Little ever seemed known about George M. Eckert (M for Mandrill, I later discovered), whose brief biography said he was originally from somewhere out east and had attended some college whose name began with a V. Vanderbilt? Villanova? Vatterott? I don’t remember. An English professor by trade, he came to Grandville in the mid-1920s and reportedly left town in five years for bigger and better pastures; one assumes this position at GU was just one in a series of small steps leading to bigger and better things for Mr. Eckert. But that too is a bit unclear.
George Eckert must have been held in high esteem by the colleagues that remained in Grandville because his name seems to have been evoked for years. An occasional dip into the yearbooks of the time indicate he was well-liked and, from those volumes immediately following his departure, much-missed. Looking sort of like a poor man’s John Updike, George Eckert’s name was finally etched on the face of the university in the 1950s with the construction of the Eckert English Building. As I noted years later, I can’t think of a more interesting honor for someone whose only association with the school is five years of teaching English.
The three-story Eckert English Building was a proud looking structure of grayish-cream colored stone whose short end opened out onto the main quadrangle. Its front doors, and the two-story windows directly above the door, were framed by a multi-colored brick façade that ran the height of the building; from a distance it appeared as jagged cut stone, something perhaps to give it the resemblance of a little texture.
Next to the Eckert Building was the band hall. In the 1980s the administration decided to not knock down the English and band buildings but to combine the two structures into one. This wasn’t something entirely new on campus as a few dormitories had been structurally fused together in years past and went from being known as X Hall and Y Hall to the X-Y Complex. After the newly built section between the English and band buildings – which mostly contained an open and windowed walkway and staircase – was complete, the combined structure became known as the Eckert Complex.
Somewhere along the way another complex developed, this one speaking to the fact that the original two buildings did not stand on equal footing. This meant that when you entered the front doors of the original English building on the first floor and walked up the staircase in the new windowed walkway, you found yourself on the first floor of the original band building. It could be a confusing mess if, for example, a class schedule said to meet in room 105 and you entered at the wrong door – if you’re told something is on the first floor, and you’re fairly sure you’re on the first floor, then you don’t usually go up flights of stairs in pursuit of a misplaced classroom. All this perceived confusion could have been avoided through signage but there was none during that school year I frequented the building (maybe there was some years prior or later but I don’t know). So in GU-speak, having an eckert complex meant you were prone to getting lost in the English building.
Ms. Getnam’s English Composition I class met in what was the basement of the original English Building. For English Composition II, I walked upstairs to the first floor, up another set of stairs to the first floor, and then down a long hall to an auditorium that was badly undersized for the number of students in the class.
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Complex
(Edwards, Unruh)
Unruh
From the album Setting Fire to Sinking Ships
1999
