A fire destroyed the original seminary building of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley in 1896. One of the first new structures to be built after the fire was Porter Hall, a residence hall completed in 1897. Porter Hall was designed by C. Putnam Karr and was named for Deacon Porter, who was in charge of buildings on the College’s Board of Trustees and was a friend and adviser to the College’s founder Mary Lyon.

Another Tudor-style residence hall is Wilder Hall (above), built in 1899 as a gift from Charles T. Wilder of Wellesley Hills in memory of his wife Mary Ware Wilder, a member of the class of 1852.