The rooms are still occupied by students, faculty and staff. Books remain on their respective shelves. Advising meetings carry on as in any other building. A few boxes are in the hall. To students, nothing extraordinary or different appears to be going on there.

But within the next few months the rooms will be vacated, a fence will go up, hard hats will be worn in the building and most of the creaky doors, floors and walls will be removed.

The 1911 Building is closing next semester for renovations. It was built in 1909 as a dormitory but currently contains offices for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, according to Carolyn Axtman, project manager for the renovation.

Once the building is finished — set for December 2008 — Interdisciplinary Studies, Sociology and Anthropology will occupy it, Axtman said.

The focus of the construction will be providing a passageway through the building and making it handicap accessible, according to Axtman.

“It is part of the master plan of all-campus pass,” she said.

The plan is to create a straight shot from between Ricks Hall and Withers Hall to the Court of North Carolina, according to Axtman.

They will also make the west side of the building accessible so everyone will have access at the same point. The west side is adjacent Withers Hall and Ricks Hall.

However, making an area handicap accessible is not as easy as taking out the stairs. A path must meet the slope requirements because if the slope is too steep, it is not considered accessible, she said.

The path will not eliminate the middle of the structure, though. A lounge area in the building will be a part of the passage.

On the west side, an exterior foyer will be built, then on the inside will be a lounge and a snack bar, according to Axtman. The snack bar will be the one the blind students run.

“Students can buy a coke at the snack bar and hang out,” Axtman said.

The lounge and pedestrian path won’t be the only thing on the first floor. It will also have seminar rooms, computer rooms, student-teaching areas, conference space and offices. The second and third floors will be offices and office support, according to Axtman.

One upgrade to the building is a heat, ventilation and air-conditioning system. Completely new structural additions on the west side will be built to house the HVAC system, according to Axtman.

The temperature regulation will be a significant change.

According to Stephany Dunstan, a graduate student in linguistics, a running joke exists in the 1911 Building about the temperature either being freezing cold or burning up and never coinciding with the weather.

The irregularity of the temperature is understandable because the building has window units for air conditioning.

Ruth Gross, Foreign Languages and Literatures Department head, said the building seems to know the renovation team is abandoning it because the window units keep breaking down.

Gross, along with the rest of the department, is moving to Withers, which will be open in January after its renovation.

“It will be an improvement, no doubt,” she said.

Dunstan said she has mixed feelings about the move. She said the 1911 Building is her “little home on campus,” but it will be nice to be in a new building.

Gross said “this building is really seedy” and needs a lot of work.

According to Axtman, structural elements will remain in the building but there are plans to remove all the walls that aren’t load-bearing and replace the finishes. She said the elevator, which is “pretty new,” and the stairwells will remain.

Axtman said the building will be “fully sprinkled,” which she doesn’t think it is now.

She said she does not know much about the technology available for the building, but she said the renovation team has to wait until it is finished to see if wireless will be compatible with the structure.

They will get into construction “as early next year as possible,” Axtman said.

According to Macon Parker, a graduate student in sociology, occupants of the 1911 Building have to be packed and ready to go by Dec. 1.

He said he will miss being isolated and having a quiet surrounding.

“We will miss the view,” Gross said.

Greg Fulkerson, a doctoral student in sociology, said he and Parker have a great view of the Bell Tower and Court of North Carolina because they are on the third floor.

Dunstan said she loves the character of the building and will miss that in a new building.

Once the building is finished, Axtman said it will have the same exterior appearance, and the renovation team will take cues for the lobby from the existing architecture.

“The architecture is beautiful,” Dunstan said.

Axtman said she does not expect to run into any major problems during construction, but a renovation is “impossible to predict.”

She said they want to make the building look as nice as possible, especially because it is a key building in the Court of North Carolina.

“We like the building,” Axtman said.