{"id":13348,"date":"2025-09-17T11:40:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T15:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=13348"},"modified":"2025-09-23T15:30:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T19:30:06","slug":"these-hallowed-halls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=13348","title":{"rendered":"These hallowed halls"},"content":{"rendered":"

For close to half a century, student-painted murals in campus residence halls have turned blank cinderblock walls into often colorful snapshots of life and times at the college. While the tradition is most celebrated in the towers of Travers\/Wolfe, where almost every inch of wall <\/span>space in each of the 10-story buildings has been touched by student art, student expression has spilled into other residence halls, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

We recently took a walk down those halls and stumbled upon movies seen on VHS tapes, a bunch of bananas, and someone\u2019s oddly specific inside joke from 1999. And while trends (and the buildings themselves) may come and go, the tradition holds: leaving your mark on the residence hall walls is a rite of passage that hasn\u2019t gone out of style.<\/span><\/p>\n

View Tower Murals<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

CULTURE CLUB
\n<\/span>Many of the murals are a tribute to the movies, music, and media that have shaped the generations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mural
Mural that highlights pop-culture icon Taylor Swift<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

IN LIVING COLOR
\n<\/span>Residence halls can start out as places of awkward icebreakers and close quarters. It usually doesn\u2019t take long, though, for those same halls to become second homes filled with lasting memories and tight-knit communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

MADE YOU LOOK
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mural
Mural of toes in shower<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sometimes a part of the design was already on the wall.<\/span><\/p>\n

SOFTER TONES
\n<\/span>Painted with care, these quiet memorials mark moments that mattered.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mural
Mural tribute to Hurricane Sandy aftermath<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

ART CLASS
\n<\/span>Celebrations of color, many of the murals transform the walls into simple yet stunning works of art.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BITE-SIZED PIECES
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mural
Mural showing late-night snacks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tasty tributes to the classic snacks that fueled all-nighters, movie marathons, and those conversations that lasted until sunrise.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The halls of Travers\/Wolfe are currently <\/i>a time capsule of the last 25 years. <\/i>We have preserved them in photos, and you <\/i>can see the magic here and in a 3D tour: alumni.tcnj.edu\/tower-murals\/<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TCNJ\u2019s walls talk, and they tell stories of student life: the enduring friendships, love, loss, and cultural consumption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13348"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13442,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13348\/revisions\/13442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}