A new Bowdoin College arts facility will bear the names of a former college president and his wife.

The Robert H. and Blythe Bickel Edwards Center for Art and Dance will open in late August at the site of the former Longfellow Elementary School, which Bowdoin acquired in a 2011 swap with the town of Brunswick for the McLellan Building at 85 Union St.

Officials from the college say Robert and Blythe Bickel Edwards, of Edgecomb, were instrumental in launching a resurgence of the arts that continues today at the 219- year-old college.

The Bowdoin Board of Trustees approved the naming in May.

The $6.5 million renovation and an interior expansion of the 38,129-square-foot building will create 45,000 square feet of space at the former Longfellow Elementary School, which closed in 2010.

The site snugs up to Bowdoin’s southern side and will localize and consolidate disparate arts programs into one home. At present, Bowdoin’s arts are scattered among six buildings — on campus and dotting the neighborhoods afield of Maine Street, from Fort Andross to Brunswick Station.

When completed, the Edwards Center will provide space for modern art studios, classrooms, critique space and student exhibitions in the visual arts and dance, including a state-of-the art digital media lab.

For the first time, faculty and students engaged in the arts can work together under a single roof, creating a cohesive arts community and numerous new opportunities for artistic synergy, college officials said.

“The arts have an undeniably important role in undergraduate education, and they are a strong and enduring part of the curriculum and the life of the college here at Bowdoin,” Bowdoin President Barry Mills said in a news release. “Bob and Blythe Edwards made many significant contributions in their time here but none more important than their work to raise our aspirations in the arts, as well as our ambition for these programs and their facilities.”

During the Edwards administration from 1990 to 2001, Bowdoin completed an extensive renovation of Memorial Hall, the 1882 Gothic-style granite and stained glass memorial to Bowdoin’s Civil War veterans that today houses the Pickard and Wish theaters.

That renovation marked the beginning of an ambitious campaign in the Mills administration to revitalize arts venues at the college, including a $20.8 million renovation and expansion of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in 2007 and the repurposing of the Curtis Pool building into the state-of-the-art Studzinski Recital Hall and Kanbar Auditorium, also in 2007.

In addition to new and renovated facilities, Bowdoin also created a number of new faculty positions in the arts and added a requirement that every student take at least one course in the visual and performing arts.

The Longfellow Elementary School, named for Bowdoin graduate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, class of 1825, was built in 1924 on land once owned by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Bowdoin class of 1852. It was expanded and renovated in the 1940s and 1980s.

As in prior renovations, Bowdoin pursued an “adaptive reuse” strategy that conserves and retains period features of the original structure.

In this case, the new facility will have had the original height of the ceilings restored while renovators also preserved the red-brick façade and reclaimed and refurbished floors and windows.

Designed by Cambridge Seven Associates Inc. and constructed by Warren Construction Group LLC, the Edwards Center will be dedicated in October during Homecoming Weekend. A public open house, including tours of the facility, will be held from 1 to 3 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 2.

The project’s working title was the Longfellow Arts Building, named in honor of the poet who matriculated at Bowdoin in 1825.

When first built in the 1920s, the building’s original structure was no more than three connected rooms. Additions through the years — particularly in the 1940s and 1980s — increased its footprint to two stories and 38,000 square feet. But its physical configuration of classrooms ringing a central gymnasium space fit well into Bowdoin’s plans, said project manager Don Borkowski.

“The building’s really a big, square doughnut,” Borkowski said, gesturing into the central pit that used to house the gym and eventually will be the center for dance and performance.

Massachusetts firm Cambridge Seven Associates Inc. created the blueprints, which called for removing ceilings to expose trusses, beams and ductwork for a sense of open, airy space within the corridors. As many pieces will be recycled and reused as possible, such as half-round spoked windows on the second floor and sections of massive 12- inch-by-18-inch timber support beams.

The entire project is funded by a $6 million bond, floated by the college in July 2012.

Bowdoin acquired the building in December 2011 in a trade with the town. Brunswick received the McLellan Building on Union Street, which eventually will house its municipal offices, and Bowdoin got the old school building, as well as use of McLellan’s third floor until 2025.

“It’s really a beautiful space, with big windows, tall ceiling height and such wonderful natural light, it’s perfect for our needs,” Dean of Academic Affairs Cristle Collins Judd has said.

She’s also excited about the geographic symbolism.

With Pickard Theater and Memorial Hall to the north, Studzinski Recital Hall to the east, the Museum of Art to the west and the refurbished building to be completed to the south, “It’s almost a perfect diamond, an intersection of the arts throughout the campus,” she said.

FOR A LOOK AT HISTORIC DOCUMENTS regarding the building, click here.