When West Campus Was Willis
The last time that Northeastern opened a new dormitory
was in 1979, when-despite the construction of three new residence halls
and the conversion of thirteen renovated buildings to dormitories during
the 1960s and early 1970s-the university was facing the now familiar problem
of a housing crunch. In fact, there were 400 students on the waiting list
for university housing as the first of 370 grateful upperclassmen began
moving into the new West Apartments on Leon Street in the fall of 1979-before
the building was even completed. Although ten-story Willis Hall (as it
was renamed in 1990) remains popular with students, architectural critics
have not been kind to it. Writing in a collection of essays commemorating
N.U.'s centennial last year, Peter Serenyi, professor emeritus of art and
architecture, proclaimed that "the undistinguished 
slab remains the most inappropriately conceived
building on campus. It is a high-rise in a low-rise campus, sheathed in
gray brick in a red-brick environment." Yet be it ever so humble .
. .