Carruthers Hall History

Have a cigarette with breakfast!

Carruthers Hall, home to UVAFinance, is steeped in history and has changed progressively throughout the years. Here are just some of the old quirks of the building that have since changed, and shaped Carruthers into what it is today:

• In earlier years, UVA's HR used to reside in Carruthers in the front lobby area. Here, the front desk received job applications all day long. In the 80's, job seekers could fill out their applications on-site, but not without completing a typing test in one of the back rooms! (Our Gen-Z student worker did, in fact, have to Google what a typing test was).
• In the downstairs area of Carruthers, there used to be a cafeteria that cooked up breakfast and lunch for employees. Aramark used to bring it over every day, up until the 2000s.
• Additionally, Carruthers used to be a smoke-friendly building, and employees were even permitted to smoke at their desks. Eventually, this led to the implementation of a smoking room downstairs that was then moved to a designated outside space. 
• Before the crosswalk off of the main entrance facing Barracks Road, there was just a sidewalk. Here, Carruthers folks would launch themselves directly across the street, frogger-style, stopping in the median to wait for traffic to pass. 

As we celebrate Carruthers' history, we also embrace the evolution that has transformed it into the modern workplace we know today.

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Thanks to Connie Alexander and Stacey Rittenhouse for sharing these memories.  If you have some historical moments from UVAFinance/Carruthers history, feel free to share them with the Coms Team. 

Check out more Carruthers Hall history on the blog: History of the Portrait/Chair,   Mountains of Paper