Hobbs Hall Reunion to be Held April 17-19
Past residents of Mary Hobbs Hall, Guilford College’s historic women’s cooperative residence hall, will hold a reunion on campus April 17-19. Registration will continue through March 27.
Planned activities will explore the history and legacy of the groundbreaking community, which operated as a co-op for more than 90 years, including discussions of life in Mary Hobbs Hall over the decades and on the hall’s founder, Mary Mendenhall Hobbs. For a full schedule of events, click here.
Miriam Leiva ’61 will give the keynote address at the luncheon on Saturday. Leiva, who lived in Mary Hobbs Hall, is Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Emerita at UNC Charlotte. She was the first woman for whom English is a second language to earn a doctorate in mathematics/mathematics education in the United States.
Throughout the weekend, Friends Historical Collection will collect oral history interviews with former Hobbs residents of all ages to be added to the college’s archives. Interviews typically can be conducted in under an hour. To schedule an interview, contact the Friends Historical Collection at 316-2264.
Mary Hobbs Hall opened in 1907 (named New Garden Hall at the time). Mary Mendenhall Hobbs, the wife of the college’s president Lewis Lyndon Hobbs, envisioned cooperative housing where female students could prepare their own meals and perform their own housekeeping in exchange for lower board costs. Generations of women were able to attend Guilford because of the reduced costs. Mary Hobbs Hall’s dining room closed in 1997. The building remains a residence hall for women. Read about life in Mary Hobbs Hall in the fall 2008 issue of the Guilford College Magazine.
For more information about the reunion of Mary Hobbs Hall residents, contact the Office of Alumni Relations by calling 336-316-2321 or e-mailing alumni@guilford.edu.
Feb. 24, 2007