Life Before Cyberspace

{Prompt: Write about the campus of NCSSM}

Watts Hospital - The Backdrop

When we moved into the School of Science and Mathematics, on September 7th, 1980, our group photo (in shorts and short-sleeved shirts) was taken in front of the edifice of the renovated 1908 Building of the historic Watts Hospital.

And on the day we graduated, on May 30th, 1982, our group photo (in cap and gown) was taken on the lawn, with the 1908 Building and Wyche House in the background.  Our high school experience was book-ended by portraits in front of the venerable buildings that for seventy years had been emblematic of Watts Hospital and the Watts School of Nursing.  

The facade of the 1908 building — with its red tiled overhanging roofs, its stuccoed walls, its ornamented loggia, and its ornate Moorish cupola — subsequently became symbolic of the new institution — the NC School of Science and Math — and symbolic of high expectations. 

The iconic cupola even served as the school’s logo for many years (after the “Flaming Diaper”… before the “Catalyst”).

The cupola of the 1908 building.

As a backdrop, it was awe-inspiring and exciting.  To prospective applicants and to students, it was inviting.  In fact it was designed to be inviting when the hospital opened 70 years before—to encourage patients to feel at ease as they entered the institution.

But even though the dramatic and historic architecture of the buildings served as a testament to great philanthropy and innovative planning… even though the buildings were home to decades of medical care, including life and death… all that meant little to the young students, including myself, all embarked upon an entirely new adventure.

For us, the grandeur of the buildings served only as a backdrop to a grand experiment – a newly funded residential high school for gifted students, in the state of North Carolina.

The entering class (and staff) in September 1980.

The High School Campus

In 1980, there was no student center or student commons… no gymnasium… no auditorium… not even a cafeteria.  Classrooms were confined to the basements, generally functional, but nothing more.  The teachers had barely enough time to move in — to make the classrooms their own.

Other parts of campus — places awaiting renovation — were off limits completely.  I didn’t even see the elegant lobby of the 1908 building until years later.  And the school administration, though housed on campus, was (happily) assigned to office space that was quite far from our student living quarters.

Our dormitories were the places most filled with the bustle of activity during that first year.  There were a little fewer than 150 students, assigned to roughly five halls on campus: two halls at Wyche House (male), two halls at Hill House (female), and one hall on the third floor of the Main Building (also male). 

In our rooms we might study… or more likely, unwind with our radio or cassette player or hi-fi stereo (depending on our audiophile nerdiness), or read a book, or discuss our day with friends.  Over time, those conversations would grow to include everything from the mundane to the existential, including our hopes and fears.

I had no roommate during most of the first year, so I spent most of my time not in my room, but in the recreation room in the basement of Wyche House.  I played ping pong down there… a lot of ping pong.  I met the other guys in the dorm down there.  We talked about random topics.  We ate Domino’s Pizza.  We started a “secret” society — a fraternity of sorts — “The Callipygian Correspondents’ Collaboration Club.”

Sidebar: “4C” as it was known, was inspired by the chance discovery of a slightly naughty word in the “C” section of the dictionary (no internet, remember), and ginned up into existence by some aspect of group mob mentality — adolescent social dynamics.  In retrospect, it’s not surprising that this blatantly misogynistic “gentleman’s club” would become an embarrassment — a testament to my immaturity.

Those social spaces… those recreation rooms, porches, and lounges… were unforgettable.  All kinds of events and activities, both sanctioned and unsanctioned, took place in those spaces.  They were the “melting pots” of our differing perspectives — our different origins.  They were the places where friend groups and close relationships were kindled.  Those experiences became the kernel of growing hall pride.

A gaggle of eleventh graders gathered for Halloween.

The Places In Between

But our daily lives, our personal time and our meanderings, were often found in the liminal spaces — the halls and breezeways between buildings, the elevator and elevator lobbies of Beall (Valinda Beall Watts Pavilion), the steps of Wyche or Hill House, the grassy quad between the dorms, and the road that crossed the middle of campus.

For me the most memorable space in which I lingered, between scheduled classes and activities, would be the mail room. It was on the ground floor of Hill House.  It may sound like a dull utilitarian space, but it was nothing of the kind.  The mailbox doors were all made of brass, designed in the 1920s, creating an antique, but regal, grid of lock boxes on the wall.  Each mailbox door was about the size of a deck of cards… maybe a little bit bigger… about 3 by 4 inches in size.  Each student had their own box, and their own combination.

A typical mailbox. 

Upon opening the brass door, on any given day, a myriad of contents could be discovered.  The mail room was the dispensary for postage-stamped letters, with news and loving encouragement from the family at home… and for some students, home was quite far away.  With virtually no internet in existence, the mail room was the source of contact with the outside world.

But the mailroom also became the essential hub of internal communications, from administration, staff, and faculty. Even student newsletters and announcements found their way into the rectangular mail cubicles. It was nearly every day that some memorandum, amusement, assignment, or directive was found curled up inside the slot at the back of the mailbox door. 

It was a little like having a mystery gift delivered in a beautiful brass box.  It could be unlocked and retrieved with a secret combination. 

But the contents must have also been quite important.  I still have a dream, to this day that I’m running late… and I can’t find my class, somewhere on campus… I can’t find the administrative office, to find out where the class is located… and I can’t find my mailbox with the crucial directions… or I’ve forgotten my combination.  My efforts to find my way are thwarted at every turn.  I wake up, realizing that it’s only a dream, and thank heavens that I made it to all my requisite courses, way back then.

Keith Promislow at his mailbox in 1980-81.

What Makes a (renovated) Hospital a Home?

The NC School of Science and Math began as a dream — an aspirational repurposing of a historically, culturally, and architecturally significant campus — the Watts Hospital Campus. The expectations were high that our class, and future classes, would honor the legacy of the hospital that had served Durham for decades. The 1908 Building was like the representation of, and the portal for, all those expectations.

But, when we walked across the threshold and through that symbolic portal, a school and a community quickly developed. It had interior functional spaces — classrooms and lounges – to facilitate the mixture of attitudes and opinions from students and faculty, from the farthest reaches of the state. 

It was a physical space where learning flowed in both directions, between the young and the old – between the book-smart, impetuous, and ambitious student body and the cautious, judicious, and moderating faculty and staff.  

Eventually it also became a home.  There were places for purposeful solo activity — for quiet contemplation, if you looked for it.  Sometimes, after class and before starting my homework (or avoiding it), I would go to the lawn beside the breezeway adjoining the 1908 Building, and practice dribbling and kicking the soccer ball, hoping not to knock any stucco from the walls, or worse, break a window.  

Or I would go to the darkroom… remove the film from the camera in complete darkness and wind it on a spool for development, later choosing a frame from the negatives to enlarge onto photographic paper – exposing the paper, developing the paper, and stopping the development — then hanging up the various photos to dry.

Or I would go to work service, cleaning dishes on the conveyor belt — rinsing off the residue, loading them into plastic trays, and pushing them through the industrial washing machine, like a miniature carwash.

Or I might check the mail, hoping for a moment of whimsy… a letter from home… some news of the world… an instruction to follow… or a plan for tomorrow. 

I dreamed of the future, inspired by iconic buildings of the past.