Johnson Hall at Washington State University Pullman is scheduled to be torn down in Spring 2022, and a new agricultural research and USDA building will be constructed in its place.
We’re collecting memories before the old building is gone. If you spent time in Johnson Hall as a researcher, student, or other reason, please let us know as we preserve the history of Johnson Hall.
Thank you.
Johnson Hall memories
Memories of Johnson Hall
“Many of my classes were held in Johnson Hall as I studied forestry and wildland recreation. I have one very special memory. I posted an ad on a Johnson Hall bulletin board looking to borrow an axe for Dr. Dingle’s silviculture field class. A fellow classmate named John Durkee wrote down my phone number. He didn’t have an axe to loan, but he called and asked me out! We married three years later and were together until his passing in 2016.”
— Karen Durkee ’75
“Woody Kalin was my advisor in ornamental horticulture. I will never forget ‘Plant ID.’ Walking all over Pullman in the dead of winter. Whenever we go back for football games, I have to go find the display case with the twigs and plants to identify! Johnson Hall will be missed.”
— Martha Johnson ’83
“In the basement at the east end of Johnson Hall was a small fruit and vegetable processing area. As a food science major, I took a class that used that area to teach about processing equipment. I recall one lab where we developed a new potato product. It tasted good but the texture was kind of gooey. We named the new product ‘Tater Snots.’”
— Russ Salvadalena ’77, retired staff
“I spent many hours in Johnson Hall as a hort major in 2000-2003. I loved all the indoor plants that were slowly taking over the library, and I loved when the beautiful serviceberry tree would bloom right outside the library doors!”
— Jody Strom ’03
“I spent almost every day of my college career in some room in Johnson Hall. The students dubbed Johnson 22 ‘The Dungeon,’ and that is where I had a 7 a.m. landscape ecology class with Dr. Mark Swanson. It is one of my favorite college memories. We also used this same room for all of Dr. Zamora’s plant identification classes. I feel lucky to have spent such time in ‘The Dungeon.’”
— Brad Allen ’10
“I worked as a computer consultant in Johnson Hall in 1977-1979, when the Computing Center was housed there. It was a state data processing center at the time. It was also the place to turn in your punch cards (as I used while getting my MBA during those years), and get your reams of fan-folded, green-bar, printed output from the massive printers.”
— Vernene Trautman Scheurer ’79 MBA, retired staff