Courtesy of George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives

Coles Tower has become an icon of mid-century modern architecture and a hub for student life on Bowdoin’s campus. At one point, when it was built in 1964, it stood as the tallest building in Maine and the tallest building in New England north of Boston.

Coles Tower is named for James S. “Spike” Coles, who served as the College’s president from 1952 until 1967. Before coming to the College, Coles earned his undergraduate degree at Mansfield State Teachers College and then received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Coles served in several administrative and teaching roles at institutions across the Northeast, including Middlebury College and Brown University, before his tenure as Bowdoin’s ninth president.

What at first may appear as a stark deviation from traditional New England architecture, Coles Tower represents Bowdoin’s educational changes throughout the twentieth century. The shift to more community-based learning and living inspired the construction of an inclusive and intimate dormitory such as Coles Tower.

The idea for building such a structure began several years before construction. Initially called “the Senior Center,” the mid-century monolith was intended to house the senior class and classrooms in one building to prepare them for upcoming post-graduate life.

The Senior Center was the brainchild of President Kenneth Charles Morton Sills, President Coles’s predecessor, who argued that a senior-only dormitory would “emphasize college and class rather than fraternity.” The project was intended to curb the influence of fraternities on campus by keeping upperclassmen living on campus rather than in fraternity housing.

Another reason for constructing this new complex was to house classrooms for senior seminars: classes in various interdisciplinary subjects open only to students in their fourth year at the College. In addition to the seminars, the Senior Center often hosted guest lectures for its residents. Now, these classrooms are used by various Bowdoin departments for students of all years.

Designed by prominent architect Hugh Stubbins, construction of the Tower began in 1964. The most obvious challenge for Stubbins was envisioning a structure that could house the entirety of the senior class without disrupting the forested landscape students appreciated. Stubbins situated his structure in the middle of the trees to disguise it as part of the landscape.

Shortly after construction began, tragedy struck when a fire engulfed the nascent structure. The cause of the fire was a faulty electrical circuit that had set ablaze the scaffolding. Damage was widespread, with flooding in the basement and fire damage on the thirteenth and fourteenth floors. Remarkably, the building was still completed on schedule. The Senior Center housed only fourth years at the college for the next decade.

As the first co-educational class entered the College in 1975, the building underwent a few significant changes, accommodating non-senior upperclassmen and women for the first time. In 1980, the center was renamed Coles Tower.

Over the years, Coles Tower has had a profound impact on many students’ lives, including Christopher Bird ’07, the Associate Director for OneCard, Events and Summer Programs.

“[When] I was a student … Coles Tower had the Bowdoin Cable Network studio in there.… So, it’s exciting to see WBOR coming back and having that kind of student life outside of just the residential aspect,” Bird said. “[Coles] has been important to my Bowdoin career, personally, for whatever that’s worth. My student job was in here, when IT used to have some offices on the second floor, and now I work at OneCard. It’s been an important landmark for my Bowdoin life.”

In 2015, after a half-century of service, Coles Tower was in desperate need of repairs. The College invested in a five million dollar renovation project that worked to modernize and ensure the structural integrity of the building.

Abigail Hebert

Nowadays, students continue to inhabit Coles Tower. The sixteen-story structure can accommodate roughly 200 residents at any given time. Most floors contain four quads, each with a common room and four single bedrooms.

While some students have some critiques of the structure, many appreciate the living space.

“I really enjoy the spaces of the dorms themselves. I think it’s really nice to have my own room,” June Hartman ’26 said. “I do think the hallways look kind of like a prison, and that the elevators are annoying because they break whenever the power goes out. But other than that, it is a great place to live.”

Many students choose to live in Coles because of its unique living style, in comparison to the traditional dormitory experience, and its centrality on campus.

“I chose to live in Coles because it is connected to Thorne, and because it would give me a new perspective on campus,” Neiman Mocombe ’26 wrote in an email to the Orient. “My favorite part of living in Coles is seeing the mountain ranges in the distance and the beautiful sunsets.”