End of an era, start of an era

When my employment was transferred to BYU about 7 or 8 years ago, I was given an office with most of the rest of the engineers in the IT group in a building located just west of campus on University Avenue and about 1300 North. We knew the building as "B-77" — not a very warm or inspiring name, but that was appropriate for the building. Originally, the campus of Utah Technical College (known as "Trade Tech" in my youth) was here. I remember going there for things like merit badge classes and traffic school.

When UTC outgrew their facilities and moved to western Orem (becoming Utah Valley Community College, Utah Valley State College, and eventually Utah Valley University), BYU purchased the Provo campus. The buildings were used for a number of things through the years; when I started working on the first floor, they were still teaching home economics classes (cooking, sewing, etc.) upstairs, and they still had a preschool as part of the main floor.

The building was old and had lots of issues. But office space at BYU was at a premium and OIT (the Office of Information Technology) didn't have any other options. So we made do, hoping through the years for a better facility. That dream eventually became a reality with the construction of the new Information Technology Building (ITB) which we began to occupy at the start of this summer. It's been very nice to be in new, up-to-date facilities with much more comfort and flexibility. (This photo shows the exterior work mostly completed; the interior is further along. The landscaping and parking will be the last to finish.) The new building is just to the west of the old one, in what used to be the parking lot.

Today, with somewhat mixed emotions, we watched the demolition of the old B-77 building, making space (eventually) for a parking lot for all of us now occupying the new building. It was quite a scene from our viewpoint in the ITB, with Y Mountain and the upper campus in the background. A large backhoe tore through the roof, walls, floors, and ceilings, gradually reducing the structure to a pile of rubble. We watched them moved methodically from north to south, knowing who used to occupy each room that took its turn disappearing into memories. Quite a sight!

I'm sure those who have longer memories than I do of this place (back to its UTC days) are feeling much more nostalgia than I am.