In May 1999, Bates College announced $12.8 million in gifts for a new signature academic space, the Frederick B. and Ursula P. Pettengill Hall. Exceeding a $12 million goal, Bates won a prestigious, $1.2 million challenge grant from The Kresge Foundation of Troy, Mich. The Kresge challenge, announced in October 1997, required that Bates raise $12 million toward the academic building by March 1, 1999.

“For such a short campaign — just a year and a half — this is a stunning achievement,” said Victoria Devlin, vice president for college advancement, at the time. “The trustee members of the project steering committee deserve an enormous amount of credit for their leadership and wisdom during this campaign.”

Funds raised above the $12 million goal enabled Bates to enhance the building’s fourth floor, adding technology infrastructure and further refining the signature meeting space that overlooks campus — the James L. Moody Jr. '53 Meeting Room, donated by Moody, then chair of the Board of Trustees, in memory of his late wife, Jean.

The total cost of the Pettengill project was $18 million, which included the 1997 construction of the new Cutten Maintenance Center adjacent to Merrill Gymnasium, replacing the building that occupied the site of Pettengill Hall. Of the $18 million cost, a bond issue provided the remaining $6 million.

The building opened for use by students in September 1999 and was dedicated on Oct, 2, 1999, during a series of events over Celebrate Bates! Weekend. A $5 million gift — a combination of planned and outright gifts — from Ursula Pettengill of Syracuse, N.Y., and her late husband, Frederick B. "Pat" Pettengill '31, named the five-level, 91,000-square foot building.

Trustee Helen Papaioanou '49, a friend of Ursula Pettengill’s and key fundraiser for the project, saw a perfect match between the Pettengills’ generosity and the College’s vision for the building, which houses social-science departments and interdisciplinary programs. “The social sciences are the academic fields that interested him,” she said. “But even more, he knew that the interaction between students and faculty is such a substantial and fulfilling part of Bates life. Supporting that interaction with a building like this is a dream that Pat might have envisioned.”

Some of the other lead donors to Pettengill Hall were:

• Ralph T. Perry '51, whose $1 million gift named the building’s signature 8,000 square-foot three-story atrium in memory of his late wife, Joan Holmes Perry '51.
• The Kresge Foundation, whose $1.2 million challenge grant named the main lobby.
• The Libra Foundation, whose $1 million grant helped the College meet the Kresge Challenge.
• The W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, whose $500,000 grant made possible the ground-floor “kaleidoscope” classroom, an innovative 125-seat teaching space.
• Trustee emeritus and former board chair E. Robert Kinney '39, whose seven-figure charitable remainder unitrust named the fourth-floor meeting room lobby and the economics and sociology wing.

Upon the building’s completion, President Donald W. Harward gave trustee Richard F. Coughlin '53, chair of the board's Grounds and Buildings Committee, credit for pushing Bates to pursue a landmark structure on a grand scale. “Dick was invaluable in moving us away from lesser alternatives to the important building we now have. He argued for a signature project — rather than just expanding the existing maintenance building — that captures what is special about student and faculty relationships at Bates.”

Boston architects Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott designed Pettengill Hall to inspire the kinds of creative teaching and learning that characterize Bates at its best: intense, challenging, rigorous and collaborative. The building brought together numerous departments that dotted the outskirts of campus in worn wood-frame houses: anthropology, economics, education, history, political science, psychology, sociology, and the interdisciplinary programs of African American studies, American cultural studies, classical and medieval studies, and women’s studies.