KU
kansan
Serving KU for 77 of its 101 Years
HOMECOMING SECTION 2
77th Year, No.35
LAWRENCE, KANSAS
Friday, November 4,1966
Controversy swirled last year about this artist's conception of new Fraser Hall. Now a reality, the twin-towered building will be completed by early next semester.
Only yesterday
University facelifted
By EARL HAEHL
It was only a year ago that: New Fraser Hall was a mound of dirt around a hole where men were working to build up from a foundation.
Old Robinson Gymnasium was the home of the physical education department—workmen were busy trying to ready the new facility for second semester.
TEMPORARY ANNEXES that had been "temporary" since just after World War II were located between Strong Hall and the Memorial Campanile.
Memorial Stadium seated only 46.500.
The Kansas School of Religion was working to raise money to replace Myers Hall.
BUT A YEAR changes things. The campus appears to have had a face-lift.
The skyline has changed. The massive structure known as new Fraser rises above all other buildings. It is not completed yet but its towers stand their full height.
New Fraser is no longer the color of duil cement. A light tan brick covers the outside.
Men are working on the roof and inside. To get material up to the roof they use a monster crane.
HOPES HAVE been expressed that this structure will be completed in time for spring semester classes. The building will definitely be finished sometime in 1967.
New Robinson Gymnasium was completed during spring semester, 1966. The new facility is handling physical education classes,the old has been converted to temporary classroom space.
Robinson Annex, east or Sum-
merfield, has been razed to make way for a life sciences building.
In the summer of 1966, bulldozers plowed through the Strong Annexes leaving room to build the $2 million Kenneth A. Spencer Research Library.
The Memorial Stadium had its construction this spring.
THE SYMMETRICAL SHAPE of the stadium had been broken by the addition of a higher section on the west side. In the
spring, the balance was restored with the enlargement of the east side of the stadium.
As a result of last year's fund drive the School of Religion will soon begin construction of new Myers Hall. Old Myers Hall is now waiting for the bulldozers.
The new addition will seat from 5000 to 5500 spectators. This increases the stadium's capacity to 51,500.
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Construction encircles Hill
By DAN AUSTIN
Five belts of structured concrete, glass and asphalt partially enricheing the Mt. Oread ridge is the essence of the KU master plan.
Conceived in 1962 by a special group of faculty and staff members under the direction of Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe, the plan is the University's answer to a projected enrollment of over 21,000 by 1975.
IT WORKS something like this.
IT WORKS something like this. The first "belt" of the plan is the actual top of Mt. Oread, Buildings necessary to almost every KU student—Strong Hall, Watson Library and the Kansas Union—have made it mandatory for all large classroom facilities to remain on Javawk Blvd.
Long treks up and down the Hill to undergraduate classes will be no more. By 1970, freshmen and sophomores and some upper-classmen will have to contend only with the distances between new Fraser Hall, Blake Hall, the Humanities Building (which will stand on the present site of Old Robinson Gym and Haworth) and several other "ridge" buildings modified for classroom work.
FOR UPPERCLASS students in the specialized or professional schools of the University, a second "belt"—just below the ridge is planned.
Here, the juniors and seniors in the different schools will find most of their classes in one building—out of the way of the between-class rush along Jayhawk Blvd.
The third "belt" is the athletic facilities with their necessary acres of playing fields and parking lots. Located south of Sunflower Drive, the belt is nearing completion with Robinson Gym and Allen Field House.
STUDENT HOUSING, which will certainly be big business at
the KU of 1975, comprises the fourth belt.
Made up of the four Daisy Hill structures, some private dormitories, and more married student housing, this belt will widen towards the southwest—where the University already owns land.
Wrapping up the University community, the final belt will be the myriad of scientific research facilities west of Iowa St.
RESPONSIBLE FOR the day-to-day impetus behind the master plan is Keith Lawton, Vice-Chancellor of Operations.
Lawton, well-schooled in the physical, economic and academic growth of KU over the past century, must act as liaison among the alumni, the planning committee and the students in promoting the master plan.
"We are dedicated to the top of the hill and the ridge as center of the main campus," Lawton says of the plan.
Another vital part of the master building plan is the new buildings themselves.
KU, which began growth in a Y-shaped pattern from the east promitory (Fraser) north to the Kansas Union and then west along the ridge, found itself without building funds for the first time in the depression of the 1830's.
DURING WORLD War II, male students were gone and the military took over several campus buildings for training. There was no need for building—until postwar 1946.
Alumni from that hectic postwar era best remember the huge enrollment increases as thousands of GI's returned to school. Temporary clapboard structures were thrown up across the campus—many of those "temporary" huts are still here.
In the early 1950's, an emer-
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"In the beginning" . . . this was KU and its only building, North College Hall—circa 1866.
Dear to generations of KU alums, old Fraser bit the dust in the summer of 1965.