History of Schaeffer Hall

In October 1897, the Board of Regents announced a competition for the design of the new Collegiate Building. Instructions to the architects specified that the building must be fireproof and must cost no more than $150,000 but otherwise gave wide latitude in matters of design. Perhaps too wide, for at the close of the competition Secretary William Haddock wrote, "The twenty-two samples of architecture examined by the board were very miscellaneous. Some with high peaked roofs and steeples and they were called French Renaissance. Others had no visible roof at all and that was pure Greek Renaissance...what the board wanted was a good square turn of Iowa Renaissance for a change." Seeking a design more harmonious with Old Capitol, the board asked eight of the original twenty-three architects to resubmit plans and hired as the judge Henry Van Brundt of Kansas City, one of the architects of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Van Brundt chose a scheme in the grand style of the exhibition by the Des Moines firm of Proudfoot, Bird, and Rawson. More important, he recommended that the regents located the Collegiate Building (now Schaeffer Hall) east of the established axis then running north and south from Old Capitol. Evidence suggests that this was part of his plan to group four architecturally similar buildings around Old Capitol, forming what would come to be called the Pentacrest. Slowed by a dispute between the architects and the contractor, construction of Schaeffer Hall took nearly four years. When the doors opened on January 23, 1902, students and faculty found a new library, classroom and office space, and an auditorium large enough to permit university-wide gatherings.

--from A Pictorial History of the University of Iowa by John C. Gerber