TOWN ENGINEERING BUILDING

The eight-year capital improvement plan prepared in 1963 included Engineering Building #2 scheduled for the 1967-69 biennium. At that time it was described:

Engineering Building #2, tagged at $2.5 million, will be designed to house the Departments of Aerospace Engineering and Civil Engineering. Not actually a separate building, Engineering Building #2 will probably consist of three additional floors on top of the new chemical engineering building and a six-story wing extending north on the west end of the present structure.¹

In August 1964 the Iowa State Daily reported that the Board of Regents had approved the capital-improvement budget which included “a $1.7 million engineering building.” On June 22, 1966, the paper recorded that a $2.2 million cost was in the request to the legislature for the 1967-69 biennium. By August the request was reduced to $1.8 million. (That amount was appropriated in the spring of 1967 and in May the architect was selected.)

This was the first building for which a formal written building program was prepared by the University Architect and furnished to the contract architect for his guidance in developing the design of the building. The building program was given to the architect in May 1967 and his schematic drawings were approved by the Board in November of that year. It had earlier been decided that the building would be an independent structure located “at the intersection of Pammel Drive and Bissell Road.”

Applications for federal funds under the Higher Education Facilities Act were filed in August and September 1967. These were approved the following year.

The first schematic drawings showed the front of the building facing south, but this was subsequently changed, before construction drawings were started, to provide for the building to face east toward Bissell Road.

Construction contracts were awarded at the May 8-9, 1969, Board meeting. The building was ready for occupancy by July 1971.

In March 1973 the Board authorized the name “George R. Town Engineering Building” for Engineering Building #2.

George R. Town had joined the Iowa State faculty September 1, 1949, as professor of electrical engineering. He was appointed Dean of the College of Engineering on March 1, 1959, and remained in that position until he retired from administrative duties on June 30, 1970. Dean Town died in 1978.