“I think it’s just fine right here.”

“No, I think it would look better over there.”

A couple argues over where to place the new couch in the living room. The same conversation could well have taken place among State University of Iowa administrators in the years leading up to 1905. Instead of furniture, though, they were weighing the possibility of moving a 6,000-ton building.

Shortly after George MacLean became the University’s eighth president in 1899, he announced a plan to redesign the central campus, giving it its appearance today: four neoclassical buildings flanking Old Capitol. At the time, though, a half-dozen buildings of various styles stood in the way, including Science Hall, now Calvin Hall, located northeast of Old Capitol at the site of present-day Macbride Hall. Though constructed less than 20 years earlier, Science Hall’s brick design didn’t mesh with MacLean’s vision of a planned, monolithic central campus.

Tearing down Science Hall was one option, but two science professors—Thomas Macbride and Samuel Calvin—opposed destroying a perfectly fine building. Instead, they proposed moving the building to its present-day location, at the northwest corner of Jefferson Street and North Capitol. After much debate, the University’s leadership agreed, awarding the $18,000 contract to a Chicago firm, L.P. Friestedt and Co.

From April until August 1905, the building was moved by Friestedt’s crew, using an elaborate series of six-inch rollers, jacks, and turning jackscrews. Classes continued to be held in the building that summer. Despite the three-story building’s size, it experienced no cracks or other damage from the move. A typical day’s move was perhaps a yard; the longest one-day stretch was 17 feet. It also had to be turned 180 degrees so that its front entrance would face Market Street from the north, instead of from the original south-side of street orientation.

It was quite an accomplishment and it paved the way for completion of the central campus. By 1924 the last of the four present-day buildings adjacent to Old Capitol was completed, though Old Dental, to the north of Old Capitol on the Pentacrest and the last of the nonconforming central campus structures, wasn’t torn down until 1975.

For more about this chapter in the Pentacrest’s makeover, see James Hill’s article “Saving Calvin Hall: The Back Story” in the Fall 2006 issue of Iowa Heritage Illustrated, published by the State Historical Society of Iowa.

—David McCartney, University Archivist

Science Hall (today Calvin Hall) at its original location, just northeast of Old Capitol, about 1903. The intersection of Jefferson and Clinton Streets is in background, to the right.

(Source—University Archives, F.W. Kent Collection of Photographs (RG 30.01.01), Buildings series, Calvin Hall folder

Science Hall during the move, 1905.

(Source—F.W. Kent Collection of Photographs (RG 30.01.01), Buildings series, Calvin Hall folder

Science Hall during the move, 1905.

(Source—University Archives, F.W. Kent Collection of Photographs (RG 30.01.01), Buildings series, Calvin Hall folder

Correspondence from L.P. Friestedt and Co. of Chicago, the low bidder, 1905

(Source—University Archives, Campus Buildings and Grounds Vertical Files Collection (RG 01.15.02), Calvin Hall folder