1954 -- 2008
. . .but Mangum Will No Longer
One year ago, our Thinking Aloud team worked, albeit temporarily, in Knight-Mangum Hall at the southern edge of the campus. Today, the building is rubble. Worse than rubble: dust. It got vaporized. If you doubt that, visit the site. Its demolition has been planned for some time. I 
knew about it and had time to prepare. But I didn’t prepare, and so I fear I must confess: I’m shocked. Not appalled, just shocked. Incredulous, you know, or in denial.
Here are some of the things I really miss that they have taken away from BYU. I don’t know who they are, but it’s probably the universal they, distant cousins to the royal we. Institutions have compelling reasons for acting, and often those actions rub uncomfortably against our penchant to be nostalgic about things that disappear. Ahem … all I mean to say is that I was once terribly fond of and now really miss: the fountain on the east side of the Talmage Building; the old former siting of the Tree of Wisdom (or “Dallin Oak”); the double uninterrupted colonnade of columnar oak trees stretching from the Talmage to the Law School; swimsuits you could check out from the locker rooms instead of having to bring your
own; Navajo tacos in the old pre-franchise-era Cougareat; the sweeping circular staircases in the Cougareat and Wilkinson Center ballroom and the fancy brickwork above your lunch; established trees on the west hillside behind the old Alumni House; ducks in canals; a president who actually resided in the “President’s House”; the architecture of Stephen Markham with a mighty lecture hall in the old Joseph Smith Building (venue for my own baccalaureate convocation!); strange little houses that lined the hilltop by the Carillon; Arthur Henry King; the Mahonri Young statue of Brigham Young in the Fine Arts Center; the giant Christmas tree by the Brimhall building.
Well, you can only behave nostalgically for a brief moment, else the enterprise starts to evince the tell-tale symptoms of curmudgeonliness. So I’d best leave it there. (Or didn’t I stop soon enough?) I repeat: the Knight-Mangum Hall Building, with its Social Hall, its history of missionary language instruction, and all it’s glorious you-can’t-get-there-from-here-ness, simply is no more. Wrecking balls and bulldozers have eradicated what moth and rust never could.
knew about it and had time to prepare. But I didn’t prepare, and so I fear I must confess: I’m shocked. Not appalled, just shocked. Incredulous, you know, or in denial.Here are some of the things I really miss that they have taken away from BYU. I don’t know who they are, but it’s probably the universal they, distant cousins to the royal we. Institutions have compelling reasons for acting, and often those actions rub uncomfortably against our penchant to be nostalgic about things that disappear. Ahem … all I mean to say is that I was once terribly fond of and now really miss: the fountain on the east side of the Talmage Building; the old former siting of the Tree of Wisdom (or “Dallin Oak”); the double uninterrupted colonnade of columnar oak trees stretching from the Talmage to the Law School; swimsuits you could check out from the locker rooms instead of having to bring your
own; Navajo tacos in the old pre-franchise-era Cougareat; the sweeping circular staircases in the Cougareat and Wilkinson Center ballroom and the fancy brickwork above your lunch; established trees on the west hillside behind the old Alumni House; ducks in canals; a president who actually resided in the “President’s House”; the architecture of Stephen Markham with a mighty lecture hall in the old Joseph Smith Building (venue for my own baccalaureate convocation!); strange little houses that lined the hilltop by the Carillon; Arthur Henry King; the Mahonri Young statue of Brigham Young in the Fine Arts Center; the giant Christmas tree by the Brimhall building.Well, you can only behave nostalgically for a brief moment, else the enterprise starts to evince the tell-tale symptoms of curmudgeonliness. So I’d best leave it there. (Or didn’t I stop soon enough?) I repeat: the Knight-Mangum Hall Building, with its Social Hall, its history of missionary language instruction, and all it’s glorious you-can’t-get-there-from-here-ness, simply is no more. Wrecking balls and bulldozers have eradicated what moth and rust never could.
-Marcus Smith
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