Creative Voices: 1979 - Crich Hall Goes Up in Flames

Just days before Christmas 1979, staff was roused early by smoke alarms and evacuated Crich Hall, named after nature photographer Vic Crich. Huddled in their nightclothes, they watched the fire burn for 12 hours, until almost nothing remained of the wooden chalet.

Photography program alumnus Paul Syvestre got a phone call while on vacation in Montreal asking him what he had in the building. The answer was a locker full of negatives. Thankfully he would find out many survived.  

The staff residence was gone. Burned to the ground. The building also housed the photo studios and several offices. Luckily, no one was hurt, but 60 staff and faculty lost most of their personal belongings and the photography program had to be put on hold until a new building was constructed.

But as the new Director of Administration, Garth Henderson’s focus was already on the future, since the past was in ashes. “It was messy. The whole place was more than gutted…There were just blackened monuments in the snow,” Henderson said.

As he travelled Canada visiting photography institutions, he kept hearing that film photography might be replaced by a new digital technology being researched at M.I.T., so plans for the replacement building grew.

In the meantime a “wake” was held for the lost building. At the wake, a cake in the shape of the burned building was served, complete with sparklers snuffed out by the Fire Chief, as a way to commemorate his hard work.

Some 125,000 negatives were saved. Staff spent hours washing and drying their students’ negatives, some of which were presented in April 1980 in an exhibition entitled “Jury by Fire.”

That summer an artwork of a miniature lake, surrounded by sod and tiny animals was exhibited in the gravel pit left on the site. In fact, many artists in residence made something beautiful in the ruins.