CMC's Early Campus

Pomona College Campus and San Gabriel Mountains, circa 1946

An aerial photograph of Claremont and the Pomona College campus looking north toward the San Gabriel Mountains. Hover over the annotation box on the photograph to see the location of the future Claremont Men's College campus.

A group of students walk down the steps in front of Story House.

Story House

Story House was the only permanent building on campus for the first year and a half of the College’s existence and, as such, served as a dormitory, commons, and central point of identity and reference. Previously owned by poet and essayist Sarah Bixby Smith and her husband Paul Jordan Smith, the distinguished Craftsman home built of wood and stone possessed a sense of intrinsic dignity that it lent to the new College.

A press release from July 24, 1946 announces Story House as the Men’s School’s first central dormitory, commons, and recreation area, while also outlining plans for future campus expansion.

To accommodate a growing student body, a wing was built on the north side of Story House, which added a larger kitchen, serving area, and north dining room. These facilities were used from 1947 to 1957 and, while they grew increasingly inadequate, Story House provided the College its sole dining hall for its first decade.

Students sit at tables after a meal in Story House dining room.

A student has his measurements taken during a suit fitting at Story House.

Veterans Units

The veterans units were among the first additions to the campus and were available for occupancy in January 1947. Housing returning war veteran undergraduates, the buildings were temporary, but they helped furnish the facilities and provide residential accommodations that were desperately needed during the first few years of the College’s development. Surplus housing units of either wood or steel, 50 x 100 feet, these facilities vividly evoked the transition period of the postwar era.

Six prefabricated steel buildings were acquired to be used as temporary facilities, five for classrooms and one for offices.

Temporary Classroom and Office Buildings

Claremont Men’s College’s first classroom and office buildings were temporary structures and remnants of the recently concluded war. Two of CMC’s first institutional structures were surplus: wings of a mess hall, 30 by 120 feet and trucked to campus from the Santa Ana Army Air Force Base. Additionally, President George Benson acquired prefabricated steel buildings, 20 by 48 feet, from the Federal Public Housing Authority for classroom and office use. Both faculty and students would share the wartime ambience through the end of the decade.

Temporary Classroom

Students stand outside a temporary classroom building, circa 1947-1948.

Early on, class lectures tended to blend with one another due to the thin walls of the prefabricated buildings. Faculty in the office units did not fare much better. As Orme Phelps recalled, he and Stuart Briggs, sitting in adjoining cubbyholes separated by thin wallboard, could almost hear each other think.

Original Library

The wings from the mess hall at the Santa Ana Army Air Force Base were set up as separate units in summer and autumn 1947, providing CMC with a library building and student recreation center, soon dubbed the Hub.

The Hub

The original Hub building provided a needed hangout for students and an area for respite between classes. After McKenna Auditorium and Student Union was completed in 1953, the relatively well-constructed buildings were used to house ROTC and the student radio station, KCMC.