Gone But Not Forgotten

Bridge to Nowhere 
A relic of the 1960s campus building boom, the notorious "Bridge to Nowhere" was originally supposed to connect the Library with the Student Union. However, for reasons lost in the mists of time, construction was never completed and for years the raised walkway came to an abrupt and precipitous end. (Legend says contractors inverted the blueprint and built the structure wrong way round.) Eventually the Bridge was extended and rerouted across the Plaza, but it remained a rarely used eyesore. Few mourned its demolition in 2003.

Mudville
During heavy campus construction in the late 1960s, a sea of slime threatened to engulf the newly installed Roth Pond in front of Cardozo, while vast tracts of campus were intermittently buried ankle-deep in mud. Students and faculty routinely had to maneuver their way to classes over makeshift plank bridges. In a 1968 protest, activists held a "mud-in" and presented goo-filled cups to administrators. Thankfully, more recent construction has been relatively muck-free, and some alums now confess to a perverse nostalgia for the days when Stony Brook was widely known as "Mudville."

Rock and Roll Heaven
During the 1960s and '70s, Stony Brook played host to many of the biggest acts in rock and roll, including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Lou Reed, and Frank Zappa — not to mention the formerly fabulous Blue Oyster Cult, whose then-manager, Sandy Pearlman, is a Stony Brook alum. Regrettably, by the 1980s Stony Brook lost its appeal to major bands as industry economics demanded ever larger venues to make touring profitable. Anyhow, the adventures of Blues Project in our handball court are probably best forgotten, so don't even think about reading Al Kooper's memoirs.