Woodburn Hall

Woodburn Hall was completed in the late 1870s as part of the growing campus of West Virginia University, which had been founded a decade earlier as the state's land-grant college. Built of brick in the elaborate Second Empire style then in fashion, its most striking feature is the tall central clock tower crowned by a steep mansard roof, giving the building a distinctive, almost European silhouette.

Over the decades that tower became the emblem of the university. Its image appears in the school's iconography, and its clock and bell have marked the passing hours for generations of students. Alongside two neighboring historic buildings, Woodburn Hall frames Woodburn Circle, the green heart of the original campus and one of the most cherished spots in Morgantown.

West Virginia University was established shortly after the state itself was formed, created under the federal land-grant program that founded public universities across the country to teach agriculture, engineering, and the practical arts alongside the classics. From modest beginnings it grew into the state's flagship university, and the downtown campus around Woodburn Circle marks its historic core.

Woodburn Hall has served many academic purposes over its long life, housing classrooms, departments, and offices as the university expanded around it. Today WVU sprawls across multiple campuses in Morgantown, connected by a unique automated transit system, but the old downtown campus and its clock tower remain the symbolic and sentimental center of university life.

Morgantown grew along the Monongahela River, which gave the town its early trade and industry, and it developed into a spirited college town shaped by the presence of the university. The river valley and the surrounding hills give the city its scenery, and the mix of students, sports, and river-town character gives it its energy, especially on game days when the town rallies behind the WVU Mountaineers.

The city is also a gateway to the outdoor country of the northern highlands, with river trails, nearby state forests, and the foothills of the Alleghenies within easy reach. Coopers Rock State Forest, with its famous overlook, and Cheat Lake lie just outside town, making Morgantown a base for both campus life and mountain recreation.

The Monongahela River valley around Morgantown was ancestral homeland and shared hunting ground of the Lenape, the Shawnee, and the Haudenosaunee, who traveled and hunted the river corridor and the surrounding hills long before the town and university rose. None of those nations is federally recognized in West Virginia today, and their descendant nations continue in other states, but the river valley they knew still shapes the city.

The river gave Morgantown its name in trade and its early growth, and it still runs through the heart of the city below the campus. Woodburn Hall, rising on the hillside above, looks out over that valley much as it has for well over a century, a fixed landmark in a place that has grown and changed around it while it has stayed the enduring symbol of the university.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.