In recent months, the demolition of the Frieze Building on the University of Michigan campus has been ongoing. As I first learned about and reported here in July 2005 (see monthly archives on the right-hand side of this page, midway down), the Frieze Building will be making way for a new residence hall, North Quad (which will join South, West, and East Quads).
Various online articles and photo essays about the demolition are available. The university has a blog devoted to the Frieze Building, through which you can access a link to the photo essays.
There's also a retrospective exhibit, sporting a title only a punster such as myself could love, "Frieze Frame" (click here and here for further details).
During my years at Michigan in the mid-late 1980s, social work was one of the disciplines housed in the Frieze Building. I used the Social Work Library fairly often, as it was a good source of journal articles on stress and coping, a topic I was studying at the time. Ultimately, however, a splashy new building for the School of Social Work opened several years ago by the corner of South U. and East U.
The Frieze was also home to performing arts disciplines, but new replacement theatrical facilities are in the works, too.
Given the physical size of UM, many faculty, staff, and students probably have had little familiarity with the Frieze Building, even during the years it was hosting academic departments. For some, though, it does carry nostalgia.
Monica Biernat, who obtained all of her degrees at U of M and was a member of the same entering cohort as me in grad school, e-mailed me this reflection in 2005: "I can't believe the Frieze building is coming down -- I used to study there for finals when I was an undergraduate!"