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Navy Pier to Here | 2005 UIC City & Corporate Award Recipient Profiles

FEATURE STORY (continued) — January/February 2005

The Navy Pier campus opened in 1946 as a two-year undergraduate school. Students often joked it was the only school that could be sunk by a U-boat.

From Navy Pier ...

How UIC's East Campus came to be

Feb. 22, 1965. The war in Vietnam continues to escalate. Malcom X has just been murdered in New York. The Beatles' "Eight Days a Week" is at the top of the music charts.

And on that cold Washington's Birthday on Chicago's West Side, a beaming Mayor Richard J. Daley watches Illinois Governor Otto Kerner cut a ribbon dedicating the opening of the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Campus. Daley has every reason to be happy. After all, he'd worked for almost 30 years to realize his dream of establishing a publicly supported, four-year state university in the heart of Chicago. It was an achievement Daley often said was his greatest contribution to the city.

Today, what was once Circle Campus is the East Campus of UIC, created when Circle merged with the adjacent University of Illinois Medical Center campus in 1982. But the story of the East Campus begins at what is now one of Chicago's top playgrounds for tourists and locals alike: Navy Pier.

Harvard on the Rocks

When the Navy Pier campus opened in 1946 as a two-year undergraduate school with a student body consisting mostly of veterans on the G.I. Bill, it was jokingly referred to as "Harvard on the rocks." Lectures were interrupted by the sound of foghorns, crashing waves and the screams of gulls, while students sprinted down a lone corridor to get to classes at opposite ends of the pier.

Some of the distractions were comical, notes Fred Beuttler '83 UIUC, UIC associate university historian. "The university rented the first floor of the pier's north wing while the second floor was under construction," he says. "Every now and then, a workman's foot would come through the ceiling while a class was in session."

While Navy Pier had no shortage of character—one former student recalls classmates catching smelt in a bucket for lunch—as the 1950s progressed, demands for a new campus from various quarters grew increasingly vocal.

Parents who couldn't afford to send their kids to UIUC to finish their degrees lobbied Daley and university trustees.

Initially, U of I trustees favored a suburban location for the school. But Daley refused to budge, and in 1959 offered to equal the costs of any suburban site.

Daley and the trustees considered several Chicago locations before agreeing on a 105-acre site at Harrison and Halsted Streets. Shortly after passage of a 1960 bond issue earmarking $50 million for the construction of a Chicago campus, Daley and the trustees formally announced Harrison-Halsted as the site for the new university.

"It was clearly a victory for Daley," says Beuttler. "There was enormous pressure on the trustees because of the large numbers of students in the Chicago area. Ultimately, they were less concerned with the location than in getting it built, while Daley's main concern was getting it built in the city."

Campus location sparks protest

Almost as soon as the site was announced, a group of neighborhood activists led by Florence Scala began a protest campaign against the site, which they said would result in the forced relocation of many residents of the blue-collar, multi-ethnic neighborhood. They also protested the inevitable demolition of the historic Hull-House settlement, a complex of buildings (housing social services) located in the center of the proposed campus site.

"It got pretty nasty," says Beuttler. "In fact, a couple of firebombs were placed in front of Florence's house, and her husband lost his job because of her efforts against the university."

Scala and her followers took their case against the university to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected their appeal in 1963.

Robert Remini, university historian and professor emeritus, says some resentment by neighborhood residents and businesses lingered even after the campus opened.

"There was a very nice Italian restaurant that wouldn't open until 5 p.m. because the owners didn't want university people to go there and figured we'd all have gone home by then," he says. "But I think they eventually realized that the university was the best thing that ever happened to them, because we saved and helped build a stronger community."

Accommodating 32,000 students

Architect Walter Netsch of the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill led the design team for the new campus. Netsch's challenge was to create a campus that would accommodate a projected student body of 32,000 in a limited area.

He came up with a novel design resembling rings around a drop of water. That "drop" was a central amphitheater—the Circle Forum—and the rings contained lecture halls, classrooms, the library, student center, laboratories and offices. He also created an elaborate system of second-story walkways, which defined the look of the university for many Circle Campus students.

Netsch's design was—and remains—controversial. Architecture critic M.W. Newman dubbed it "Fortress Illini."

But Beuttler says Netsch was practical in his design, which made extensive use of concrete—a relatively low-cost, low-maintenance material.

"Netsch designed the buildings to be utilitarian and functional," he says. "They weren't pretty in the beginning and may not be pretty now, but they've stayed functional for 40 years and will stay functional for another 40."

When the campus was renovated in the mid 1990s, some elements of Netsch's original design were altered or eliminated, including the walkways and Circle Forum. But despite East Campus changes and the ambitious work-in-progress South Campus expansion, Netsch's original vision remains an enduring symbol of the campus.