ISU PRESS BUILDING
Collegiate Press Building
Built: 1940
Addition: 1947-48, 1951, 1955-56, 1964-66
Architect: 1940 John Normile, 1947, 1951, 1955 Thomas K. Fitzpatrick, 1964 Griffith-Kendall
Contractor: 1940 Robt. W. Scott & Co., 1947 Wickes Engineering and Construction Co., 1951 Weitz Company, Inc., 1955 James Thompson & Sons, 1964 Carlson-Rockey, Inc.
A request to the Public Works Administration for funds to help finance a Collegiate Press Building was rejected in 1938 and delayed the construction of the building for two years. All construction since then has been funded entirely by monies from the funds of the Collegiate Press, Inc. (later Iowa State College Press, Inc. and Iowa State University Press, Inc.).
Ground-breaking for the first unit of the building was on April 8, 1940 and acceptance of the contract work came on September 17 of that year.1 The original building is now all but lost in the center of the existing structure. When first occupied it was described by the student paper:
The $40,000 structure, started last spring, will house the Iowa State Daily Student, the Bomb, the Iowa Homemaker, the Iowa Engineer and the Iowa Agriculturist offices on the main floor. The printing plant of the Collegiate Press will be on the ground floor. A photographic dark-room, to be used by publications, and offices for the book department of the Collegiate Press also are located on the main floor.2
In 1947 a 26 x 90 foot addition on the north side was started. This expanded the ground floor to increase the press work area. It was completed in the spring of 1948. In 1951 an addition of the main floor above the 1947 construction was built, providing new storage and work space.
Plans for the east wing addition had been started by Fitzpatrick in 1951 but it was 1955 before the Griffith-Kendall documents were completed and put out for bids. The construction contracts were awarded in August of that year and the new wing was completed in the fall of 1956. 3 The east wing included ground, first and second floors.
In 1964 plans were developed for an extension of the original building to the south, providing a completely new front entrance as well as new office space on the ground and main floors. That construction was finished early in 1966.
Title to the land on which the building is located was transferred from the State to the Corporation April 11, 1955, in order to satisfy the legal requirements in negotiating a bank loan for the building construction.4 Title will revert to the State when the corporation is free of indebtedness on building costs.