The walls of Healy Hall have seen their share of students and faculty over the course of their 200 years on Georgetown’s campus. More compelling than the politicians, celebrities and presidents who have visited Gaston Hall in years past, however, are the pranksters who have stolen clock hands or explored subterranean tunnels — and perhaps even the ghosts that have been rumored to wander the halls of this beloved building.

More than just a campus landmark, Healy Hall is also on the National Register of Historic Places, has been named a National Historic Landmark and is the ultimate site for a photo-op with Mom and Dad. But for all the times students have walked in and around Healy Hall, it seems quite safe to say that most Hoyas have never delved into the long history and stockpile of legends associated with this architectural masterpiece.

“When Healy was erected, there was the Maguire Building and Old North parallel to each other and there was this big open space in the middle, so Fr. Patrick Healy, S.J., decided to put his grand building there,” said R. Emmett Curran, a Georgetown history professor and author of The Bicentennial History of Georgetown University.

The construction of Healy Hall made a strong display of power to the rest of the District, announcing the beginning of a stronger Catholic presence in D.C. “He very deliberately seized the spot so that it would face [the center of] the nation’s capital,” said Curran.

Healy Hall, in a sense, was a symbol of a new Georgetown, and Healy was considered the school’s “second founder,” after John Carroll.

Though many don’t make it past the first floor, next time you’re headed to class, look around at the building’s details. Some of Healy’s most famous — or infamous — features are right in front of you.

The Healy Tunnels
One of the entrances to the famed and filthy Georgetown tunnels is located under Healy in the basement. While at Georgetown, Hilary Hartman (SFS ’05) spent her fair share of time underground. “Late at night, we’d go into any of the older academic buildings like Healy, Copley [Hall] and Old North,” she said. Although she has forgotten the specific locations of the entrances, she remembered that it was tricky to find them in the first place. “You just have to know where to look,” she said.

According to Hartman, who currently works at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, most of the electrical wiring and pipes in the city run underground, and Georgetown’s tunnels are meant for this purpose.

“There are tunnels all over D.C. — the White House, the Treasury Building, the old Executive Building,” she explained. Curran confirmed that “the purpose of the tunnels were to provide heat pipes between Old North and Old South,” but has heard rumors among students that the tunnels were part of the Underground Railroad.

“[We] heard the tunnels led downtown to act as a potential escape route for congressmen and members of the executive [branch] in case of an attack, so we’d always try to go as far away from campus as possible. I think the furthest we got was around N and 36th [Streets],” Hartman said.

In a 1995 article in Voices, the New York Folklore Society’s magazine, Vince DeFruscio and Charlie McCormick cited the Georgetown tunnels as a supposed location for secret government affairs. “At Georgetown University,” they wrote, “the tunnels are supposedly the location for secret meetings that extend, geographically and politically, all the way to the White House.”

Perhaps today the notion of tunnels leading to the White House is a stretch to most Georgetown students, but other legends say the tunnels — beyond their practical purposes — served as meeting spaces for the Stewards, a secret society at Georgetown, bunkers for public officials and escape routes for Jesuits. The tunnels are large enough to accommodate undergraduates, but not so large or welcoming that you’d want to spend more than a few minutes down there.

The Clock Hands
One of Hartman’s friends, who graduated in 2004, was the son of a legend. “His father was a GU alum, and he and three of his friends stole the hands off the clock tower in the 1960s or ’70s and mailed them to the Vatican, and then the Vatican had to mail them back to Georgetown, which must have been embarrassing for them,” she said. “I think they sent a letter with the clock hands, but I don’t know what it said.”

In the 1960s, the hands were stolen so often that they were replaced with wooden hands for a period of time. “It used to be a freshman challenge, to see who could be first in class to get to the clock hands,” Curran said.
Students could, at one time, go up to the clock tower to steal the hands through a passageway that was once used for the Jesuits who rang the bells before they became mechanized. “They’ve made all kinds of efforts to board it up,” Curran said.

In Hartman’s graduating year, the tradition was reborn. Andrew Hamblen (SFS ’07) and Wyatt Gjullin (COL ’09) climbed up construction scaffolding and entered Healy though a broken window to get to the clock tower. For punishment, they were given one year’s probation and community service hours.

“I don’t know anything about that, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you,” Hartman said. “I don’t even know how you would get up there.” The 2005 heist was the last time the clock hands were stolen.

Riggs Library
Riggs Library is one of the nation’s oldest surviving cast-iron libraries, which refers to its interior decoration and structural supports made of cast iron. The space is full of spiral staircases and books that are hard to imagine anyone actually reading.

In preparation for the university’s centennial celebration in 1889, University President Fr. J. Haven Richards, S.J., wanted to complete and open the library planned for the north tower in Healy. Local banker Francis Riggs’ donations allowed the library to open in the early 1890s, which served as Georgetown’s main library until Lauinger Library opened in 1970.

Today, its doors are only opened on special occasions and during select study days, but the room has undergone several changes since its debut. At one point, Riggs was home to the fine arts studio and department. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Fr. Timothy Healy, S.J., restored the space, at which point the stained glass was added. The renovation won several architectural awards.

The School Seal
Hartman said that she never stepped on the seal at the entrance to Healy once during her four years here. “I do know one person who stepped on the seal and it took him about six or seven years to graduate,” she claimed. Besides the myth that stepping on the seal just outside Healy Hall’s main doors will prevent one from graduating, dubious rumors abound that Congress can pass laws in campus gathering halls because the seal allows school buildings to function as a temporary Capitol.

A popular belief is that Georgetown is the only institution that was allowed to have a seal that is so similar to the U.S. government’s seal because Healy became the temporary Capitol of the nation in 1812 when the White House and Capitol building were burned. The seal’s design actually goes back to 1798, however, and was created by the university’s third president, Frenchman Fr. William Louis DuBourg. Curran has heard some say the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were kept in a tabernacle in the university’s chapel during the war.

“None of this is really true,” he said. “The town of Georgetown was putting pressure on the university to offer school buildings to the U.S. government. … The president of GU reluctantly made an offer to the government, which still didn’t have a home. The government thanked them but declined.”

The Cannons
The cannons that flank one of the entrances to Healy have the most fascinating history of all the building’s features. They were first put on display in 1889 for Georgetown’s centennial celebration and came from St. Mary’s City, Md. Fr. Joseph Carbery, S.J., helped find and excavate six cannons early in the 19th century, two of which are on campus. The cannons were originally standing at an old 17th-century fort, and Curran found that the cannons’ provenance has been traced back to a 1600s London gunsmith’s shop. “It’s possible that the guns could have come over on the Arc,” he said, citing the more heavily armed and larger of the first two ships that brought settlers across the Atlantic to Maryland in 1634.

They were not purposefully installed to be pointing in the direction of the Capitol building, but Curran said that “in the 1920s, a senator from Alabama gave an anti-Catholic speech, during which he said, ‘At this very moment there are guns pointed at this very Capitol by a Catholic school.’”

The Pub
Ask alumni who graduated before the 1990s about Healy Hall, and they will tell you that the Leavey Center pales in comparison to Hoyas’ former hangout spot. The basement of Healy, where the Office of Financial Aid is located today, used to house a student center, a cafe and a pub. The pub was shut down shortly after the university responded to the drinking age change in 1987 and the pub was forced to “go dry” one night a week, losing money. The basement space, including the Center Café, was closed and converted after the Leavey Center opened.

The Future
Today, Healy Hall sees speakers, religious services and student events in Gaston Hall; it plays host to the Philodemic Society’s special events in Riggs Library, houses the administration and campus ministry offices as well as classrooms, meeting spaces and research organizations. It also houses the classics department, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature.

And what of Healy hi-jinks? Hartman believes there is no way graduating classes after the 1990s would behave as previous generations did.

“I think they’re too scared of following rules, and are less rebellious and behave better than students in the ’60s and ’70s,” she said. “Today everyone concentrates on getting that GPA a little higher, or scoring that internship or getting into law school.”

Though Hoyas today may not be as adventurous as those of decades past, the legends of Healy Hall still live on. Students continue to sneak into the tunnels in the wee hours of the morning, hatch and abandon plots to steal the hands from the Healy clock tower and sidestep the seal — Georgetown’s welcome mat — every time they pass through Healy Hall. The enduring rumors and mystique that surround this monumental structure will perpetuate Georgetown’s culture and history for years to come.