Originally published by Dave Evensen, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Amended by Jalynn Bugaj, F&S communications intern
When you spend a year and a half immersed in a place, as Karla Smalley has in Altgeld Hall, you start to develop a sense for the significant details. One day not long ago the architect was drawn to an old chair on the building’s third floor that seemed out of place, yet oddly familiar.

Smalley is an associate principal and architect at Bailey Edward, a firm hired by campus to help renovate Altgeld Hall while preserving the building’s colorful history. Her work is part of the Altgeld and Illini Hall Project, which was launched to renovate Altgeld Hall and replace its neighbor across Wright Street with a new building to improve and modernize spaces in data science and other mathematical sciences.
Smalley was studying the building’s decorative paint and windows when it occurred to her where she’d seen that old leather chair: the historical archives.
“When you look at those photos for a year and a half, they sort of become engrained in your mind,” she said. So she went back to the archival photos, and sure enough, there was the chair in black and white, in the office of former University of Illinois President Andrew Draper, who’d served from 1894-1904.

Smalley determined that the leather chair was an original feature of the presidential office suite when it was located in the then-new Altgeld Hall (then called the University Library), which opened in 1897. There were other chairs like it in historical photos, but this was the only one that remains in the building. Today it sits next to a professor’s desk in what used to be the president’s private office.
The old chair is a clue to Altgeld Hall’s past. In the building’s early days, it functioned not as just the campus library but the center of university operations. Along with the presidential suite, the building housed operations for the Board of Trustees, bursar, and registrar, among others.
Today, the space where Smalley found the chair—located on the north side of the building facing the Alma Mater—is the undergraduate office for the Department of Mathematics. The former greeting area for the president’s office is still a greeting area, but instead of officials and politicians, it’s the welcome point for students looking for help and advising.
In the same space along that north side is the Board of Trustees’ former waiting room, now occupied by academic advisors. Part of the board’s former meeting room is now occupied by Alison Champion, associate director of undergraduate studies.
The history of the space isn’t lost on its current occupants. Champion said that they enjoy some impressive architectural features that aren’t typical in a normal office.
“The most wonderful features of our space include a lovely set of window seats in (Room) 313, which is where students wait before their advisor appointments in non-COVID times, inside the area that looks like a smaller tower on the outside of Altgeld,” she said. “(There are) two fireplaces with ornate wood coverings—but they’re blocked off to keep out the bat visitor that we had once—and of course the view of the Alma Mater. The fireplaces are the real showpiece.”
In all, Altgeld Hall has undergone four renovations (with the fifth one underway) and shifted in purpose from the library and administration building to the School of Law and the Department of Mathematics. And yet that chair and other furniture items around the building have remained in place. Smalley, for example, located the grandfather clock, a library table, and several paintings and photos that were present when the building opened in 1897.
“It’s almost been like a treasure hunt,” Smalley said, of her search for original items.
Onto the Clock
The discovery of the former president’s chair sparked interest in other items in Altgeld Hall when it opened in 1897. One of them being a grandfather clock, located on the first floor. The vintage clock now showing clear signs of wear and scratches. To restore its original beauty, a decision was made to begin the restoration process.
Tracy Collom, furniture restorer, was responsible for refinishing the grandfather clock, a process that took about four weeks to complete. Collom mentioned that the refinishing process went smoothly, stating, “I have been restoring furniture since I was a teenager in our family’s shop. It’s like ‘clockwork.'”
To prepare the clock for refinishing, the glass shop carefully removed the glass. Any damage to joints or hinges that required repair before refinishing was noted. The locksmith shop fabricated new keys for the two locks. It was requested that the color be restored to its original shade, which was still evident inside the clock. Therefore, a custom color match was performed to determine the stain to be used.
Collom didn’t have to dissemble the clock himself. “When they delivered the clock to me it was an empty cabinet. We only took off the doors before restoring,” said Collom.
The clock underwent initial gluing repairs before the paint was stripped. Following this, detailed sanding was performed, and missing scroll work was carved. The clock was then stained, and repair areas were touched up using wood putty or Bondo, a lightweight polyester-based plastic body filler. Special attention was given to blending these areas to disguise the repairs as much as possible.
Next, the brass hardware was cleaned and buffed, and a sprung hinge was lightly reshaped. Sealer finish coats were applied using catalyzed lacquer, with light sanding between coats and additional touch-ups as needed. Once the surface felt and looked smooth, final finish coats were applied. Due to the extensive surface area and detailed sections, fans were used to help dry the piece evenly.
As many flaws as possible were repaired by forming the correct profiles, easing edges, and using durable products, then sanding all the areas properly to ensure longevity.
There were around a hundred scratches, gouges, and stains on the grandfather clock that Collom addressed or covered up during the refinishing process. “Once you start doing the artwork on it, you have to be in the right frame of mind,” said Collom.
Restoration History
According to historical documents, what’s now the undergraduate office served as the presidential suite from 1897 through the early 1900s. After President Draper departed in 1904, the space was occupied by President Edmund James (who served from 1904-1920). By 1915, James—along with the Board of Trustees, registrar, and other administrators—had relocated to what’s now Henry Administration Building.

As for the old chair itself, it sits in the office of Randy McCarthy, professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Mathematics. He acquired it back in 2005 from the department chair—the head of the department, that is—who’d had it since at least 1994. The chair’s journey before that is a mystery, though it currently sits just a few feet from where it first appeared in historical photos. McCarthy knows that the original president’s desk that accompanied the chair is now in Henry Administration Building.
McCarthy has long been intrigued by the building’s history, ever since he heard that a colleague worked in an office that still had the bursar’s old money safe. Years ago, he learned the history of his own office from a historian, and now McCarthy has his students sit in the chair when they come in for advising.
Occasionally, McCarthy said, he humors them with the story behind the chair and his own office. Every other Friday some 120 years ago, he said, as faculty and staff lined up in the hallway to be paid at the bursar’s office, the president would open the door of his office to meet them.