Excerpts - 1963 (circa 1963)

Oh as Rome was not built in a day Iowa State was not built in its first wooden walls or its first brick or its first marble or even in its latest concrete in fact Iowa State has not yet been built but the dust of its present will settle to the strength of its future and the time defined monument of its past but now the dust the busy dust of group the dust flying up from the chisels that are carving the biggest model of Education in our history 1963 our dust is our biggest unity day Oh Oh you we get lost in it and the stumble through rots and detours but week off our way through it and get to work more or less as usual there is a lot of construction going on but we can look back and there was a lot of construction in the past since my days as a student things like the Memorial Union the library the physics building the veterinary clinic the dairy industrial building practically the entire residence halls development and the whole complex of the team's laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission have been built on this campus future development will be on the periphery of the campus the traffic plan is to provide outer belt drives and parking areas preserving the central campus for pedestrian traffic classroom facilities this poses a problem on travel time between classes and for that reason I think we will see more high rise buildings within the periphery because it will not be possible for students to change classes in the ten-minute period allowed this year we are engaged in the largest building program in our history we have under construction right now more than 15 million dollars worth of buildings we have 12 million dollars worth in the advanced planning stage on which we expect to receive bids early in 1964 over 15 million dollars just to keep up and yet at the same time to hack away at the bedrock and carve out the future let's take a closer look at some of the newest faces of our statue true to our traditional spirit we work toward the developing quality livestock products foremost among our projects is the new animal industries building classrooms research and teaching laboratories for the department's of animal science poultry science and dairy science and true to our pioneering spirit Iowa State showed the way an educational radio more than 40 years ago and launched the nation's first educationally owned and operated television station back in nineteen fifty the new WR building attained studios offices and services for wo I am FM and TV in addition its facilities are designed to aid in training advanced television students the building at its facilities will allow iowa state to develop excellent closed-circuit television instruction to supplement and improve regular classroom teaching the project was financed from woi TV reserves no state funds were used another modern board is the spacious engineering building adjoining chemical engineering here are more of the ever vital classrooms and laboratories as well as new offices of nuclear engineering chemical engineering and engineering science at the overcrowded labs and classrooms of the chemistry building can breathe more freely as they empty their overflow into the chem building addition the addition of the physics building is one of which we can be especially proud because the National Science Foundation granted 1 million dollars toward its construction a vote of confidence from the nation for science here at Iowa State most of the six stories of additional be used for graduate research but will include for large undergraduate teaching labs this building will strengthen our programs in astrophysics classical physics and physical meteorology and the drazi petals of the formal garden will be awakened by the pneumatic hammer when it will tear away portions of the wrinkle face of old botany Hall here the plant science building will house the department's of botany Plant Pathology forest and possibly genetics I'll be 22 large undergraduate classroom laboratories and 72 research laboratories submitted on to the agricultural engineering building are the new quarters of industrial education with new labs for woodworking metalworking auto mechanics and electronics and looming over the tip of the campus sprawling as a Roman arena is the new men's gymnasium it will allow better scheduling of intramural events and greater facilities for them with six basketball courts six handball courts to squash courts and a hundred and fifty showers but its central features one of the three best swimming pools in the nation and the best in the midwest 75 by 50 feet whether 30 to 50 foot diving pool and there's space for 800 people to watch the cornerstone of the new atomic reactor which the US Atomic Energy Commission has just built for four and a half million dollars lies just a mile and a half northwest of the campus the reactor is five thousand kilowatt thermal power output makes it one of the most powerful research reactors in the nation but not only do students need more working space they also need more living space more research means more graduate students so we raise the only international house and even as it burned it was still being used for an educational purpose fireman ship training and on the ashes we pour the concrete for a graduate door here an eight-story tower will house 122 women and 268 men later additions will make room for a total of 1,000 students the biggest dorm project will go up on what was the poultry farm at the south end of welsh avenue but not all of our concrete is rising upward some of it will stretch along with round as new highways and roads remember the old one Lena with its one-way signal under the railroad on the stang road now it's been changed into a four-lane er with no signal and the bed road job was finished in September highway 30 has burst its forms all through campus town and has poured like lava across four lanes signal lights are progressing anyone driving at a constant speed can make every green light all along the way at the expense of tradition however for the old bridge for the Daredevils at the end of Lake Laverne had to give way to a new one of more solid footing and safe handrails but the bottleneck s curves at the intersections of Lynn Avenue and morale drive have been pulled out to a free-flowing straight line the cost of the new and wider lincoln-way is born fifty fifty by state and federal governments all in all 12 projects and all of them needed just to keep up but keeping up is also growing and if we were to say that I would stay bees built we'd be saying that Iowa State is finished and dead but we are alive and we are carving new faces on our monumental statue of Education new lines haha Oh and so by this we give the past more dignity the present more life and the future more hope Oh