Garland Hall renovation celebrates milestone with topping out ceremony

The College of Arts and Science celebrated a major milestone in the Garland Hall capital project with a topping out ceremony on Sept. 12. The project, which includes a strategic renovation and expansion, began in 2021.

In a construction project, a topping out ceremony marks the placement of the final structural beam. Leadership and staff involved with the Garland Hall project gathered on site to sign the steel beam before Skanska Construction, the contract manager, raised the beam to the top of the building and secured it.

"From the beginning, this project was guided by four major principles," said Timothy P. McNamara, Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science, at the ceremony. "One is the flexibility to create space that is adaptable and allows us to take advantage of opportunities for future programs, people and needs that we can't even anticipate yet. Two is to create balance with this beautiful historic core of the university. Three is to maintain connections between interior and exterior spaces. And finally, this project is guided by One Vanderbilt. We aim to manifest the core values of the university, including building collaboration and community."

Located in the university's historic core, Garland Hall was built in 1928 and named after Chancellor Emeritus Landon Garland. While the building has received some minor repairs and maintenance over the years, it required more significant attention to meet the evolving needs of faculty, students and staff. The renovation and addition will honor the building's history and architecture, while building greater alignment with the college's mission of teaching, research and service.

The renovated Garland Hall will include:

• State-of-the-art spaces to meet current and future academic needs

• A mixture of teaching, research and office spaces

• Collaborative gathering spaces

• Improved infrastructure and accessibility

• Vanderbilt's first dedicated outdoor classroom

"This building has served Vanderbilt very well over the almost past century, but we have to admit over the past number of decades some of those spaces have become a little bit antiquated, a little rough around the edges-and they just weren't living up to the world-class standards that we have here at Vanderbilt for our teaching and our research and our collaborative spaces," said Eric Kopstain, vice chancellor of administration. "So this building was taken down to the studs, and we are adding 35,000 square feet of incremental space. So when this is completed … the building is going to enable us to live up to our promise of delivering world-class undergraduate education, it's going to support and advance our aspirations around world-class research. And all of that is in our service of creating people who can change the world for the better."

Garland Hall is expected to be completed in time for the fall 2025 semester.

Learn more about the Garland Hall renovation.