A brick building with a limestone foundation, Gaylord Hall at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska in this 63.5"x4.5" black and white photograph was built as a women's dormitory. The center section of the Y-shaped building has four-stories over a daylight basement while the other two wings are three-stories high. The end of the central wing in the photograph has a gambrel roof with shed dormers; the other two wings have hipped-gambrel roofs with pedimented dormer windows. An entrance is built into the corner where two of the wings meet. Lines of short trees cross intersecting paths in the foreground and march past the building.
Ladies Hall was designed by Cabot and Chandler of Boston and built in 1884. It was the third college building on campus. After a pledge of a generous donation, the building was renamed in 1890 for the Reverend Reuben Gaylord, a pioneer home missionary and Christian educator. Gaylord Hall provided housing for seventy-five to eighty female students. The building had steam heat and gas lighting as well as piping for hot and cold water.
Currently the building houses classrooms and faculty offices. There are production studios for television and radio, and the student newspaper is located in the lower level. Gaylord is one of three Doane buildings listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Sources: 1) Thomas D. Perry, History of Doane College 1872 to 1912 Crete, Nebraska (Doane College Crete, Nebraska, 1957), 56-57 . 2) Janet L. Jeffries, Images of America, Crete (South Carolina, Arcadia Publishing, 2012), 67.
