Marshall University Architectural Guide
by Carlos Bozzoli, Architect
The John Deaver Drinko Academy

Sorrell Maintenance Building

  
View from south east
  
Current use:
It houses the departments of physical plant,facilities planning and management, and receiving, in addition to supply rooms and storage facilities.
Location: 
20th. Street, at the eastern end of campus,between Cam Henderson Center and Marshall University Stadium.
Designers:
Robert L. Brown, Huntington, WV, Architect.
Completed: 
1965
Name: 
For Howard Kenneth Sorrell, long time staff member, retired as service engineer in 1974.

This building appears isolated between some parking lots and sport fields, facing 19th street and the Marshall University Stadium. It is mainly an office and storage building, conceived as a brick block, which has a narrow interruption at its entrance, where a white tiled coated wall separates a receding ground floor entrance and a first floor wide window. At the 20th street façade, two wide, rectangular steel frames filled with grooved metal coating occupies most of the wall, bearing two rows of aluminum double-hung windows. The same happens with the 3rd. Avenue façade. However, a close observation of these frames reveals its almost two dimensional quality, as they are only rectangular pieces attached to the walls instead of cubic volumes that intertwine with the main brick walled volume (as often happens in Modern Architecture mass handling).