Mary “Buff” Brennan, dance professor emerita, remembers when Billie ran the elevator in Lathrop Hall.
“When I came, we had only one elevator,” Brennan said. “It was a cage, and a woman operated it. She would open the door, sit there … and take you in and go to whatever floor you wanted to go.”
From toe-touches on the floor of a gymnasium to world premieres of complex choreography, Lathrop Hall has seen some significant changes in its 100 years. Built as an “activity space” for women in 1910, the current home of the UW-Madison Dance Program originally had a gymnasium, a track and a pool (turned into a studio during an extensive renovation in 1997).