Woodburn Hall – the beating heart of WVU

West Virginia University (or WVU) was founded in 1867 but by 1870, the first campus building in what is now known as Woodburn Circle was completed and (eventually) named Martin Hall. Woodburn Hall itself was completed in 1876 and is now known as the center of that historic and very distinctive set of buildings at the heart of the downtown campus of the college. As a local photographer, I have been trying, over the years, to capture the building in the greatest light and this short article gives you a feeling for what is one of the most distinctive buildings in Morgantown. You can click any image to see a larger version of it or click the link in the description to see that particular image in my store. Alternatively, you can find all my WVU images available as prints in my new store with free shipping in the USA and Canada!

You can also choose to hear this article read to you as you browse the images:

Shortly after we moved to the area, I was starting to feed my obsession with this building! Unfortunately, the main street in Morgantown is no longer at its best with some of the old buildings replaced by pretty standard modern shops and apartments. But I was always impressed with the buildings at WVU!

This was one of the first images I took of the building – back in 2016, but I still like the great colors and very warm feeling of the lighting on that day.

The lighting from the rear of the building can sometimes be tricky, with the sun in the frame, but this can also make an intriguing view with a starburst effect:

With a little bit of Photoshop magic, that same image can become a historic looking black and white piece of Fine Art with a texture to suggest its age. I’m sure some photographer in the past probably created one like this!

As time has gone on, I think I have learned new things about photographing this old beauty. For one, the time of day is critical and I also believe my skill at framing and then processing images has improved with practice. By early 2020 with no place to travel except around Morgantown, I managed to capture this view:

It is quite difficult to capture all the buildings in Woodburn Circle in one image, but with a little bit of panoramic work, I managed to see more of all three in this winter image from December 2020:

Then we can come back in the next snow storm to hit us in 2020/2021 to capture this view of the circle:

That same snowfall also gave me some ideas for combining pieces of the key landmarks at WVU into one image. This famous Mountaineer statue is actually on the other side of the road up against a modern building, but by carefully extracting it from the image, we can create a picture that shows what it could have looked like!

Finally, with more modern technology, ie a drone, I managed to take a wider view that shows just how the buildings around this Hall have changed since it was first built. 1876 meet 2021!

With a more recent visit in January of 2022, I took a view of the Woodburn Circle from the front – a nice image to end this article with!

And yes, there are even more images that I have taken over the years, but I hope this gives you a good view of the changing seasons around WVU’s historic heart. Some of the more recent ones have been associated with attempts to capture the rising moon over the WVU Campus. You can see those later ones here and here.

All my images are available as prints or on many other gifts (a jigsaw puzzle perhaps?). The full set of Morgantown images can be seen here in my store ready for delivery directly to your door.