The 400 Wing: When De La Salle Chose to Grow

When the 400 wing opened in the late 1980s, it didn’t just add classrooms to the De La Salle campus; it permanently changed the trajectory of the school.

At the time, De La Salle was intentionally preparing for growth. As Terry Eidson, Bishop Cummins Scholarship Program staff member and longtime coach, recalls, the decision was clear and deliberate.

“We made the conscious choice to go from like 700 or 750 to 1,000 kids,” he said. “So obviously, we needed more classroom space. And so that was the whole concept of the building of the 400 wing. Increasing the population.”

Before construction began, the footprint of the campus looked very different. What now feels like an essential part of everyday life was once simply open space.

“There was nothing over there,” Terry said. “I think there was just a parking lot.”

As the first major construction project after the original campus was built, the 400 wing represented both excitement and uncertainty. De La Salle had always been known as a tight-knit community, and growth raised important questions about how that sense of belonging would endure.

“I think there was some trepidation of adding, you know, 250–300 more kids,” Terry said. “What that would do to the kind of community that we had here.”

But demand for a De La Salle education was undeniable. With long waitlists year after year, expansion felt less like a risk and more like a responsibility.

“There were so many kids on the waitlist,” Terry said. “We knew we could add them.”

The new building also opened doors academically. Originally designed as a science-focused space, the 400 wing gave faculty and students access to more modern labs and classrooms. The current space for the Learning Center became the biology and chemistry room, a space that held Brother Jack Henderson’s “critters,” including a 12-foot boa constrictor.

“The science teachers were thrilled,” Terry recalled. “It was a STREAM building before STREAM was a thing.”

While the campus grew physically, daily life adjusted quickly. For students arriving after the expansion, the larger school was simply the norm.

“It’s like a small little town expanding,” Terry said. “Only takes a couple years of adjustment.”

Looking back, Terry sees the 400 wing as the beginning of a broader shift in how De La Salle invested in its students; not just in athletics, but across academics and student support.

“This was the beginning of an academic expansion,” he said. “We really started building things for the students.”

That momentum would lead to decades of campus development, from the library, music building and Hoffman Center to the STREAM building and beyond. But it all started with the decision to grow.

“There was no doubt that that was the beginning of it not being the small, little Catholic school anymore,” Terry said. “It was an expansion that got us to the future it is today.”

Today, the 400 wing houses important spaces like Campus Ministry and the Learning Center, programs that continue to evolve and expand to meet student needs. What began as “just adding more classrooms” ultimately became one of the most consequential moments in De La Salle history.

“It probably had the biggest impact on the change of campus of any of these buildings,” Terry reflected. “Because it changed the population forever. It changed the way that the school was going forward.”

Sixty years in, the 400 wing stands as a reminder that growth, when rooted in mission, can strengthen, not dilute, a community.