Name That Building: Moore Hall
With help from the Clarke Historical Library, Name that Building is a weekly feature that explores the namesake of various buildings around CMU’s campus.
Moore Hall, one of Central Michigan University's busiest academic buildings, is named after longtime Vice President of Academic Affairs Wilbur E. Moore.
Moore Hall was opened in 1971 and was designed to accommodate the speech department and the dramatic arts. Costing Central Michigan University $5.5 million to build, Moore Hall includes Bush Theatre, the Kiva Auditorium and a four-story building for classrooms and offices.
Moore was named vice president of academic affairs after establishing himself as one of the nation’s best speech therapy researchers. He spent 20 years as a faculty member at CMU, previously teaching at Colorado State University, the University of Iowa and Kent State University.
“What Moore is best known for is his summer speech clinic he started in 1946,” said Clarke Historical Library Research Specialist Bryan Whitledge. “They still use his program today.”
Moore’s summer speech program started in Warriner Hall, which limited his work so much that he actually had to hold therapy sessions in a hall closet.
The lack of facilities for the speech program was one of the key reasons why Moore Hall was built. The building featured a speech sciences area about seven times larger than the previous facilities stationed at Warriner.
More than $150,000 in speech pathology equipment was installed in Moore Hall when it was built, helping further develop the speech program at CMU. Including planning, official approvals and construction, it took more than five years to build.
Moore died in June 1988 at the age of 84. The following year, the university created the Wilbur Moore Prize, a scholarship program for students enrolled in CMU's Department of Speech and Drama.
Moore was around to witness many milestones at CMU. He saw the school become an official university in 1959 and also served when it opened the School of Business and the CMU Honors Program. Moore also worked under three different presidents at CMU, including Charles Anspach and Judson Foust.
Before retiring in 1970, Moore was honored by University President William Boyd.
“(Moore) epitomized several qualities for which we all have strived: Compassion for people as people, discipline through conviction and action and an appreciation for interrelatedness of the mental and physical," Boyd said during the ceremony.
