Some people rummage through yard sales in search of useful décor or furniture to add to their homes. Others look for collectible items with a certain amount of historical or sentimental value.
With unique items such as the door that led into the ATLAS classrooms on the second floor of Lincoln Hall and dozens of student desks someone’s grandfather may have sat in for a class or two in his day, bargain hunters have a good chance of finding both at the office furniture sale being hosted by the Preservation and Conservation Association of Champaign County this month.
“We have people buying desks for their garages,” volunteer Betty Swisher said. “People needing shelving units for businesses.”
Much of the Lincoln Hall office furniture at the Railroad Freight Depot, 312 N. Walnut St. in downtown Champaign, was donated to the association by Williams Brothers, the contractors renovating Lincoln Hall.
For two months, construction workers removed bolted chairs, blackboards, office doors and more as they began renovating Lincoln Hall earlier this year.
The furniture was then loaded onto trucks and brought to the Preservation and Conservation Association.
“It was all donated to us and saved from going to the landfill,” said Lori Dow, another volunteer at the association.
The non-profit organization plans to give all proceeds from the furniture sale back to the community, Swisher said.
Dow said they had been busy with the sale since it started July 7, with a variety of people coming in for a variety of reasons.
“The first day we probably had 300 people come in, easily,” Dow said.
Curious buyers have been ranging from current University students to alumni to Champaign residents wanting a piece of Lincoln Hall history. Some of the furniture dates back to sometime in the 1920s or ‘30s, Swisher said.
One item in particular was snapped up recently for special reasons.
Last week, someone contacted the association to see if the former office door of Dale Brashers, the communication department head who passed away July 5, was still available, Dow said.
It was.
The inquirer then came in to purchase the tall wooden door, whose glass window still retained Brashers’ name and office number.
The person wanted to use the door as a memorial to Professor Brashers in the renovated building, Dow added.
Others plan to creatively use the old office furniture around the house. Dow said other than desks, filing cabinets and shelves, some people have also bought the oak doors and slate blackboards, intending to convert them into coffee tables and other similar furnishings.
Area resident and former University Press marketing specialist Barbara Horne said she plans on purchasing one of the student chairs formerly bolted to classroom floors at Lincoln Hall.
“I think I’m going to put it on my back porch, since we have a heavy wooden plank. It’ll be very easy to screw them down,” Horne said.
Interested buyers still have a chance to purchase a piece of Lincoln Hall.
The office furniture sale ends this Saturday, when it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Many wooden and metal desks remain, as well as filing cabinets, doors and shelving units, with prices ranging from $10 for student chairs to around $50 for desks.
For Horne, the fact that these items come from one of the University’s most historic buildings adds some interesting “luster” to her shopping.
“I know it well,” Horne said of Lincoln Hall. “I taught rhetoric there as a graduate student.”
“Everybody’s got a memory of something,” Dow’s husband Benny added.