Restover Demolished Over Break
by: Christopher Turpin ‘12
Restover House, which has served as the Hampden-Sydney Police station and has stood on the campus for a century, was torn down after being gutted for reusable material over Winter Break.
Upon returning to campus, most students have noticed something missing this semester, but many were unable to put their finger on exactly what it was. Though still news to some, the Restover was razed on January 5. This building, which was serving as the Police Station and Visitor Center until they were moved to Gilkeson House, was built around the turn of the twentieth century. This one hundred year-old building was torn down, according to Director of Public Relations Mr. Tommy Shomo, because it was “structurally unsound.”
According to Mr. Shomo, the Restover had no real historical significance. When the building was originally built, it was actually located along College Road, and housed a private store and the post office. Once a college bookstore was established in 1928, the private store went out of business. The post office remained until 1941, when it was moved to what is now the Esther Thomas Atkinson Museum.
According to Mr. Shomo, the only piece of history associated with the Restover, was that “only upperclassmen (juniors and seniors) were allowed to sit on the post-and-rail fence along College Road.” This tradition was established when students would wait for the mail, which would arrive at the Restover from Farmville twice a day. This tradition continued well into the 1960’s. Mr. Shomo explained that “When I came to Hampden-Sydney as a freshman in 1965, we were told that not sitting on the fence was one of the Hampden-Sydney traditions that we needed to follow. No one explained why and, in retrospect, I am quite sure that the sophomores who forbid us to sit on the fence did not know why either.”
Sometime after the store was moved, so was the Restover, to where it sat until the time it was razed before the beginning of the current semester. After the Post Office was relocated, the building served as faculty housing until the 1979-1980 academic year, when it was then refitted to serve as the business office. Twenty years later, the building became the security office and visitor center.
Mr. Shomo claims that the structural issues of the building had been apparent for some time, but there was no place to move the facilities it housed. That changed this semester when the police station was moved to Gilkeson House, which sat abandoned for the fall semester of this academic year. According to Mr. Shomo, “Once Restover was empty, the safest and sanest thing to do was to pull it down.”
The process of tearing down the Restover began on January 5, when all of the useful materials were removed, and the building was prepped for teardown. On January 6, the razing process was begun, and about half of the building was left standing until January 7, when the job was finished. All that is left of the building is an empty spot in the parking lot next to Atkinson.
Perhaps many will find it disappointing that no building is planned to replace the Restover, but perhaps the extra space could be turned into much needed extra parking for guests of the college as well was students and faculty members. Although the Restover seems to be an easily forgettable building, it spent one hundred years serving whatever purpose was needed at the time. From post office, to faculty housing, to business office, to police station and visitor center, the building perhaps filled one of the most diverse rolls of any building on campus, and certainly had an interesting history, if not a significant one. After over a century of service to the College, maybe it was time for the Restover to retire.
Former campus security office torn down, police HQ relocated to Gilkeson House
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