Fulton Hall

Fulton Hall is a building on the campus of Boston College that houses the School of Business Administration (now the Wallace E. Carroll School of Management).

When World War II ended in 1945 there was a dramatic increase in enrollment at Boston College, due to the returning soldiers and the opportunities afforded to them by the G.I. bill. The number of undergraduates swelled from 1,000 before the war to 5,000 by 1946. The available facilities could no longer accommodate any more students, so Boston College decided to build Fulton Hall. This building was, by far, the most sparse due to budget constraints. Students went door to door throughout the city of Boston selling “Bricks for Boston College” for $1 each in an attempt to raise funds. Working with whatever resources they could, Maginnis & Walsh designed a building that would never be able to live up to the rest of the existing buildings. The construction of Fulton Hall began in June 1947 and ended in 1948. The building was laid out on the south side of what is now known as the main Gasson quadrangle. This area is composed of a large grassy courtyard surrounded by the Lyons, Gasson, Devlin, and Fulton buildings, one in each cardinal direction. The original design consisted of a simple 2-story Gothic-style building with a plain masonry façade, two towers in the front corners and a recessed courtyard on the south side. Because of its hilly location, and a request from the Trustees of Boston College that the building not block the view of Gasson Hall, only the top two stories were visible from the front of the building and the Gasson quadrangle, making it look small amongst the taller adjacent buildings.

In the summer of 1993, Svigals & Associates radically renovated Fulton Hall. To improve the exterior aesthetics of the building, it was given a colorful masonry façade to match the rest of the buildings in the Gasson quadrangle and a polychrome copper roof. The colors used in the roof and walls create a striking effect with the landscaping of the Gasson quadrangle during the fall when the leaves in the trees turn yellow and red (which happen to be the school’s colors) and fall on top of the bright green grass, in effect making the grass look like the colorful roofs of the buildings that surround it. This color contrast makes for a very aesthetically pleasing effect. In order to increase available space, a 5th floor along with a whole new section on the south side of the building were added and its south-facing courtyard was converted into a spacious 5-story open atrium in between the two sections. The rear (new) section of the building is finished in the exterior with the same polychrome masonry work as the rest of the building, but its interior is drastically different.

The rear section is a thin straight line, running from east to west, enclosing into an atrium what was formerly the south courtyard of Fulton Hall. In order to maximize available space in the atrium, the north of the rear section is supported by a series of exposed tubular steel columns. These columns run from the bottom of the building up to the bottom of the atrium’s glass ceiling. These columns support large steel girders on which the floors of the building rest. By using exposed structural members constructed from tubular steel, the architects achieved a modern, elegant and clean look that maximizes the available space inside the building as well as keeps costs down. The tubular shape of the columns also emphasizes the verticality of the space, making the 5-story atrium feel even taller. The pleasing simple gray columns make a great contrast with the south side of the original buildings sharp edges, ornate windows, and colorful masonry. The use of a satin-finished wood where the walls of the rear section meet steel columns softens the intersections and reduces the industrial feel of the exposed structural members. The contrast of a warm and soft material like wood and a cold and stiff one like metal creates a very interesting effect, where the softer warmer material gives the building a finished, refined and elegant look while the steel makes it feel modern, strong and minimalist.

The large glass ceiling of the atrium allows large amounts of light to flow into the building throughout the day because of its east to west layout. This light is softened by the use of diffusing finishes on all of the interior surfaces, creating a naturally lit environment where it is nearly impossible to identify the source of light. All exposed wood has a satin finish and the paint used has an eggshell finish in order to diffuse the light and the masonry walls of the original building naturally do this. In order to utilize the natural light provided by the atrium, as well as to provide a sense of openness, the third, fourth and fifth-floor north-facing walls (the ones that face the atrium) on the rear section are composed mostly large windows. The second floor has a U-shaped balcony area that overlooks the open area in first floor, which is furnished with couches benches and tables and meant to be a meeting place and lounge area for students. The balcony, which connects the old building to the new one, features steel and wood handrails composed of steel vertical elements and wood horizontal elements in order to add a softer and warmer material where humans interact with it. Also notable in the handrails are the gothic arches which span from column to column, representing the union of the classic gothic building and the new modern addition.

The original Fulton Hall was a short, unsightly stone building due to the lack of funds available during its construction; it looked out of place amongst the other much more ostentatious and taller colored-stone buildings. For many years it was regarded as the most unsuccessful of the Maginnis & Walsh buildings. During the years, it went through many minor renovations, including the construction of a small Library on the south side of the building overlooking the courtyard. This small library now overlooks the atrium. This wall features 7 evenly spaced windows in the form of large Gothic arches, each of which is divided into three columns, each featuring a drop-shaped subdivision near the top for decoration. A lead rectangular grid pattern was applied to large panels of glass in order to create the effect of the window being composed of small panes. This is a sharp contrast from the windows in the new addition, which are rectangular and feature large uninterrupted glass panes.