Building Names

“Who Was That Guy?”

The Library Administration building, the Student Services building, the Physical Education building, and the Science Classroom building. These were the original names of the first four buildings that comprised the campus of Dalton Junior College at the dedication services of May 15, 1968. Though descriptive and functional, these titles failed to impart any sense of history or legacy to the structures. The buildings carried these names until January 15, 1970, when after the recommendation of Dalton Junior College’s first president Dr.Arthur Gignilliat and the DJC faculty, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia approved the naming of the buildings to honor four individuals whose contributions were significant factors in the region’s economic prosperity, civic life, and cultural heritage.

Westcott Administration Building

As its name implies, the Library Administration building housed both the Library and all administrative offices before the 1972 construction of a separate library facility. Frederick Westcott (1899-1965) was one of the founders of Cabin Crafts, a pioneer company in the earliest days of the tufted bedspread and carpet industry. Under Mr. Westcott’s leadership, Cabin Crafts changed bedspread production from a home based, hand made process to a true industry. He envisioned an operation that would standardize production levels and quality under the roof of a centralized design, processing, and marketing organization. Applying these mass production techniques to other textile products, Mr. Westcott’s efforts heralded the rise of a burgeoning Dalton carpet industry. His innovative mechanical introductions such as needlepunch machines, nylon fibers, high-low patterns, oversize dye-becks, and broadloom production combined with his marketing abilities made possible the dramatic growth of a new industry and made Dalton the ‘Carpet Capital of the World.”

James Thomas Pope Student Center

Just inside the south entrance of the student center hangs a portrait of the man whose name honors the building. Judge James Thomas Pope (1927-1969) served on the Conasauga Judicial Circuit and the Whitfield County Superior Court. Judge Pope was an aggressive proponent of the establishment of a junior college in the northwest Georgia region. He strongly believed that an educated and enlightened people were the greatest foes to the injustice, crime, hunger, and tyranny which plagued the world. In addition to his judicial
responsibilities, Judge Pope played an active role in the civic life of the community. He served as Director of the Cherokee Boys Estate, on the board of the Cheerhaven School, and was an active participant in the Mental Health Association. He also served as chairman for the March of Dimes, the Dalton Recreation Commission, and the local unit of the American Red Cross. 

B.J. Bandy Gymnasium

Burl Judson Bandy (1888-1948) was one of the true pioneers of the tufted bedspread industry and eventually built the nation’s largest bedspread factory in Cartersville, Ga. Beginning with five samples that Mrs. Bandy displayed to department stores in the northeast United States, B.J. Bandy and Company received its first order for four hundred hand tufted bedspreads. Soon, Macys ordered one thousand bedspreads. In February 1928, the company shipped fifty-seven thousand handmade bedspreads. By 1937 Mr. Bandy was the leading figure in the textile industry in north Georgia with manufacturing facilities in Dalton, Rome, and Ellijay. Founded in 1945, the Tufted Textile Manufacturers Association unanimously elected Mr. Bandy as its first president. A noted philanthropist, Mr. Bandy and his family were generous in their support of local charities and organizations, most notably their donation for the establishment of the intensive care unit at Hamilton Memorial Hospital and the preservation of the Chief Vann House. The family’s generosity continues to this day with their support of the Bandy Heritage Center for Northwest Georgia.

Sequoya Hall

As the first classroom building constructed on campus, the building that eventually became known as Sequoya Hall originally housed classrooms for scientific and humanities related courses. With the 1970 addition of Memorial Hall, a general purpose classroom facility, the Science Classroom building was devoted to purely scientific endeavors. Although not a citizen of the Dalton area, Sequoyah was an appropriate choice as the namesake to a building devoted to learning and academic inquiry. Like many Native Americans of his time, Sequoyah(1760-1843) contemplated the power source of the European population’s superior strength. He became convinced that written language enabled them to more effectively accumulate and transmit knowledge than his own heritage of memory and oral transmission. In 1809, Sequoyah began working on a systematic means of developing a written language for his people. First using pictographs and then symbols, by 1821 he had developed eighty-six characters that represented the full range of syllables of the Cherokee language. In 1827 the first Cherokee newspaper was printed at New Echota and by 1828 the Cherokee were a literate nation. Dalton lives in the heart of the ancestral Cherokee lands and the dedication of the first classrooms on the campus are a fitting tribute to a visionary man possessed of an inquiring and scientific mind.