As students returned from winter break to begin the spring semester, many were stunned by the stark emptiness of the West Quad. The reason? Sunset Cottage, the historic home of Kenyon’s Department of English that had stood since 1856, had been demolished.

In a message to the Collegian, Chief Operating Officer Roger Wakeman outlined the process of the building’s demolition. “The site preparation for the demolition started during the week of Dec. 15, with fencing and completion of utility disconnections,” he explained. Demolition began on Dec. 22, with building materials mostly removed by Dec. 24. Following the demolition, work continued during the break to “regrade the site to the current conditions,” Wakeman said. Kenyon’s Maintenance Department plans to plant grass on the plot in the spring.

In September, the College announced that the building was to be taken down, eliciting various reactions from the Kenyon community. For Charlie Menzel ’28, who published an opinion piece on the matter in the fall, the decision proved that change at Kenyon is inevitable. “In order to still exist in perpetuity, things have to change,” Menzel said in an interview with the Collegian.

However, alumni reactions have been varied. In November, following the College’s announcement, Brian Berg ’81 spearheaded the Don’t Let Sunset Cottage Go Down Committee, where he and other alumni championed the preservation of the building. “It’s been a cornerstone of Kenyon’s identity, Sunset Cottage. It’s been a creative sanctuary, a literary incubator, a place where future novelists stood, where countless students discovered the power of language to shape the world, and to let that legacy be demolished is disgraceful and unthinkable,” he said in an interview with the Collegian.

While the committee’s efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, Berg hopes the College will approach historical preservation with more collaboration in the future. “There should be a collaborative process involving the Kenyon stakeholders. Its alumni, architects, historic preservationists, faculty, current students,” he said. Wakeman stated that administrators handled outcry from alumni by facilitating “thoughtful and engaged dialogue with all interested parties.”

“We have heard from just a handful of alumni sad about the loss of Sunset, as we sometimes do whenever there are changes to the campus they remember,” Director of Alumni Engagement Annie Gordon said in an email to the Collegian. However, since classes have not been held in the building since 2018 and most of the English department moved into new offices in buildings such as Lentz House in 2009, “most [alumni] seem to understand the decision,” Gordon stated. Gordon encouraged alumni to engage with the other English buildings on campus. “We’re looking forward to inviting alumni to tour these new-to-them spaces over Reunion Weekend in May, especially Keithley House, which was designed to echo Sunset with its porches,” she noted.

According to Wakeman, there are currently no “immediate plans” for Sunset Cottage’s previous site.