Section 2
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan Serving KU for 77 of its 101 Years
Without warning, a sagging wall in the big gymnasium burst due to water accumulation in the wall. Standing 15 feet from the wall, he watched helplessly as sand, mortar and plaster toppled to the wooden floor.
Gym open house is set Saturday
Several years ago, Henry Shenk, physical education professor, was instructing a physical education class in Robinson Gymnasium while a driving rain pelted the ivy-clad stone building. Thunder sounded throughout the building as if it were an echo chamber.
Thinking lightning had struck, Shenk, carrying buckets and tubs, rushed to the jagged hole in a vain attempt to catch the flowing water.
THANKFUL THAT NO ONE was injured and realizing lightning had not struck, Shenk called the Buildings and Grounds Department to report the damage.
For 60 years, Robinson Gymnasium, inconspicuously located along Jayhawk Boulevard between Flint Hall and Hoch Auditorium, housed KU's physical education and recreation facilities.
Photos by Bill Mauk
Story by Jerry Klein Assistant Sports Editor
Today, ten years since the rainstorm and now in his 26th year of teaching, Shenk is looking forward to the first open house of new Robinson Gymnasium after Saturday's Oklahoma game. Located on Sunnyside Avenue at 16th Street across from Summerfield Hall, the two-story physical education building is vividly termed by Shenk as a "dream come true."
Shenk would still be dreaming, too, if the legislature had not seen the need for a new classroom building and appropriated the necessary funds in their 1964-65 session.
PLANS FOR A new building began four years earlier when the Physical Education Department, a division of the School of Education, along with the other schools in the university, realized the effects of an increasing enrollment.
Originally constructed for 3,000 students in 1906, Robinson Gymnasium provided facilities for more than 10,000 students in 1961.
Time and again, plaster crumbled from the ceilings and walls. Classrooms were equipped with poor lighting. Termites knawed holes in the woodwork big enough for a man to stick his fist through. Its 20 by 60 foot swimming pool, Shenk says, was just an "overgrown bathtub."
See NEW GYM, page 2