The College Building/Lynch Hall

Lynch Hall was one of the first academic buildings on St Bonaventure's campus. It stands in the exact place where De La Roche stands today. the building was eventually destroyed by a lightning storm and a subsequent fire.

The College Building, or as it would be later referred to as, Lynch Hall, cost the school $10,000 to build. It stood where De La Roche now does. It was originally constructed in 1858 before facing damage from a fire, being restored as Lynch Hall in 1899. The building contained classrooms and laboratories, student housing and interestingly enough, a bowling alley. This was more than likely the main academic building on campus considering the many themes going on in Alumni Hall, and one of the two first student housing buildings, the other being Devereux. The most notable story about this building is how the building tragically met it’s end in 1933. On top of Lynch Hall there was a large clock tower which was struck by lightning, causing massive amounts of fire damage to the building. By the next year, the remains of Lynch Hall, originally the college building, were Frankenstein’d yet again into a new and improved science building known as De La Roche, which luckily hasn’t caught enough fire to burn it down it’s almost 100 years.     

Lynch Hall , SBU Archives . Accessed December 6th 2021. http://archives.sbu.edu/studentpages/buildings/Buildings/Lynch%20Hall.htm.