Community invited to join Northwest in celebrating Martindale Hall opening on Sept. 18

Martindale Hall, which underwent a dramatic facelift during a two-year expansion and renovation project, is reopened this fall for coursework and other activities on the Northwest campus. (Photo by Gracelynn Brown/Northwest Missouri State University)

Northwest Missouri State University welcomes the community and supporters to its expanded and modernized Martindale Hall during a ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house this month.

The celebration will begin with the ribbon-cutting ceremony at 2 p.m. outside the south entrance of the building on Fourth Street. Attendees will then be invited inside the building to tour the remodeled classroom and lab facilities, which will host presentations and demonstrations of new equipment, including a dissection with an Anatomage table.

Martindale Hall, which serves as the home of Northwest’s School of Health Science and Wellness, reopened at the start of the University’s fall semester in August, concluding a two-year renovation and expansion project that dramatically changed the building.

Students took advantage of a new lounge space in Martindale Hall on Thursday. (Photo by Gracelynn Brown/Northwest Missouri State University)

“It is exciting to be back in Martindale Hall and to have the students back in full force,” Dr. Rhonda Cross Beemer, the chair of Northwest’s School of Health Science and Wellness, said. “There is an energy to the building that is hard to explain – an energy students in the health science and wellness majors bring. This is a welcoming facility with opportunities.”

The extensive remodel of Martindale Hall aligns with the University’s efforts to strengthen partnerships and programs emanating within its School of Health Science and Wellness. In recent months, Northwest has announced its intention to establish a Center for Rural Health, and it is launching a Bachelor of Science in Nursing program in the fall of 2027.  

The building opened in 1926 and served as the University’s primary gymnasium for decades until the opening of the Lamkin Activity Center in 1959. Martindale Hall was subsequently renovated and repurposed for academic programs between 1973 and 1975.

Martindale Hall now features a well-being lab and a sports science lab as well as classrooms, collaboration spaces and lounge areas. It also includes a new foods and nutrition lab, replacing the foods and nutrition lab formerly housed in the Administration Building. A room in the lower level of Martindale Hall that once housed a pool now serves as a dance studio and meeting room.

The Missouri General Assembly provided $8.5 million for the $17.5 million project; donors provided the remaining funds.