A New Home for Humanities

The new building will mark a renewed commitment to telling the human story. Bora Architecture & Interiors

The future home for the humanities at UW–Madison took one step closer to reality in May, when donors joined campus and local officials to break ground for Irving and Dorothy Levy Hall.

“Not only are we breaking ground, but we’re making a statement,” says Eric Wilcots, dean of the College of Letters & Science. “We’re making a significant investment in the humanities and renewing our commitment to telling the human story.”

Levy Hall is the College of Letters & Science’s new, 136,000-square-foot academic building, set to open in the summer of 2026. When complete, the new building will feature five levels, 13 classrooms, and 1,100 seats for students. Designed to partially replace the Humanities Building, it will be home to the departments of African American Studies, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicano/a and Latina/o Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, History, Jewish Studies, and Religious Studies.

The building is named for the parents of Marv ’68, JD’71 and Jeff ’72 Levy, whose $20 million gift helped make the project possible.

“If we were going to get involved, it was going to be this project, because all three of us have L&S degrees,” said Jeff Levy, noting that deceased brother Phil Levy ’64 was also an L&S alum. He predicted that the building that honors his parents would become “a beehive of activity” for UW students. “Every student at some point in their undergraduate career has at least one or two classes in Letters & Science, and that means a lot to us, too.”

Published in the Fall 2024 issue