It's coming down.

Rejecting the pleas of a group of professors and preservationists, the city's Historical Commission yesterday granted Temple University permission to tear down Thomas Hall, an 112-year-old campus building at Broad and Norris.

Temple persuaded the commission it needed the site for a new, five-story, 500-bed dormitory.

After some agonizing, the city's Preservation Alliance agreed to support Temple's demolition proposal in return for a university commitment to preserve the Baptist Temple, an even-older historic building on campus.

Patricia Wilson Aden of the Preservation Alliance said the loss of Thomas Hall and six rowhouses also targeted for demolition was lamentable.

"Understanding there's the need to balance preservation goals with the needs of the university to remain a viable institution, we sought a compromise that would achieve a preservation victory for us," Wilson Aden said.

Thomas Hall will be razed this summer, and the new dormitory is expected to be ready by fall 1999.

Temple chief financial officer Martin Dorph said a key university goal was generating more campus life in part by having more students living there. Only about 2,500 of the campus' 20,000 students reside on campus. Temple convinced the Historical Commission that its needs amounted to the kind of financial hardship necessary to justify razing the historically significant structure.

"We find it hard to believe Temple could find no alternative to this," said Fran Odyniec, a leader of opposition to the demolition. "We think the university could use this building to make it a true educational resource and increase the marketability of the university."

The group would like to see the hall used as a communications museum and archives. It once housed classrooms for the school of communication and studios of university radio station WRTI.

A statement distributed by the group said that it found some foundation interest in funding the project but that university officials would not meet even to discuss it.

Dorph said the group entered the game far too late. "There's been significant public discussion about these plans since January," he said.

Regarded as a noted example of High Victorian Gothic style, Thomas Hall was built as an Episcopal Church. Temple bought it in 1942 for use by the Theology School, which no longer exists at the North Broad Street campus.