Nursing Building

Originally constructed in 1976, but later renovated and expanded in 2014, the Nursing Building is home to the University of Alabama in Huntsville's College of Nursing. The nursing department has a long history at UAH, but the construction of this building allowed it to grow drastically, establishing the nursing program as a permanent fixture in the UAH community and making UAH a competitive school in the field. Within the building are classrooms, medical equipment, and appropriate facilities to provide all necessary services for the College of Nursing. It has been the home of the nursing program of UAH since it's original construction and remains that way today.

When the university instituted a College of Nursing in the 70s, it was understood that it required a home. So, for this purpose, the Nursing Building was created. When constructed in 1976, it was spacious for the amount of students enrolled, contemporary looking, and triangle-shaped. It stored, as intended, "administrative and faculty offices, open-ended classrooms, educational forums, service areas, and multi-purpose common areas"^[1] in a total of 46,000 square feet. Additionally, on the top floor of the original construction, there was a large, modern at the time, Learning Resources Area. It was designed to meet every need of the College of Nursing at that time.

That being said, the building did not age as well as it could have. With the school growing and technology becoming better, it became necessary to renovate the building, and even add more space to it. At an enrollment figure of more than quadruple what had been anticipated nearly 40 years prior, a simple renovation itself would not be effective in reducing the strain on resource and classrooms. A renovation and expansion was necessary to provide the needed space. This was planned in 2014. Although the exterior of the building was still considered aesthetically pleasing in the 21st century, the interior of the building needed much more work. Both the renovation of the existing structure and the expansion were anticipated to be completed by early-to-mid 2015, for a total cost of $17,000,000.

The renovation brought the building into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act - an act intended to, among other things, define features that a building must have to be adaptable for those with disabilities - which simply didn't exist at the time of original construction, as well as updating the building itself to not only be compatible with modern technology but also allow for the reconfiguring of the top floor into meeting spaces as opposed to the old Learning Resources Area. The expansion however created new spaces for the building, providing more classrooms, additional faculty offices, a new auditorium, and additional gathering spaces for students. It also provided a new space for the Learning Resources Area in the expanded structure. In addition to the interior renovations and addition, the construction also included a new design for the greenway in front of the building, reinforcing that the front of the Nursing Building is the side that opens onto the greenway and not that which opens to the road, as that had been an aesthetically confusing and arguably displeasing design choice since the construction of the original part of the building.

To this day, the Nursing Building is home to the entirety of UAH's College of Nursing and every program within it. The building established the College of Nursing as an essential part of the community and allowed for a growth that made UAH a competitive university for nursing programs. It houses all classes, equipment, gathering spaces, lecture halls, and auditoriums that the College of Nursing needs, and additionally provides an architectural presence that compliments UAH's campus-wide greenway and walking path network.

University of Alabama in Huntsville, "1976-1977 Catalog, vol. 10, no. 1" (1976). Course Catalogs. 27. https://louis.uah.edu/catalogs/27.

The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "Breathing New Life into the Nursing Building." January 22nd 2014. https://www.uah.edu/news/campus/breathing-new-life-into-the-nursing-building.