Construction has been completed for the new Fries Arts Building, located on the corner of College Street and Hamlin Street. The building, which will open to students in the Fall 2025 semester, will be used for visual, performing, and studio arts and includes multiple theaters and art studios.
According to Director of Construction Joseph Banks, the building has been in the works for almost two decades.
“While conceptual planning has been ongoing since 2007, design and programming work commenced in 2022, with construction taking about a year, starting at the beginning of 2024,” Banks wrote in an email to The Argus.
Multiple structures were previously located on the site of the new complex. During the construction of the Fries Arts Building, some were demolished while others were renovated for University use. The buildings, the oldest of which dated to 1850, were used for varied purposes, including as a metal stamping facility.
“Previously, the structure had been Wesleyan’s physical plant, and [prior] to the University’s acquisition in the 1950s, [it] had been owned by various manufacturers,” Banks wrote.
In the summer of 2023, the Middletown Planning and Zoning Commission held a hearing on the construction which was attended by city residents. Neighborhood views about the University’s impact on the nearby community were brought up by a resident of Hamlin Court, a condominium across the street from the new building.
“The light points of these plans had a lot to do with bringing Wesleyan into the community so that it would be more integral to the community, [so] that it wouldn’t be them [versus] us, and [so] that people would all get to know each other and they would be good neighbors in general,” the resident said.
The Fries Arts Building was completed at a cost of $22 million and has around 20,000 square feet of space. President Michael Roth ’78 expressed his excitement over one of the theaters within the new building.
“The theater is incredible,” Roth said. “I wanted to make it into studios, like very dirty, ugly, just hose them down, but smarter people than I got involved and now they’re beautiful. And then there’s the theater where students could put on small productions.”
Roth added that while the building isn’t currently ready for use, events have been planned in anticipation for the Fall semester.
“I think we’re…getting ready to use the building and we’ll be in there in the fall fully, but we’ll have some soft opening things going in the next months, and then we’ll dedicate the building in May,” Roth said.
These soft openings of the Fries Arts Building included daily tours of the structure during WesFest, allowing potential students and their families to see the space. However, the building remains mostly empty and will be furnished for use over the summer.
“Construction is complete, but we anticipate needing the summer to move faculty in, get all equipment up and running,” Banks wrote. “The building will be operational for this Fall 2025.”
Other major construction on campus includes the new science building, slated for completion in Spring 2026. The building will feature connected meeting spaces, classrooms, labs, and a cafe.
“The science building continues to make great progress,” Roth said.
Both of the projects were funded by the University’s $600 million fundraising campaign announced in Fall 2023.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the newly constructed building. It is Fries Arts Building, not Fries Art Building.
Raiza Goel contributed reporting and can be reached at rgoel@wesleyan.edu.
Spencer Landers can be reached at sklanders@wesleyan.edu.
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