Campus Buildings Directory
1405 Jayhawk Blvd. 66045
1 floor
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, 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. The chapel, dedicated April 2, 1946, has evolved from a Christian house of worship to an interfaith, nondenominational facility popular for weddings.
An $850,000 addition to the southeast side and other renovations were completed in fall 2007. The 600-square-foot area includes a large dressing room for the bridal party, accessible restrooms and more space for wedding preparations. Renovations include repairs to plaster, woodwork and stonework, beams and drainage; new ceramic tile flooring; and painting. The organ and the stained-glass windows were also refurbished, and the landscaping was renewed. The chapel’s tile roof had been replaced after it was destroyed in a microburst in March 2006.
4 floors, basement
The center was dedicated Aug. 25, 1990, and named in honor of Kansas Sen. Robert J. Dole, an advocate for people with disabilities. Kiene & Bradley Design Group designed the $12 million classroom and clinic space, which houses undergraduate and graduate departments and research and training centers, including the Department of Applied Behavioral Science and affiliates such as the Child and Family Services Clinic, gerontology, early childhood autism, the Edna A. Hill Child Development Center and the Sunnyside Infant-Toddler Program, and the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences and Disorders. Also in DHDC are the Schiefelbusch Life Span Institute and affiliates such as the Gerontology Center, the Center on Developmental Disabilities, the Merrill Advanced Studies Center and the Research and Training Center on Independent Living.
The radio-TV sequence of the School of Journalism also has offices, classrooms, studios and labs here; the Stan and Madeline Stauffer Multimedia Newsroom was dedicated Oct. 1, 2004.
The Department of Applied Behavioral Science was formerly the Department of Human Development and Family Life; the name was changed in August 2004. The department, established in 1964, was founded on programs affiliated with the home economics department, long chaired by Edna A. Hill, founder in 1943 of the first nursery school at KU. After her 1967 retirement, the child development center was named in her honor.
See also: Haworth Hall
2350 Petefish Drive 66045
1 floor, basement
This west campus building, dedicated in ceremonies July 19-22, 2003, that honored World War II veterans, is named for retired Kansas Sen. Robert J. Dole. The $11 million, 28,000-square-foot facility, designed by ASIA of Lenexa, houses papers from Dole’s 35-year career and is the world’s largest congressional archive.
The institute sponsors public and educational programs in bipartisan civic education and leadership training; it has seminar and meeting rooms, broadcast facilities and exhibits on Dole’s life and career as well as on specific historical or political topics. Features of the limestone structure include a reflecting pool, two large stained-glass windows and a Memory Wall of photos of Kansas war veterans, the central Hansen Hall and the Simons Family Media Center.
1345 Louisiana St. 66044
3 floors, basement
48 women
Pronounced: DOW-thert
This hall houses 48 women in 12 bedroom/study area suites. It opened in 1954 and was largely funded by the gift of Burt Chronister of Kansas City, Kan., in memory of his wife, Ava Douthart Chronister, a 1901 graduate, and her sister Lela Douthart, an 1899 alumna. The architect was Raymond Coolidge.
Douthart was built on the site of the original chancellor’s residence, designed by Kansas City architect Henry van Brunt, who also designed Spooner Library. After “The Outlook” became the chancellor’s residence in 1939, the home became a scholarship hall, first for men and then for women, and was named for longtime languages professor William H. Carruth. In 1953, the building was declared structurally unsound and demolished.
See also: Spooner Hall; Chancellor’s residence; Carruth-O’Leary Hall
Museum of Natural History and Biodiversity Research Center
1345 Jayhawk Blvd. 66045
11 floors
Pronounced: DIKE
One of KU’s signature buildings, Dyche Hall was built as the Museum of Natural History in 1901-02 to a design by Kansas City architects Walter C. Root and George W. Siemens; they used the Venetian Romanesque style characteristic of southern European churches of 1050-1200. The limestone building, distinguished by a steep-roofed tower, arched doorway and elaborate stone ornamentations of natural and fantastic animals and plants, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
After his death the building was named for Lewis Lindsay Dyche (1857-1915). Its first purpose was to house the famous Panorama of North America Mammals he created for the Kansas Pavilion at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Dyche helped design the main-floor diorama that still displays part of the collection he began while a protégé of natural history professor Francis H. Snow in the 1880s. Dyche began teaching while a KU undergraduate, earned two bachelor’s and two master’s degrees and was professor and chair of zoology and taxidermy and curator of birds and mammals. He continued collecting on expeditions throughout North America and in Greenland and the Arctic.
Included in the 1893 exposition panorama was the stuffed and mounted body of Comanche, the only survivor of the U.S. Cavalry force at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876. After the horse’s death at Fort Riley in 1891, Dyche was asked to preserve it; it has remained in the museum and in 2005 was moved to a new fifth-floor climate-controlled exhibit space.
The building was closed from November 1932 to June 1941 for substantial restoration and was enlarged in 1963 and 1996.
It houses the Biodiversity Institute and the Natural History Museum and divisions including botany, entomology, herpetology, ichthyology, informatics, vertebrate paleontology, mammalogy and ornithology. The entomological collections from Snow Hall have been moved here.
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