the smell of hope had turned to the smell of old leather in crommert 's office , the whole thing like some scene from his own play : the old prints of previous stovington headmasters on the walls , steel engravings of the school as it had been in 1879 , when it was first built , and in 1895 , when vanderbilt money had enabled them to build the field house that still stood at the west end of the soccer field , squat , immense , dressed in ivy .