After spending some eight months on Luther’s campus, I can now make the claim that I’ve seen every building (true enough). Here, I’ve ranked all of them based on my scattershot knowledge:

1. Center for the Arts

This has been my go-to study spot for a pretty long time now. There’s a ton of comfortable chairs and wonky-looking tables, and if you ever let your mind wander while studying (like I tend to do), there’s plenty of art on the walls to look at and plenty of random corridors and spots to explore around the building. Everything is also really new and nice, with a ton of big windows to let in as much natural light as possible.

2. Baker Village

My older brother lived here in his final year at Luther, and it’s a great opportunity by the looks of it. There’s way more space here than any dorm building on campus, and it definitely makes you feel like you’re living like a true adult, with a proper living space to share with your buddies. Definitely ideal for sports teams.

3. Sampson Hoffland Labs/Valders Hall of Science

With how nice the Sampson facilities are, you would think Luther is trying to corner the STEM market. I’ve barely been there because an English/Poli Sci major doesn’t really have any business poking around lab rooms, but from all I’ve seen, it’s just like the CFA for science people: conspicuously modern and clean.

4. Koren Hall

This is where a lot of my major’s classes are going to be, and I’m not complaining. While there are some old classrooms with the type of desks you’d see in a school where nuns beat their kids with yardsticks, the rooms that are actually used are great. Especially 217; I like spinning around in the space desks.

5. Naslund Sports and Recreation Center (SRC)

In contrast to the aging Regents Center, the SRC indoor track screams massive donation with how up-to-date and modern it is. The track surface and facilities are first-rate and the wall mural showing the topography of the Decorah hills is a nice touch.

6. Preus Library

I haven’t really started using the library much until recently, and it’s easy to get lost in the sea of books for sure! I have stopped by to check out all the old artifacts from around the world we just have lying around there for some reason, but besides that, there’s plenty of space to study, and in most parts, you could hear a pin drop.

7. Center for Faith and Life (CFL)

It’s really nice that a small school like Luther has a big concert venue like the CFL. It’s perfect for hosting Christmas at Luther and bigger acts like the Dave Matthews Band (they recorded an album there back in the day). The acoustics sound awesome and there’s plenty of fun back rooms to explore behind the main stage, too.

8. Jenson-Noble Hall of Music

The place where I work and practice the piano is, all in all, quite a nice space to be. I especially like to be in the main atrium where the pyramid-shaped ceiling skylights make it feel bright, even on a cold, cloudy winter’s day. There are a ton of pianos to choose from (of varying quality), but I often find myself going into the Orchestra Room when no one is there to play on what is, in my opinion, the best piano on campus: a Yamaha that somehow gets both the depth and nuance of a grand and the dynamism of an upright at the same time. Shoutout to that specific piano.

9. Olin Hall

Olin and Koren strike me as twins separated at birth (despite being built some 70 years apart) in how they are fundamentally similar. While it doesn’t have Koren’s room 217 with its huge window and space desks, which takes it down a few rankings, Olin is still a clean and modern place for math and business to call home. If I was a professor, the third floor labyrinth of hallways seems like it would be an enticing spot to have my office.

10. Brandt Hall

I picked Brandt over Ylvisaker as a first-year for a reason: the rooms are bigger and the lounges are better. Besides that, it has one of the better locations for a hall, it isn’t on a faraway outskirt of campus like Towers and you can get to the library, the Union, and a bunch of other places quickly. No A/C is still a noticeable downside, but at this point, that’s just part of the first-year Luther experience.

11. Farwell Hall

The concept behind the clusters is a really cool one: to give big groups the opportunity to all live together (and live with whatever chaos can come with that situation). The building itself is decent enough, and it gets bonus points for one of my favorite architectural

features on campus, the sky bridge, which is especially enticing to walk through at night.

12. Main Building

Main might be cursed, as it’s burned down twice in the past, and for that, it gets taken down a couple points. However, it is home to one of my favorite study spots, the elusive sixth floor mini-lounge. I’m pretty sure this is the highest point in Decorah, and from the big window, you get a great view of a large part of the town. The rest of the building, meanwhile, is merely average and showing its age somewhat.

13. Loyalty Hall

The only thing I know about this building is that there’s a cool entrance to the basement classroom where my first-semester Paideia class was held. You walk into a section of vines and growth like you’re entering an outdoor Italian restaurant in a city somewhere. As for the rest of the building, I genuinely have no idea what goes on.

14. Twin Towers (Dieseth and Miller)

Nothing remarkable here. They sit there and do their thing without bothering anyone and that’s fine. There is a nice view from some of the dorms, though.

15. Dahl Centennial Union

The go-to-place for a lot of things does exactly its job, nothing more, nothing less. It does have a really nice view out to the valley from the Oneota Market and some fun liminal space-style backroom staircases that people rarely venture into, but the building itself also leaked water not too long ago.

16. Regents Center

There’s a reason this complex is being largely redone: it needs it. The basketball court (and particularly the bleachers) were a sore sight for the eyes and the gym could — without a doubt — use some improvement. It did serve its purpose well enough, but it’s time for it to go.

17. Ylvisaker Hall

Ylvi is essentially Brandt, but more cramped and worse. A reasonable 16×13 ft room footprint is shrunk to a 13×10, which is barely enough space to breathe in my opinion. The building itself often seems in worse condition and architecturally. Brandt has it beat with its more unique design while Ylvi resembles a filing cabinet.

18. Larsen Hall

This unfortunate hall has the feel of a building not renovated since the Eisenhower administration. I had the misfortune of having a class in Larsen’s one classroom last semester, and the A/C unit haphazardly tacked on the wall would sometimes overpower our teacher’s voice. The rest of the building just feels like a liminal space, a strange look into a forgotten space you might have seen as a kid.

19. Olson Hall

Walking past the shell of Olson and its mold-ridden hull makes me somewhat sad, to be honest. So much potential, a great location for students in the arts, but living with fungus poisoning your lungs little by little is far from ideal. I hope Olson can soon make a comeback, but all remains uncertain.

I know there’s still a lot for me to explore and find out about the buildings as I get older (especially about Dieseth and Miller, pardon the tiny description). I’ll probably revisit this and re-rank the buildings in a couple years’ time; hopefully, the upcoming Gerdin Fieldhouse can shoot the Regents Center up the ranks and Olson can reopen to its full potential.