From 25 Niagara Square to Main Street

by Edmund Zaremba

In the 1940's, Millard Fillmore College was a very old building. It had three floors, as I recall. Years ago, they used a weird cleaning compound. It was green, with a distinct smell. They cleaned the wooden floors with that over many years. That smell permeated the wood, and I always remember it.

After the old Millard Fillmore was closed, we were rather sad to see it go. They had to close it down because of the fire hazard. Then they transferred us over to the main campus. We lost a little bit of our comradeship there, because the campus seemed so large to us.

When we were operating out of Millard Fillmore, it just seemed like our own little place. It was close to the center, downtown. We felt very much at home, you know, because of the smallness of it and the fact that so many of us were a little older and all had the same backgrounds, pretty much - being in the service for a couple of years. We could share those times together and share our new experiences at the university at Millard Fillmore.

But that large campus was nice too. When we transferred over to South Campus, we experienced the awesomeness of these big buildings. Being an evening student there, I had that long walk from Ashwill lot to the building where we went for our schooling. That was always something that I remembered: all the lights in the big buildings, in Capen Hall. And the Student Union - it was on the right side of Capen Hall, with a walkway. I went there often. You could get something to eat there, and you could get together with the gals and guys there.