Zane Showker Hall: Then and Now
On March 10, 2022, while on a trip to Virginia, Elyse and I spent a few hours visiting James Madison University, which is where I went to college from 1999 to 2003. While there, we visited Maury Hall, which has since been renamed to Gabbin Hall but is otherwise the same, we checked out Wilson Hall, which had been renovated a few years ago, and we checked out the new D-Hall, which replaced the dining hall that I was familiar with on the same site. However, we spent most of our time on campus visiting the new College of Business Learning Complex, which consists of two buildings: Zane Showker Hall, and Hartman Hall. Hartman Hall is brand new, having been completed in 2020. Zane Showker Hall has been around since 1991, and is one that I was quite familiar with, having spent much time there as both a business major early on and later as a public administration major. If it gives you any idea how much time I spent here, I had classes at Showker during seven out of my nine semesters at JMU. During the 2020-2021 academic year, Zane Showker Hall was closed for a renovation, and reopened for the fall 2021 semester. This was my first visit to the newly renovated building.
In touring Zane Showker Hall, I soon learned that the building, for the most part, still looked like Zane Showker Hall. The layout had not been changed very much. The same rooms were all still there, but the building systems had been updated, the decor had been updated, and a lot more technology had been added since I was a student. While Zane Showker Hall was a showpiece of the best that the early 1990s had to offer as far as design, decor, and technology went back then, now it’s much more modern, and, alongside Hartman Hall, is ready to serve students for another thirty years.
The front side of Zane Showker Hall, photographed in October 2000. Located adjacent to Eagle, Shorts, and Chandler Halls, collectively known as the Lakeside dorms, Showker was designed to be architecturally similar, though at a glance, it is clear that Showker was built much later than its neighbors. The office tower has something of a pinwheel shape, similar to Shorts and Eagle Halls. A driveway for passenger dropoffs is in front.
The main entrance to Zane Showker Hall. The vestibule was a greenhouse-like structure, and there was something resembling a colonnade in front of it.
Following renovations, it still looks like Zane Showker Hall, but with a few changes. Besides sister building Hartman Hall, which replaced Chandler Hall, the sixth floor received floor-to-ceiling windows on the ends of each of the wings. I’m not sure what I think about this change, considering that it does not extend the full height of the building. It looks like it doesn’t belong, like it’s been shoehorned into an existing design (which, in all fairness, it is). Additionally, the driveway is gone, as this is now located in front of Hartman Hall.
At the entrance itself, the greenhouse-style vestibule had been replaced by a smaller, more modern vestibule. The colonnade is gone. “Showker Hall” lettering is now in place over the entrance.
The sign was in a different place than it used to be, and was of a different style, matching the design language that JMU adopted fairly recently that contains street addresses for all of the buildings. Interestingly enough, though, the newly constructed Hartman Hall still used the older signage style.
I am kind of saddened that JMU seems to have settled on “Showker Hall” as the name of the building post-renovation. I always liked that it was called “Zane Showker Hall” because it was unique. No other building used the namesake’s first name on its signage. JMU briefly changed the sign to say just “Showker Hall” in 2000, but this was quickly changed back when the all-purple signage style with the then-new Madison head logo was introduced. I commented on that change at the time in a quote article.
The main lobby spans two stories, and serves as the link between the classroom wing and the office tower. As built, the lobby made heavy use of marble in its design. A portrait of Zane Showker, the building’s namesake, hung on the back wall.
Following renovation, the lobby takes on a much plainer appearance. The marble is largely gone, replaced with wood, tile, and drywall. A small lounge area in the center of the space is carpeted. The lobby is now named the Abate Atrium. This follows a trend in the new College of Business Learning Complex, in that everything that they could sell naming rights for, they did.
The portrait of Zane Showker is back in the same place as before, now above a gas fireplace that had been installed in what used to be the back wall of the lobby. The area around the fireplace is now the only place where marble is found – the same style of marble that the entire lobby had previously been done in. The lobby now also extends further back than it did before, into space that was previously a separate vending lobby.
Dedication plaques just off of the main lobby. These plaques were reinstalled in their original locations following renovations, though the original setting was on brick, while the new setting is on drywall. I feel like the new setting doesn’t lend the same sense of permanence as their original brick setting. There were always two plaques: one for the building as Zane Showker Hall, and another for the more generically named “College of Business Building”. I am unfamiliar with the history here, but the presence of two separate plaques marked as they are always made me wonder if the building initially operated under the generic name, however briefly, prior to its formally being named for Showker. I also found it curious that Gerald Baliles is listed as the governor on the dedication plaque, because Doug Wilder was governor in 1991, which makes me wonder if the lower plaque was manufactured well in advance, prior to Wilder’s election in 1989. Lots of questions here.
The vending lobby was just behind the main lobby, and contained a row of vending machines and some tables. The Breeze, the JMU student newspaper, was available here. The space was largely carpeted, and much of the walls were the same red brick that was used on the exterior of the building.
Within two years of my graduating, the vending lobby got a facelift, with the carpeting’s being replaced with tile. The centerpiece was the then-new College of Business logo in the floor.
If that fire alarm in the back of one of the photos of the vending lobby looks familiar, it should. That is the exact Wheelock 7002T that I use as the lead photo on the Fire Alarm Collection pages, and which appears on the fire alarm shirts in my online store. I had three photo shoots with it in 2000, 2003, and 2016. Every time I got up on a chair to photograph this alarm, I would always think, please do not let this thing go off in my face. I’ve heard it sound before, and trust me, it’s loud.
Photos from the 2000 shoot, taken with the original Mavica.
The same alarm in 2003, photographed with Big Mavica.
The same alarm again in 2016, photographed with my Nikon SLR.
Elyse got a photograph of me at work with the alarm during the 2016 shoot.
Nowadays, the vending lobby is a lot smaller, with much of the space’s having been incorporated into the main lobby. It’s now more of a corridor than a room, providing access to room 1103 (formerly 101) and the stairwell.
In this photo, I demonstrate that the fire alarm is gone without a trace. I knew that this was going to happen, as the Wheelock 7002T does not meet modern codes, plus when you renovate a building like this, a new fire alarm system is a given, but it was still sad to see it missing for myself. I would also find a number of instances throughout the building where openings from the old system had been plated over, but in this case, since it had been mounted on drywall, you would never know that it ever existed.
On the other side of the vending lobby, in the office tower part of the building, were several group study rooms. Room 116 is shown here. They had a table and chairs, and were fully partitioned off with a door. I never used them with a group, but I did occasionally use them alone. Unfortunately, I did not get photos of this space following renovations.
Prior to renovations, the first floor corridor in the classroom wing continued the marble theme from the lobby in the floors and the walls were a tan color, shown here in 2016. Following renovations, the walls became white, and the floors were tiled.
In the classroom wing, Zane Showker Hall generally had three sizes of classrooms: small, medium, and large. The classrooms on the ground and first floors had fixed seating in tiered rows, while the classrooms on the second floor were more traditional classrooms with a flat floor and standard furnishings.
This photo shows room 102, one of the small classrooms on the first floor, photographed in February 2001. 102 was unusual in that the seats were office task chairs, and not fixed to the desks on a swivel like in the other classrooms, but was otherwise identical to the other small classrooms, with three tiers of seats.
These photos from 2022 show rooms 1103 (former 101) and 1105 (former 103) following renovations. The early 1990s color schemes are gone, replaced with a lighter color palette. A ramp has been added on one side, allowing wheelchair access to the lectern. Additionally, there is no longer a center aisle, all chairs are now separate from the tables, and all seats now have power outlets. Another thing that I noticed is that previously, the various classooms had different color schemes from each other, but now, all of the classrooms seemed to have a single, uniform color scheme.
Room G6, photographed in 2000. This was one of four mid-sized classrooms, with five tiers of seats. Unfortunately, I was not able to get into any of the mid-sized classrooms, so I have no modern photos to provide comparisons.
Instructor Tony Ratcliffe presides over a section of COB 191 (business statistics) in room G6. Ratcliffe was a great instructor, and retired from the university in 2016.
Rooms 105 (above) and G5 (below) were the two large classrooms in Zane Showker Hall, each with a capacity of around 100 people. 105 had a floor that sloped downward, while G5 had defined tiers.
I was able to get into room 0212, formerly known as G5, and here’s how it looks now.
On the first floor, there were two additional classrooms on the other side of the lobby: rooms 108 and 109. I had COB 202, which teaches about interpersonal skills, in 108. I only took one photo in the room when I was a student (above), which was this one from December 2000 (I ran it with a quote article from around that time). Following renovations (below), the room, now numbered 1121 and named for KPMG, looks pretty much the same, but with more tech in it, different lighting, no more wood trim, and different furniture.
The elevator in the classroom wing, meanwhile, was about the only thing that was untouched by the renovation. The elevator was a Dover Impulse in 2001 (seen at left), and it’s still a Dover Impulse in 2022 (seen at right). I would have expected that the elevator would have been modernized while the building was offline for renovation, but it’s still there. They didn’t update anything. Note the down arrow indicator (below) that has clearly worn off over time, and was filled in with permanent marker.
On the second floor, room 202 was painted a tan color, and had a tiled floor. It had a double chalkboard on the front wall, and a second chalkboard on the side wall. I took COB 241 (financial accounting) in this room in the fall of 2000, and GECO 200 (introductory macroeconomics) in the spring of 2001.
Following renovations, the same room, now numbered 2104 and named for the Bergstrom family and John Marshall Bank, has different lights, a double whiteboard on the front wall only, and, interestingly enough, a carpeted floor.
The second floor of Zane Showker Hall had a fairly large computer lab on one side, in the same spot where the mid-sized classrooms were located on the other floors. I could not get into these rooms during my more recent visit, so I couldn’t tell you what these were nowadays. However, the JMU computer lab website lists a computer lab in Hartman Hall, so I imagine that these rooms have been repurposed.
The second floor corridor in the classroom wing, meanwhile, was fairly spartan. Tile floor, white walls. This look was retained following renovations.
The restrooms as originally built were fairly straightforward in their design. They were very functional, with white tile walls, a black tile floor, and black stall partitions. Following renovations, the restrooms retained the same layout as before, but the new finishes were a whole lot fancier, which resulted in a much more high-class look.
One day in 2003, I randomly got photos of the fire alarm and pull station in the second floor corridor next to the lobby. I got a photo of the same thing in 2022, showing the spots where the alarms used to be, now plated over.
The office tower elevators, unlike the classroom wing elevator, had received updates. The marble, seen in the view from 2000 (left), is all gone, replaced with drywall, the floors were changed from marble to tile, and the elevator doors were changed from white to stainless steel.
The office tower elevators had been modernized prior to the building renovation, as Elyse and I had observed that they were no longer Dover Impulse when we visited in 2016. We observed no additional changes inside the elevator between 2016 and 2022.
The stairwell in the office tower as originally built was very much a product of its time, with those pink railings and undersides.
In 2022, the stairwell looks largely the same. However, the flooring has been changed from rubber to tile, the lighting is different, and the railings and undersides of the stairs are now gray.
The fire alarm system in Zane Showker Hall following renovations is a Simplex 4100 voice evacuation system, which is similar to what the university has been installing in all of their buildings as of late. Notification appliances are white and mostly ceiling-mounted. Prior to renovations, the building had a Spectronics system, and used Wheelock 7002T horn/strobes and Fire-Lite BG-10 pull stations. I never did find out where the panel for the original system was located, but a remote annunciator was located off of the lobby near room 108.
A smoking area was located next to the rear entrance of the building. Along with ashtrays, this area also contained vending machines and a mail drop. Not long after I graduated, the smoking area was moved from the covered area where it was when I was a student to an open area slightly further from the entrance, which I observed during a visit in 2005.
The rear of the building beyond the smoking area, as originally built.
The old rear entrance, along with the smoking area, is now completely gone, having been replaced by an L-shaped connector corridor between Zane Showker Hall and Hartman Hall.
Main atrium of Hartman Hall, the second half of the College of Business Learning Complex, which replaced Chandler Hall, a dormitory that existed on the same site from 1974 to 2018.
Hartman Hall was a very nice looking building, but we spent very little time looking at Hartman, as it was never part of my own college experience. No doubt that many students will form fond memories of time spent in this building, but the building means very little to me, since it was not there when I was a student. Zane Showker Hall, however, will always hold a special place in my college experience.