The Creation of the Alumni Memorial Building

A major project that the Alumni Association took on was the construction of the Alumni Memorial Building in 1924. The Memorial Building was to honor the 1,921 Lehigh men who served the United States in WWI. The plan, as Ross Yates notes, was for the building to be an “architecturally unique memorial.” The building was supposed to hold the president along with his staff, all of whom used to be located in Packer Hall. It would also hold the Alumni Association offices on the second floor of the right wing. The construction began in the late spring 1922 and was completed in the fall of 1924. This was an important project for the Alumni Association for both financial and sentimental reasons.