Miss Johnston also sponsored Woodie’s design of William Cooper Procter Hall College of Nursing at Jefferson Avenue and MLK Drive, which still stands. The four-story concrete building has adjustable louvers to reduce solar heat and an exposed aggregate surface.

Sander Hall, a high-rise dormitory at UC, was also innovative. Completed in 1973, the building was clad in sleek, insulating reflective glass for energy efficiency. The building was actually two buildings, one on top of the other, with separate elevator cores to minimize vertical travel time. The rooms were arranged in suites to promote social interaction, but the university chose to downsize the bedrooms to compensate for the common spaces. Built-in furniture was specified to make them more spacious, but the university used stock loose furniture instead.

The building was unpopular with students, who felt it was cramped and inconvenient. Students threw furniture through the windows and set it on fire. At the time Sander Hall was built, there weren’t many high-rise buildings, and code requirements had not caught up. But when the code was updated Sander Hall didn’t have enough fire egress, and there was no feasible way to make it comply. In 1991, the building was imploded in 8 seconds. When Sander Hall was torn down, Woodie was very circumspect about its demise, recalling his father had advised him that you should never stick around to see what happens to your buildings.

It’s perhaps a blessing that he was not around to see two of his houses in Indian Hill – the John Mitchell House and the Alfred Moore House – torn down in 2007.