Pondering the proud, puzzling past of Parker Hall
August 18, 2026
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Everyone has a Parker Hall story.
Most of them begin the same way: “I got lost.”
For 63 years, students wandered Parker's maze of hallways looking for classrooms, office hours and, occasionally, the exit.
Along the way, they found mentors. Careers. And for many, they found home.
It was never flashy, but for generations of students and faculty, it was dependable, familiar and full of character. By the end, the building was showing its age in the way well-used places often do: through worn ceiling tiles, the occasional water leak and chalk-dusted classrooms. The forgotten hallways, the basement affectionately known as “The Maze” and even the occasional raccoon all became part of Parker’s history and charm.
Parker hosted an estimated 35,000 classes, becoming one of the busiest academic buildings on campus.
Now, as Auburn University’s College of Sciences and Mathematics (COSAM) begins a new chapter at the STEM + Agricultural Sciences Complex, the conversations aren’t just about a new building.
They’re about saying goodbye to the place where so many Auburn stories began.
For generations of Auburn students, the road to class led straight to Parker Hall. Whether they found the right classroom once they got there was another story.
Before computers fit in backpacks, they filled rooms. Parker Hall’s Mathematics Computer Center put Auburn students and employees face-to-face with some of the era’s cutting-edge technology.
Parker Hall’s twists and turns make a little more sense from above. The sprawling complex became an Auburn landmark and, for generations of students, a notoriously easy place to get lost.
Forget the cloud. Parker Hall’s computer center once stored data on massive reels of magnetic tape, part of a computing operation that required considerably more floor space than a laptop.
A place worth coming back to
Eric Harshbarger first walked through Parker Hall’s doors in 1989 after deciding architecture wasn’t the right fit. Majoring in mathematics seemed like the obvious choice; he had always been good with numbers.
Then came abstract algebra. It stopped being about finding the right answer and became about proving why it was right.
Harshbarger stayed, earning both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics at Auburn. It was during graduate school that another unexpected opportunity found him.
While working toward his master’s, Harshbarger wandered into one of the building’s old computer labs. And his world changed.
“I first learned about the World Wide Web and started making my website at the old computer lab at Parker Hall,” he said.
What began as curiosity eventually landed him a job in Silicon Valley during the web’s earliest days.
Years later, Parker opened another unexpected door.
Just days before classes began in 2007, Harshbarger was asked if he would teach a precalculus course.
Three days later, he was standing at the front of a 250-student classroom inside the same building where he had once wondered if he’d understand abstract algebra.
“I never imagined I’d come back and teach,” he said.
Nearly 20 years later, Harshbarger works across campus in Auburn's STEM + Agricultural Sciences Complex. But when he talks about Parker Hall, the conversation rarely stays in the classroom for long.
Instead, he remembers the mysteries.
There was the locked gray door that hid a staircase to the roof. Curious, Harshbarger even downloaded the building's blueprints, determined to solve some of its many puzzles. Even then, the building never gave up all its secrets.
"I'm sure somebody could still come up to me and say, 'Did you know about this?' and I'd answer, 'No,'" he said with a laugh. "I've only been in this building on and off for four decades."
That was part of its charm. There always seemed to be one more story tucked around the next corner — a hallway so hidden that even a department chair once admitted, "I didn't even know this hallway existed, much less your office."
There were forgotten rooms, a giant elevator motor tucked away where few people expected it and enough twists and turns that getting lost almost became a rite of passage.
Members of Auburn’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics gather outside Parker Hall near the end of the building’s 63-year run.
The next generation
When Joanie Morris walked into Parker Hall in 2015, it was just another building.
By the time she walked out for the last time, it had become a part of who she was.
Graduate students shared an office beneath the classrooms where research, grading and lesson plans competed for space.
Above the exit hung a handmade sign that read, “Teach Like a Champion.” Before heading to class, grad students reached up and tapped it.
“It was such a fun, almost gritty environment because it’s in the basement,” Morris said. “We’re all just really trying to get through these hard classes and do the best we can for our students.”
By then, she’d experienced Parker Hall from nearly every angle.
“It’s all I’ve known,” she said. “All my graduate classes were there. All my math undergrad classes were there. I sat in professors’ office hours struggling. I taught students there.”
One last lesson
“As many memories as many of us have of it,” Harshbarger said, “it’s time to put it to rest.”
He’s right. The building has done what Auburn asked it to do.
It welcomed generations of students, challenged them and, every so often, convinced them to come back as teachers.
The best thing about Parker Hall was never the building itself, Morris said. It was the people who walked out of it.
