I Destroyed Pelham Hall!
Okay, perhaps I didn’t actually bring Pelham down, but I did get to take a whack at it with a sledge hammer! FYI - This picture is of Elan Schnitzer of the Mount Vernon Campus Life Office. He was just doing the preliminary hammering to get things ready for me…
Today, much of the Mount Vernon Campus gathered for a goodbye picnic for Pelham Hall. We ate hotdogs and then took turns donning the hard hat for our chance to knock a few bricks off the old girl.
Like any good retirement party, there were also tributes read. Here is a little excerpt from Nina Mikhalevsky, former Dean of Students at the Mount Vernon College (before it became part of GW):
Flood: I called it The Poseidon Adventure because whenever we had extremely heavy rains it flooded–prodigiously: the water ran down the inside walls, the water cascaded across the slated windows and into rooms, the water bubbled up through the lower floor.
Pestilence: One spring, Pelham had the worst, most pervasive and recalcitrant mice problem– for months, we tried a variety of exterminators/services/methods as well as some draconian rules for the students managing their cooking/snacks/food but within a few weeks, t he mice always returned in abundance. Finally, three students went to the DC animal shelter and adopted three cats–in three weeks the mice problem was solved–whenever I went up to check on things at Pelham, I pretended I did not see the cats.
Madness: one year, a two students set up a grill on the ledge outside their window; they…sunbathed, and grilled hotdogs–we found out when we saw the smoke coming up over the hill…
Goodbye, dear Pelham!
