Opening Day at Levy Hall

I arrived at Irving & Dorothy Levy Hall on the first day of the semester the way I used to show up for a 9:30 a.m. lecture when I was a UW–Madison undergrad: fresh off the bus and with seconds to spare. Fortunately, I wasn’t there to attend a class but to watch current students enter the UW’s new humanities building for the very first time.

Lead donors Marv ’68, JD’71 and Jeff ’72 Levy, who named Levy Hall in honor of their late parents, imagined it as a “beehive of activity,” and on opening day, buzz it did.

“This is a new building,” one student announced as she gave the person on her video call a phone’s-eye view of the light fixtures that drip from the ceiling into the airy central staircase.

“Has she been on our campus yet?” a friend asked. “It’s nicer than any campus in Europe.”

I snagged a seat in one of the hive’s many comfortably furnished alcoves and communal spaces, where busy bees tapped away at laptops or enjoyed a moment of respite on the semester’s hectic first day. The surrounding corridors teemed with people, freshmen and faculty united as novices navigating the new space. Over the din, calls of “Whole milk latte!” and “Strawberry-banana smoothie!” rang out from the baristas at the first floor’s Hosto Café.

I didn’t ask any of the students I chatted with that morning whether they’d been to campuses in Europe, but they shared equally high praise for the UW’s new hub for the College of Letters & Science.

Sophia Buckholtz x’27, a senior majoring in journalism and history, watched the demolition on North Park and West Johnson Streets that made way for Levy Hall from her dorm window as a freshman and feels fortunate to have a class for her medieval studies certificate in the finished space.

“It is really the high standard of a new building here,” Buckholtz says. “It feels open and spacious and bright.”

I met Sri Iyer x’30, a freshman intent on studying chemistry and global health, as she was waiting to attend the first class of her UW career. Already, she had decided Levy Hall would be her go-to spot for study sessions and morning coffees.

If Levy Hall’s first day of school was any indication, it will be a home not just for the humanities, but for students of every academic pursuit; for the interdisciplinary interests that define a UW education; and for the opportunities to explore those interests in a place designed for collaboration.

In short, Levy Hall is as bright as its open corridors and the people who fill them.