History (Re) Photographed:
by Concordia College students in History 112HU, Fall 2016

Collin Larson

Over the years Concordia College has changed in many ways. Buildings have been added to the campus such as most recently the new Offutt business school and in progress right now is the new science building Ivers are only a few examples. Remodels of buildings have occurred and buildings have changed what they are used for. I have chosen to write about my photo I re-photographed and that is Brown Hall on the north west side of campus sitting among the large courtyard. Brown Hall is a four story building that is designed to house around two hundred and sixty students. The rooms on the inside of the building are arranged vertically instead of horizontally by floors. It was build in nineteen-forty-seven in Gothic Tudor styling. Brown Hall is named after Concordia President J.N. Brown who worked for the college from nineteen-twenty-five to nineteen-fifty-one. 2
Comparing the pictures at first glance one would think not much has changed in the scenery besides a few minor things, until you take a closer look. The most obvious part of the picture and that is the big tree that you see in the second picture that is missing in the first. You can draw an obvious conclusion from this that some significant time has passed between the taking of both of these photos, almost seventy years to be exact. Another thing you may notice right away is the new lights and walking path that were put in, one may assume this was done because this area of campus was becoming more frequently traveled.
I have a few different ideas as to why the outside of the building has been redone over the years in between the two pictures. Being Concordia College and Brown Hall are located in Moorhead, Minnesota the building has seen some harsh weather. From the hot summers to the harsh winters some wear and tear to the outside of the building would be cause for remodel. The brick building was obviously made to be there for awhile so updates are of course going to be necessary.
My second inference is that the building was built with the intent it would be around for many years to come. The materials used are mainly brick and this would help the building withstand the harsh Minnesota winters. It is a big brick building with windows on all sides around which may suggest to some this is a building used for a dormitory. This may be intended to give the building may of a feel of home for the students living there.
I did some research to see if Brown Hall has always been used as a dormitory. What I found while searching the Concordia College website is that from what I can tell it has always been a dormitory. In nineteen-eighty-three there was a huge remodel that made Brown Hall accessible to students in a wheelchair.2 Other than that there have been no major renovations to the building besides simple painting or shingling like we saw this summer.
I think that these pictures side by side help show that Concordia is successful as a college. If the building did not change much that would show that there was no need for upkeep or expanding the building. So seeing that the building has changed over time helps back up my claim that the school grew. With growth comes change and updates would be necessary to keep the building up to date and looking nice to hopefully attract more students to create more growth for the school.
My idea is that the school decided to build this building because of immigration and the growing community of Fargo Moorhead in general. My secondary source I used is a scholarly article where the information provided is form the United States Census in the year two thousand. The article compares immigration trends thought-out the nineteen hundreds to the early two thousands. I used this information while researching if immigration would have anything to do with the reasoning behind expanding the building. What I found was that it was too inconclusive to tell, there are some numbers from the article may suggest immigrants were coming from Europe to the united states at this time. Such as during the nineteen forty’s to the nineteen fifties there was a nineteen percent increase in millions, and a fourteen point five percent increase in population increase according to the the United States Census Bureau.1 But overall I feel the building change is due to the expanding community around the college.
In the time that the first picture was taken there was not much else as far as infrastructure around the college. It was about the furthest thing in the southern part of town at the time, as you can tell from the picture it looks to be almost out in a corn field. This is just amazing to me because it shows not just how much that Brown Hall, or Concordia College as a whole has changed overtime, but the community as a whole. 1 U.S. Census bureau, decennial census of population, 1900 to 2000. 2 "Brown Hall." Concordia College. Web. 04 Dec. 2016. 3 Hobbs, Frank. Stoops, Nicole. “Census 2000 Special Reports: Demographic Trends of the Twentieth Century.” November 2002.