Commodore John Barry Hall

The foundation of Commodore John Barry Hall was put into place in 1947, with the President of the school Father Stanford, the Commanding Officer (CO) of the unit, Capt. Thomas, and the Secretary of Defense all standing by to lay the first stone.  Built for the NROTC unit for usage in the spring semester of 1949, the building was the only government structure that had a cross carved into the front above the door. It was also the most state of the art training facility for its time, complete with a navigation room, an anti-submarine training simulator, a mock-bridge, and even several ship-board weapons systems and accompanying targeting radar. A tower was also placed on the roof of John Barry in 1953 for practicing celestial navigation. But although the equipment was a novelty for the midshipmen in the beginning of the 1950s, it soon became out-dated and was used only for show in yearly open-houses as a means to give both students and faculty a general depiction of the US Navy. As late as 1966 it was a billet for midshipmen to stay proficient on using parts of the various systems, but in the first part of the 1970s the pieces were all removed, partially because they were obsolete, and partially because the school's engineering department needed more space for their own labs. In retrospect, although these items were never really of any use to the Battalion and their training evolutions, it was still a morale-builder to have a mock-ship hidden within their very own NROTC building. True, the true purpose of the equipment had long since been forgotten, but it was still a symbol of what was the Navy, and it gave the unit a sense of cohesiveness when the Nation often was not.