Common Room

Located on the second floor of historic Old Main, the Common Room is one of Knox's most popular gathering spaces.

When Janet Grieg Post, Class of 1894, spear-headed the effort to renovate Old Main for Knox's Centennial celebration, she understood that history isn't something to be thrown away. Perhaps this is why Post salvaged the pine timbers of Old Main when the building was updated with a steel and cement skeleton. Always an aesthete, Post had these pine timbers transformed into the paneling of the Common Room, a place for the mingling of staff and students.

Old Main's original hand-made bricks were also repurposed to make the room's fireplace. In addition to these deeply symbolic gestures, Post decorated the room with elaborate 18th Century furniture, including copies of the tea tables used by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. The renovations of the Common Room were funded by Mr. and Mrs. William Lincoln Honnold. Mr. Honnold attended Knox for only one year (1886-87), but he retained connections to the school even as he worked for a gold mining company in South Africa. Mr. Honnold's portrait now rests above the fireplace, a witness to changes in décor, faculty, staff, and students. It is this portrait, along with the paneling and fireplace, that remind us of Knox's rich and continuing history, a history that seems to radiate from the multi-paned windows of Old Main.

Once home to Knox's Caxton Club and campus lectures, the Common Room is currently used as a meeting and classroom space. It is also the namesake of  Knox's online journal of literary criticism.