Drone footage shows the Diana Davis Spencer Classical Education Building construction on Aug. 22, 2025.
Courtesy | Jack Cote
The Classical Education Building will be completed by late December, and additions to the union, which began construction last spring, will be usable by February 2026.
Rich Péwé, Chief Administrative Officer at Hillsdale College, said the windows have been hung in the Diana Davis Spencer Classical Education Building and almost all the brick is set.
The bell that sat in front of Central Hall has been moved and now hangs in the tower above the Grewcock
building.
“The Grewcock Union facade has all but taken shape, so it is becoming apparent how important it was to get the scale of the union to work with the scale of Christ Chapel and the Spencer Classical Ed building,” Péwé said.
The facade of the union has made much progress since the spring, Péwé said. The portico pediment is complete, and its pillars are being set. The college hired McCrery Architects for the design of the Spencer Classical Education building, the same architect that will design President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Ballroom at the White House. The company is known for its neo-classical approach to design, according to a press release from the White House.
“Architecture and landscaping are not superficial decorations, but rather an expression of the harmony Hillsdale College seeks to form between the mind, body, and souls of its students,” Péwé said. “The architecture at Hillsdale should point up to the eternal, inspire higher learning, and represent the college’s meaning.”
Hillsdale’s campus has also been under construction for more than a year and renovations continued this summer. “The number of people on our D.C. campus has increased dramatically, and we outgrew the space we had,” said Andrew Heim, executive director of Washington operations.
“The Kirby Center served us well for 15 years, but we are very excited about the new additions.”
The additions to the D.C. campus will include a new chapel called the “Chapel of Divine Providence,” according to Matthew Spalding, vice president of Washington operations and dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College.
“The chapel at the Hillsdale D.C. campus, and its stainedglass windows, will proclaim the sovereignty of God in the affairs of men and invoke the last line of the Declaration of Independence,” Spalding said.
The building will also include five new classrooms and eight new staff and faculty offices. The Van Andel lecture hall will also receive all new audiovisual equipment. On the fourth floor, the college plans to install a new library reading room, which Heim said will allow for more formal and serious academic events, as well as high profile administrative events such as board meetings.
Heim also said the college will renovate the two townhouses that stand beside the Kirby Center. The townhouses will house undergraduates in the Washington Hillsdale Internship Program.
“We have seen wonderful growth in our D.C. programs, so we wanted to make sure our facilities were accommodating,” Heim said.
The D.C. campus will see substantial completion by the end of October of this year, according to Heim.
