In recent years, Brachman Hall has been the “odd one out” in regards to the first year residence halls.

Later this spring, the 38,729 square foot residence hall will be demolished to make way for a parking garage. But don’t expect Brachman to go quietly. Residence hall officials are planning a final bow to honor TCU’s first co-ed hall.

Brachman Hall Director Jeff Alexander said students and alumni will have a chance to reminisce about the hall this Saturday from noon to 2 p.m.

Alumni and upper division students who lived in Brachman Hall can tour the hall, visit their old rooms, take pictures and get T-shirts. A time capsule will be filled during the day with objects that describe Brachman Hall’s history and be put on display at the Brown-Lupton University Union. Past residents still living on campus or in Texas will be invited to the event.

Brachman isn’t the oldest dorm on campus, but it does have history. Like many residence halls, Brachman Hall started out named “New Hall” in 1970.

A year later, it was named for a local businessman and his wife, Solomon and Etta P. Brachman. Although Brachman never graduated from TCU, he was inducted as an honorary member of the TCU Alumni Association in the late 1960’s and has an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the university.

The first co-ed residence hall on campus began as an experiment.

“Brachman was not built because we had a shorting of housing,” said Don Mills, a distinguished professor of educational leadership in the college of education.

Mills, who has been at TCU for more than 40 years, said then-Chancellor James Moudy wanted to build a living-learning residence hall.

“[TCU] would invite faculty members to become affiliated with Brachman and be given the title of a faculty don, taken from the dons at Oxford,” Mills said. “They would be a mentor to the students.”

Students living there were required to take some core classes taught in Brachman Hall.

The T-shaped building, split into a men’s wing in the north section and a women’s wing in the south section, has a long legacy with many ups and downs.

One of Mills’s favorite tales about Brachman Hall involves a barbecue goat. He said some residents decided to hold a luau on the back lawn and didn’t think anyone would notice them spit roasting a goat.

The neighbors smelled it.

“It was fairly pungent,” Mills said, who added he didn’t get to taste the goat. “I wasn’t invited. In fact, no administrators were.”

Staff and students built a strong community in the early years of Brachman Hall, Mills said. He recalled a spirit of “we’re Brachman.”

That spirit helped shape TCU. For example, Brachman prompted the university to set rules of behavior between students and staff.

“You had a lot of young staff, so there was some interaction dating,” Mills said. “There did come a time early on where TCU had to say ‘Look, you’re staff, they’re students. Stop that.’”

Protests by Brachman students brought about changes in student life that are still in place today, such as co-ed visitation.

Mills said, in its early years, Brachman Hall even had its own formal held in ballrooms in downtown Fort Worth. Administrators would give out awards to the students living there.

By the mid-80s, the experiment was over.

Brachman Hall never developed as a popular choice as a residence hall among first year students, in large part because of its distance from the rest of campus.

After the new lust of Brachman Hall went away, the school struggled to get students to live there, Mills said.

Brachman’s fate was sealed in the late 90s when renovations only added about 10 to 12 years to its life span. In comparison, the renovations of Colby Hall are expected to extend the life of the building by 50 years, said Craig Allen, director of Housing & Residence Life.

Brachman Hall will be torn down as soon as this semester ends in May.

Although Alexander is sad to see his home go, he realizes it’s necessary.

“We talked a lot about how this can go south, Brachman’s being torn down, it’s so sad,” Alexander said. “But it has been an incredible home for so many people. Let’s celebrate that.”