Campus buildings recall KU architectural history
By CHIP ROUSE
An appropriation of $408,500 was granted by the Kansas Legislature in 1941 for the construction of a long-waited mineral industries building. It was the first building on a state grant in 10 years.
Along with the appropriation, the legislature enacted a long-term proposition with state universities for as long as 10 years ahead. Previously they had run on a two-year plan.
Actual work on the building began Dec. 12, 1941. The five-story structure was completed two years later. It would have been
Last of a series
completed sooner had not wartime priority regulations created difficulties in obtaining the copper wiring and transformers.
ON THE PLAQUE BY the front entrance are printed the following words: Lindley Hall, Named in honor of Ernest Hiram Lindley, Chancellor of the University, 1020-1039. Erected 1942.
A new home for the KU Reserve Officers Training Corps was assured on Feb. 11, 1941, when Chancellor Deane W. Malott announced that the University had raised $25,000, its share of the total cost of the structure.
Funds for the new three-story Military Science Building were provided by three other sources: The National Defense Council. a Works Progress Administration allotment, and several personal contributions obtained by the University Endowment Association.
CONSTRUCTION on the building was started March 13, 1941, but was halted on Jan. 28, 1943, when all WPA projects were discontinued.
The building was finally completed but was not officially opened until Dec. 10, 1943.
Since 1954, nine new academic buildings have appeared on the KU campus. In 1954, a new physical science building was completed to house the departments of physics and chemistry and the School of Pharmacy. On Nov. 5, 1954, the $3,250,000 structure was named Malott Hall after former Chancellor Malott.
BASKETBALL WAS transferred from the friendly confines of Hoch Auditorium to a new $2½ million fieldhouse. The 17,000-seat structure is the second largest collegiate fieldhouse in the nation.
The building was named after
The department of music in the School of Fine Arts and the department of speech and drama in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences moved into a new building in 1957.
Forrest C. "Phog" Allen, who won more than 700 basketball games as head coach at KU.
MURPHY HALL contains 81 piano practice rooms, five ensemble practice rooms, two organ practice rooms, 37 teaching studios, seven offices, eight classrooms for music, two classrooms in the theater section, a band- orchestra rehearsal room and a chorus rehearsal room.
Summerfield Hall, home of KU's School of Business, was completed in 1959. Total cost of the building was $1,300,000.
The structure, with a five-story glass curtain wall, was named in honor of Solon E. Summerfield. The University has received approximately $620,000 from Summerfield and his estate since 1929. In addition, the Summerfield Foundation now gives the endowment association $80,000 a year.
A $150,000 NUCLEAR reactor, manufactured by the Research Laboratories Division of Bendix Aviation Corp., was installed at KU in 1961. A legislative appropriation of $269,852 was granted to construct a building for the reactor, and a grant of $100,000 came from the Atomic Energy Commission to help purchase the 10-kilowatt reactor.
The Nuclear Reactor Building contains one combined lecture and demonstration room and 14 research laboratories.
The year 1962 saw the completion of the Center for Research in Engineering Science. The new building, located west of Iowa Street, cost $225,000.
WITH THE YEAR 1963 came a new $1.9 million engineering building. The building, located on the corner of 15th and Naismith next to the Nuclear Reactor Building, gives KU one of the nation's most modern engineering teaching and research facilities.
KU's Council for Progress. In 1962. Learned was elected national president of the KU Alumni Association.
The new engineering building has been named after Stanley Learned, president of Phillips Petroleum Co. and chairman of
Old Blake Hall was replaced in 1964, and in 1966, New Robinson Gymnasium was constructed directly south of Summerfield Hall to replace Old Robinson. Cost of the new gymnasium facilities totaled $1,406,918.
Also in 1966, the Botanical Research Center was completed at a cost of $1,000,000.
FINALLY, FRASER HALL was completed this spring, bringing the architectural history of KU's academic buildings to a halt for the time being.
However, the story will not stop here. A new pharmaceutical building, a new School of Religion, and a new space technology building have already been planned.
Daily Kansan Thursday, May 25, 1967
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