Students returning to East Hill after break will find many campus buildings just how they left them in December — with the gaping hole on the East Avenue sidewall of Rand Hall also unchanged.
The hole is a product of a 2015 car accident in which a Cornell freshman driver “failed to navigate the curve just north of Lincoln Hall” and crashed into Rand Hall, according to Cornell Police.
The accident happened right before a planned renovation of the top two floors of Rand Hall. Due to the imminent renovation project, the tarp was put in place as “a stop gap measure.”
Unfortunately, the consistent postponement of the renovation project meant that a continually disfigured Rand Hall remained a staple of Central Campus.
In 2013, AAP communications announced that “a light-filled, 21st century library” was slated for completion by 2016. The renovation of the Ho Fine Arts Library, currently housed on the top two floors of Rand Hall, was made possible by a $6 million gift to AAP by California–based architect Mui Ho ’62, B.Arch. ’66.
Two years later — July 2015 — Rand construction representatives pushed this date back to a 2017 finish.
Now, an updated timeline states that the “library will open for fall semester use” in August of 2019. After years of delay, the construction on the Mui Ho Fine Arts Library project and the renovation of Rand Hall officially began last month.
Despite the school’s innovative and construction-minded nature, the Rand Hall hole has become an unconventional campus landmark.