engineering

Harris Hall

Harris Hall is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Harris Hall rather than just read about it. In short: Harris Hall is a former auditorium and office building located at 617 East Huron Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Key takeaways

Harris Hall belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Harris Hall to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Harris Hall from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Harris Hall is a former auditorium and office building located at 617 East Huron Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Harris Hall was built in the 1880s as an auditorium and student activites center affiliated with the St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, located blocks away. The building has served as a USO, offices, and a meeting space for the Christian organization Word of God. The University of Michigan purchased the building in 2025.

History

The Reverend Samuel Smith Harris was the second Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan. During the late 1800s, in response to the controversy surrounding the then-new theory of evolution, Harris had the idea of constructing a forum for discussions of religion and science. Ann Arbor, the location of the University of Michigan, was Harris's selection for a location. In 1883, Harris and the local parish, St. Andrew's, began raising funds to construct a building. The church hired Detroit architect Gordon W. Lloyd to design this auditorium. Construction began in 1886 and was complete in 1887. The building was dedicated on April 19, 1887 in a ceremony attended by Harris, former Michigan Governor Henry P. Baldwin, and prominent university professor Henry Simmons Frieze The building was originally named Hobart Hall in honor of former bishop John Henry Hobart, but was renamed after Harris's unexpected death in 1888. The hall was used for lectures, concerts, and other cultural forms of entertainment. The hall served the Episcopal church (it included parish house facilities) and university students, as well as the community at large. In addition to the auditorium, the building also contained a gymnasium, bowling alley, and billiard room. The building continued to be used for its original purpose until 1943, when it was converted to a USO for servicemen undergoing military training at the university. Beginning in 1946, the university leased it to use as headquarters for the Band and Wind Instrument departments. In 1974, St. Andrew's sold the structure to the non-denominational Word of God Community. In 1980, the firm of Buckheim and Rowland acquired the building and converted it to use as offices.

Description Harris Hall is 2+1⁄2-story, red brick gable-roofed structure, measuring 50 by 80 feet (15 m × 24 m). It sits on a random-ashlar foundation, and has yellow-gray stone trim as string courses, doorway and window sills and lintels, and drip moldings. It has wooden Queen Anne-style eavesboards with supporting brackets. Above the entry and first floor windows are recessed, arch-topped, spandrel panels containing red terra cotta. Similar panels in the second story contain colored glass transom lights. A flight of limestone steps runs up to the main entrance, which is protected by a projecting, gable-roofed structure with rounded flanking walls and carved stone capitals similar to Romanesque columns.

References

External links Media related to Harris Hall (Ann Arbor, Michigan) at Wikimedia Commons

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Harris Hall

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Harris Hall claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Harris Hall before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Harris Hall ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Harris Hall

In research: Harris Hall appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Harris Hall in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Harris Hall is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures completed in 1886, Buildings and structures in Ann Arbor, Michigan, National Register of Historic Places in Washtenaw County, Michigan, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Harris Hall outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Harris Hall in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Harris Hall means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Harris Hall out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Harris Hall in simple terms?

Harris Hall is a former auditorium and office building located at 617 East Huron Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Why does Harris Hall matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Harris Hall?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Harris Hall.