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.
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.
The fountain was authorized in October 1952 as a memorial to alumnae on the 50th anniversary of the founding of Lambda chapter at KU.
Students, alumni and friends donated about $5,000 to the construction fund; the balance of the $11,800 cost was contributed by KU Endowment’s Elizabeth M. Watkins Fund.
Katie Kring, 2003
In 2003 the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau sponsored “Jayhawks on Parade,” a five-month exhibit of 5-foot, molded fiberglass Jayhawks decorated in themes including Vincent van Gogh, patchwork quilts, cubism, mosaics, and abstractionism.
The 30 Jayhawks were decorated by area artists and placed around Lawrence; many later were auctioned for charity.
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, 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 befriended many scholarship-hall students.
This facility for collaborative research in sustainable energy, which adjoins Chamney House on the south, was dedicated July 16, 2011. A 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 design/build program of the School of Architecture & Design.
