Fire and flood
Upper left is the 1933 fire; upper right, 1930 fire;
right, the 1942 flood; bottom, the 1972 flood.
The Arrival of the Friars in Western New York, p. 14
Fire
again struck Lynch Hall in 1933. This
time the rebuilding was accompanied by a name change and De La Roche Hall took
its place on campus the following year.
Fire and flood
Upper left is the 1933 fire; upper right, 1930 fire;
right, the 1942 flood; bottom, the 1972 flood.
The
disasters changed form in 1942 when the first great flood hit the campus
inundating the campus farm. 1972’s
flood was more damaging with water reaching into a number of the buildings and
destroying some furnishings and records.
The
greatest of these disasters happened near the mid-point of the term of the
longest serving president in SBU’s history—Father Thomas Plassmann, OFM.
Father Tom’s administration saw the development of Saint Bonaventure
from a small college to its coming of age as a university.
It carried the school successfully through fire and flood, the Depression
and WWII and the great stress each of those events put on the college.
