As Notre Dame students return to their daily routine on campus, one thing is certain to remain the same from years past — the steady drone of construction on campus.
Construction companies have been hard at work all summer and into this fall on a number of new buildings including the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, the second McCourtney Hall research building and a new men’s residence hall.
The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art will replace the Snite Museum of Art, which has now closed its doors and will transition into its new role as the Snite Research Center in the Visual Arts, according to the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art website.
Doug Marsh, vice president for facilities design and operations and University architect, offered his praise for the new building in an email interview.
“There are beautiful galleries in the new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art including space for the exhibit of contemporary works, a feature that was lacking in the Snite Museum,” Marsh wrote.
The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art was donated by philanthropist Ernestine Raclin and her daughter and son-in-law Carmen and Chris Murphy. It was designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects, according to Notre Dame Facilities Design and Operations. The museum began construction in May of 2021 and will be completed by Nov. 30 of this year, Marsh stated.
Further north on campus, the new men’s residence hall continues rise from the ground. The building, which is as of now unnamed, will be built in the collegiate Gothic style according to Facilities Design and Operations. The dorm will have facilities and a design similar to recently constructed dorms, such as Johnson Family Hall, Dunne Hall, Baumer Hall and Flaherty Hall, Marsh explained.
The new dorm will be completed for the fall of 2024 and will hold 263 students, Marsh said.
When asked if any residence halls would be demolished after the new dorm is complete, Marsh did provide any tangible hints.
“We are currently completing an update to our undergraduate residence hall plan that will guide our work over the next few years. We will share information with the campus as these plans are finalized,” he stated.
Just next door to the new men’s residence hall and adjacent to the original McCourtney Hall, the second McCourtney research building is being constructed.
The new building will have cutting edge science facilities, Marsh explained.
“There are several research themes intended for the building: genomics, environmental, tissue (biomedical/bioengineering), and vector, capped off with a computational team that will work with all the groups in data analytics,” he wrote.
According to Facilities Design and Operations, the new science building will be 200,000 square feet large and will have 110,000 square feet of office and laboratory space.
The building, which was the lead gift from alumnus and emeritus trustee Ted H. McCourtney and his wife, Tracy, started going up in the summer of 2022 and will be completed by the end of 2024, Marsh said.
As the work on these buildings continues, students may have noticed that another construction project is nearing completion. The statue of Mary atop the Golden Dome has finally shed its scaffolding, with the regilding work coming to an end. The rest of the scaffolding will soon come off, Marsh wrote.
“The remainder of the work will be completed and the rest of the scaffold removed in the next month or so,” he explained.
