Tom Riley remembers his reaction when he arrived at North Dakota State University nine years ago and laid eyes on the shabby Quonset huts that housed the art department.  "My big deal after I saw them was, 'How do we get them out of here?' " recalled Riley, dean of the college of arts, humanities and social sciences at NDSU.  Bulldozers will answer that question today as Northern Improvement Co. begins demolishing the hodgepodge of three Quonset huts on the south end of the Fargo campus.  The space will be converted to parking after the debris is hauled away, NDSU President Joseph Chapman said. Eventually, it could be a building site, he said.  The Quonsets became obsolete in August when NDSU moved its visual art, architecture and landscape architecture programs to the new NDSU Downtown campus at 650 NP Ave. Built in 1948 on NDSU land, the 140-by-120-foot complex originally served as the Naval Reserve Headquarters in Fargo.  The Quonsets contained offices, classrooms, a machine shop and a sick bay, said Naval Reserve Senior Chief David Rice, who was a quartermaster and navigations specialist when he arrived at the center in 1975.  The Naval Reserve moved into new off-campus headquarters in 1983, said Rice, the Webmaster for NDSU Agriculture Communications.  The university purchased and remodeled the Quonsets, making them the art department's home in 1987, said Wayne Tollefson, an associate professor who retired from NDSU three years ago but still teaches a drawing class.  The east Quonset became ceramics and design, while the west Quonset became the printmaking room, he said. Drawing and painting were on the second floor.  The Quonsets were renamed the Art Building in 1990.  While the building lacked light and space, its worn condition also gave students a certain degree of creative freedom, Tollefson said.  "They didn't have to worry about getting paint on the floor," he said.  Moving into the Quonset huts also gave students the opportunity to earn their own studio space, a concept that produced quality artists and has carried over to NDSU Downtown, he said.  "A lot of people would look at them (the Quonsets) and say, 'Geez, how do you get anything done in here?' " he said. "You make use of the space you have. The difficulty doesn't dampen your ability.  "Nevertheless, art students said they were happy to leave the Quonsets behind for NDSU Downtown.  Dave Lewellyn, a fourth-year visual arts major from Valley City, N.D., calls the downtown campus "absolutely spectacular." He's one of eight students with their own ceramics studio; the Quonsets had four.  Still, Lewellyn said he sometimes misses the camaraderie and Bohemian atmosphere of the Quonsets.  "Maybe the warmth of home hasn't set in yet," he said. "That other place was just like a warm shoe that felt really good."  "There was a whole family-knit (feeling) that came with it," added Amy Johnson, a fourth-year art major from Fargo.  However, Johnson's sentiment about the Quonsets only goes so far.  "I was going to raffle tickets for people to take a sledgehammer to it," she quipped.  At least part of the Quonsets will live on, fittingly as art. Some 3-D design students ripped boards from the floor of the old painting studio and plan to incorporate them into art displays, Lewellyn said.  Northern Improvement Co. also will recycle some of the building materials for other projects, said Bruce Frantz, NDSU's director of facilities management.  The demolition, asbestos abatement and cleanup will cost about $85,000, he said.  Tearing down the buildings carries "tremendous symbolism" in light of the progress NDSU has made in the past several years, Chapman said. He noted the old Dacotah Field ticket booths and lavatories from NDSU's pre-Fargodome Division II football days also are being removed. Chapman has said during the past couple of years that he wanted to take the first swing with the wrecking ball, but that wasn't allowed because of the nature of the buildings. "After it's all over, we're certainly going to walk across there and say, 'Boy, this looks good,' " he said. 

Picture: A backhoe stands ready to begin tearing down the Quonset huts which housed the NDSU art 

department prior to its relocation at the new downtown location. Dave Arntson / The Forum