Graves Hall Restoration Photo Gallery

One of Hope College's oldest and most distinctive buildings is being brought into the modern era while at the same time being returned to its original glory in an "adaptive restoration".

The first work has been the careful removal of the stone that formed the east entrance to Graves. After Van Raalte Hall was destroyed by fire in 1980, the college decided to re-use some of the Waverly stone that had formed the former southern entrance of Van Raalte Hall to construct a new entrance to the east side of Graves Hall. Since the stone of Van Raalte Hall and the stone of Graves came from the same local stone quarry, this new entrance matched the beauty of the exterior of the building nicely.

To bring the building into compliance with today's accessibility requirements, an addition is being added to the east side of the building to accomodate an elevator. Finding enough stone to maintain the visual integrity of Graves Hall has been a challenge since it is no longer available locally. Lorri Sipes, a preservation planning architect, located a sandstone very similar to Graves' Waverly stone at the Kipton Quarry in northern Ohio near the campus of Oberlin College. The quarry has a state-of-the-art cutting facility where the slab, measuring six-to-eight feet square and 2-3 feet thick, are being cut and prepared for shipment to the Hope campus.