Buildings

The redbrick classical-style building, designed by Kiene & Bradley Architectural Partnership of Topeka, was dedicated May 14, 1983, in the centennial year of the Alumni Association. The association had been housed in Fraser and Strong halls, Sudler House and the Kansas Union before the new center was built. An alumni fund drive raised $4.2 million for construction, and the KU Endowment Association donated a site northeast of the Kansas Union.

The fieldhouse, which opened March 1, 1955, is named for Forrest C. "Phog" Allen, the notable KU basketball coach who played for and was trained by James Naismith, the game's founder, a longtime KU professor of physical culture and its first basketball coach. The fieldhouse and its basketball court, named for Naismith, superseded the facilities at the original Robinson Gymnasium, built in 1907 and razed in the late 1960s; and Hoch Auditorium, where games were played from 1927 to 1955. Like those venues, the fieldhouse also has been the site of concerts and university functions.

Increasing demand for both educational and recreational sports facilities spurred the decision in the late 1990s to build a new student center. The $17-million facility south of Watkins Memorial Health Center, funded by student fees, was dedicated Sept. 25, 2003. In December 2007, it was named in honor of David A. Ambler, the longtime vice chancellor for student affairs who was a strong advocate for a new recreation fitness center.

The $31-million football complex adjacent to Memorial Stadium opened in August 2008. HNTB Architecture of Kansas City, Mo., oversaw plans for the 80,000-square-foot complex. It includes academic areas; locker rooms; facilities for weight and cardio training, hydrotherapy, audio-visual screenings and nutrition; coaches’ offices; two practice fields; and new parking lots. The roof of the weight room, about 20,000 square feet, is bermed into the hill to the southwest of the stadium and covered with grass.

Named for Dana, a 1959 business graduate, and Sue Anderson of Los Angeles and their family, longtime KU supporters and its chief donors, the 42,000-square-foot facility at the northwest corner of Anschutz Sports Pavilion was dedicated April 19, 2003. It is used by all athletic department sports and houses the strength and conditioning department staff offices; weight, exercise and conditioning rooms; and conference and tutoring rooms.

Dedicated Oct. 7, 1989, it is named in honor of Fred and Marian Anschutz, parents of Philip Anschutz, a 1961 business alumnus and entrepreneur in telecommunications, entertainment and media companies, sports teams and arenas, railroads, and real estate. He and his wife, Nancy, gave $6.5 million for an endowed library acquisitions fund.

The pavilion is named for Fred Anschutz, a 1933 alumnus who was its chief donor, and was dedicated Oct. 27, 1984. It houses practice areas for football, track, softball/baseball and soccer; the Ray Evans Football Field and Bill Easton Track practice areas; and the Shaffer-Holland Strength Center, superseded in March 2003 by the Anderson Family Strength and Conditioning Center.

The Audio-Reader Center opened in November 1988 after the original 1910 building—formerly the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity house—was renovated by von Achen Chartered Architects. The center, a statewide reading service for blind and visually impaired people staffed largely by volunteer readers, is named for the Louis and Dolpha Baehr Charitable Foundation of Paola, KS, a major donor to its programs.

Bailey Hall, completed in 1900, was designed by John G. Haskell and built in response to surging enrollments in chemistry and pharmacy that made the 1883 Chemistry Hall (“the Shack”), also designed by Haskell, too small and outdated.

This hall housing 48 students was the first men’s residence hall built at the university. It was the gift of Mr. and Mrs. J.R. Battenfeld of Kansas City in memory of their son John Curry Battenfeld, killed in a car accident in December 1939. Designed by Morton Payne and Russell Field of Kansas City, the three-story Georgian brick building opened in September 1940.

Gould Evans Associates of Lawrence designed this two-story, 20,000-square-foot building northwest of the School of Pharmacy, and construction began in fall 2009. The $7.25-million building houses laboratories and office space for start-up companies, emerging technology businesses, and collaborations involving KU researchers and large technology firms.

The first hall on this site was a physics building designed by State Architect Seymour Davis in imitation of a French chateau admired by its namesake, physics professor Lucien I. Blake. A dapper man with a vivacious personality, Blake was also a noted scientist in electricity, thermodynamics and X-rays. The building housed classrooms, labs and auditoria when it was completed in 1895 south of Old Fraser Hall; it was superseded in 1954 when physics and other science departments moved to Malott Hall.

Opened at ceremonies Feb. 28, 2009, that also acknowledged the 40th anniversary of women’s athletics at KU, the 16,000-square-foot boathouse was designed by Peterson Architects of Cambridge, Mass., and Treanor Architects of Lawrence.

The two-story, 26,000-square-foot facility on the east face of the fieldhouse was designed by HOK Sport+Venue+Event of Kansas City, Mo., and opened Jan. 21, 2006. It houses a hall of fame for Kansas athletes and sports, with a special emphasis on the contributions of James Naismith, inventor of basketball, KU's first basketball coach and a longtime faculty member; and Forrest C. "Phog" Allen, KU's great coach, who played for Naismith. The hall also includes the ticket office; www.kustore.com; and donor, alumni and recruiting meeting rooms.

Francis H. Snow, one of the first three professors at the university, held the natural history chair and founded KU’s botanical collection, which was housed in old and new Snow halls. Ronald L. McGregor, herbarium director 1954-88, oversaw a huge expansion in specimens, and to accommodate it the collection was moved to this 9,000-square-foot redbrick building in the West District, designed by George Beal, in 1966. The research laboratory and herbarium are affiliated with the Natural History Museum & Biodiversity Institute.

Opened in September 2003, the building houses Kansas Public Radio, a consortium of Kansas public-radio stations of which KANU 91.5-FM is the flagship. It has five production studios, a music library, and a performance hall seating 50. It was funded by donations from Hortense Oldfather, the Sunderland Foundation and the Endowment Association; von Achen Chartered Architects designed the structure, which adjoins the Baehr Audio-Reader Center.

Named for Gene A. Budig, chancellor 1981-94, and dedicated Oct. 31, 1997, it replaced the building that was designed in the Collegiate Gothic style by State Architect Charles D. Cuthbert and that opened as University Auditorium in 1927; it was named in 1938 for former Kansas Gov. Edward W. Hoch (1905-09).

The original Burge Union, which opened in 1979, closed in March 2016 and was razed. A new building, also named for longtime director of the KU unions Frank Burge, replaces it. Costing $13 million and funded mostly by student fees, it will have about 33,000 square feet in 1.5 stories and a basement. It will house a conference area, KU Legal Services for Students, the Sexual Assault Prevention & Education Center, the Emily Taylor Center for Women & Gender Equity, a Reflection Room, a lactation room, and a coffee shop and convenience store. Completion is planned for summer 2018.

The four-story Capitol Federal Hall, home of the School of Business, opened in June 2016. The $65.7 million, 166,500-square-foot structure, east of Allen Fieldhouse on Naismith Drive, was designed by Gensler of Chicago, partnered locally by Gastinger Walker Harden + BeeTriplett Buck of Kansas City.

This building opened in 1955 as a men's residence hall and was converted in 1965 to offices and classrooms for academic departments including English, classics, and Romance languages. Since 1986 it has housed administrative offices, including Human Resource Management, Institutional Opportunity & Access, the ADA Resource Center for Equity & Accessibility​, the Sexual Assault Prevention & Education Center, two shared service centers, ​and the comptroller’s and budget offices. ​

This facility for collaborative research in sustainable energy, which adjoins Chamney House on the south, was dedicated July 16, 2011. An 1,820-square-foot, one-story stone building, it was funded by donations to and designed and built by about 20 students in Studio 804, a program of the School of Architecture & Design.

Planning for a dedicated building to house visual arts and their academic offices began in earnest about 1970, after courses had been scattered in a dozen campus buildings — including Bailey Annex, Memorial Stadium, Flint Hall, Chamney House and Barn, and the Wesley Building — for nearly 90 years. The new building was designed by Paul Krause, a 1956 alumnus and principal at Horner & Krause of Kansas City, KS. Construction began in 1977 on the hilltop south of Marvin Hall.

In September 1963, KU Endowment acquired this property of 130 acres, house, barn, and outbuildings from the Chamney family, leading Lawrence dairy farmers since 1912.

The School of Fine Arts used the house in the early 1970s for interior design classes and craft studios. It also housed the Center for Design Research until summer 2011, when a new, energy-efficient structure south of the house opened.

In 1912, Lawrence banker Jabez B. Watkins (1845-1921) built the three-story, 26-room house, designed by W.J. Mitchell, for himself and his wife, Elizabeth Miller Watkins. She lived in the home until her death in 1939, bequeathing it to the university as a chancellor’s residence. It replaced the original brick chancellor’s residence at 1345 Louisiana St. 

Chancellor Deane W. Malott and his family were the first to live in the home. The first floor is used for receptions and other public functions; the upper stories are family living quarters. 

Part of the Facilities Services Complex, it has offices and shops for carpenters, painters, plumbers, steamfitters, lock shop, moving crew, storage, recycling facilities, etc.

Opened in 1923 as the first residence hall at KU, the women’s hall was named in honor of Alberta Corbin, an 1893 alumna and professor of German who was a suffragist leader, first university “adviser of women” and an advocate of women’s housing. The original, south building, designed by State Architect Ray Gamble in the English colonial style, adjoins the site of the university’s first building, North College (1866). In 1951 North Corbin, housing 180 more women, opened; in 1958 the buildings were connected, and both were renovated in the 1990s.

The 1892 home of Juanita Strait, bequeathed to KU Endowment at her death in 2002, was refurbished as a community center for the scholarship halls that surround it and an office and apartment for the complex director. Mrs. Strait, a longtime piano teacher, was the widow of Reginald Strait, a physical education professor, and she had befriended many scholarship-hall students. 

William H. Danforth, chair of Ralston Purina Co., provided the largest single donation for the chapel through his foundation; the rest of the funding and most of the furnishings were donated by faculty, students, alumni, and Lawrence residents. Edward W. Tanner of Kansas City, MO, KU’s first architectural engineering graduate in 1916 and principal designer for the J.C. Nichols Co. 1919-64, designed the 90-seat Gothic Revival structure. The construction was done in part by German prisoners of war, many of them masons, who were detained in a Lawrence facility.