By Melissa Moody
The Ekstrom Library, on the University of Louisville’s Belknap campus, just received a $14.2 million renovation. The 25-year-old building now seems out-of-date compared to its modern addition.
Ekstrom Library is far from being the Belknap campus’ oldest building; in fact, it sits where a far older building formerly resided. The University Playhouse, which houses university theater department productions, was built on that site in 1874, long before the area was called Belknap campus or the University of Louisville owned the property.
“The Playhouse only makes sense if you understand that from just before the Civil War, 1860, to 1925 the Belknap campus was the city of Louisville orphanage and reform school,” said Tom Owen, a local history archivist with the University Archives and Records Center. “Very early in that period the orphanage and reform school built a Protestant chapel for religious services.”
The University Playhouse is the campus’ second-oldest building (Gardner Hall is the oldest), and it is now housed on Cardinal Avenue between Second and Third Streets. Gardner Hall was built in 1872 and was used as the first dormitory for white girls at the orphanage and reform school, called the House of Refuge until 1884. It was renamed the School of Industrial Reform during an era that emphasized the importance of factory work.
The Playhouse occupied the site where Ekstrom now stands until 1977. When U of L bought the property in 1925, the university Dramatic Club took over the building as a setting for plays, seating 553 theater-goers.
U of L disassembled the Playhouse plank by plank in 1977 for construction of Ekstrom and put the building in storage until 1980, Owen said. It was re-opened in 1980 and the theater department has been performing in it for the past 25 years.
Inside the building where it now sits on Cardinal Avenue, it is small and dark, intimate and with an air of romance. The simple wood plank construction and chapel windows have an air of reverence appropriate for a former house of worship.
“You look at it and still say, ‘It looks like a chapel,'” Owen said.
