The history of the University YMCA building

When it moved to Wright Street in 1938, the Y was changing homes for the eleventh time in 65 years.¹ It met in a professor's lecture room, a dormitory, the Law building and two floors of University Hall, then in a house at Wright and John streets that it shared with the YWCA from 1899.²³ In 1908 it opened Association Hall, a large building on the northwest corner of Wright and John with dormitories for 60 to 80 men, a café, a barber shop, bowling alleys and an assembly room for 400.⁴⁵ The building was meant to give the Y a home of its own. Instead it gave the Y a hotel and a restaurant to run.

When Henry E. Wilson arrived as general secretary in June 1916, the Association carried a deficit of $40,000. Hannah writes that Wilson "didn't believe that university YMCAs should operate rooming and boarding establishments," and he questioned at once whether Association Hall fit the Y's work.⁶⁷ The dormitory and the cafeteria had both failed as businesses.⁸

The war settled the matter. On July 26, 1917, the Y turned its building over to the School of Military Aeronautics as barracks, and its offices moved to University Hall and then to the empty president's house at Wright and Green.⁹¹⁰ By the end of the war the Board had decided not to go back.¹¹ For two years the University leased the building and ran its rooms and cafeteria.¹²¹³ The Illinois Union moved onto the first floor in 1919, and the upper floors, run for students as the "Y Inn," were already being called Illini Hall by that September.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

In 1919 the Y offered the building to the University for $130,000, and the University declined.¹⁷ The Illinois Union then agreed to buy it, under a contract dated July 15, 1923, for $130,000: $30,000 in the form of the Union's building at 617–619 S. Wright, which held a post office, and most of the rest over ten years. The Y's members approved the sale on Jan. 25, 1924, by a vote of 708 to none.¹⁸¹⁹²⁰ The money was to go into a fund for the upkeep of a new building, not into building it.²¹ The Y held the mortgage, which Peters calls a mistake: the Union kept falling behind, and only on Dec. 1, 1941, after the Union had been folded into the University of Illinois Foundation, did the Y settle for less than it was owed.²²²³

For twenty years the Y had no building of its own.

• The Hut, 1918–1923. In October 1918 the King Construction Co. put up a one-story army "hut," 44 by 100 feet, on the southwest corner of Green and Wright for the student soldiers. It was dedicated on Nov. 15, 1918, and became the Y's headquarters. The Y bought the hut for salvage and, in May 1920, the lot under it.^24252627 Wilson wrote in 1919 that it "was a familiar friendly sight."²⁸ An overheated stove set it on fire early on Dec. 8, 1923, and the city refused to let it be rebuilt.²⁹³⁰³¹
• Borrowed rooms, 1923–1928. The Y opened club rooms in Hughes Hall on Green Street, kept offices in Duncan's Studio, and by summer 1924 was back on the first floor of its old building, now the Union's.³²³³³⁴
• The frame houses, 1928–1937. In August 1928 the Y moved into the two houses on its new site, 1001 and 1003 S. Wright, one for the student lounge and services and one for the offices.³⁵³⁶ In February 1933 workers from the local relief committee built a lounge and meeting room between them, and the Faculty Forum met there that March.³⁷³⁸ Jim Lake, president in 1933–34, remembered that the old house needed paint, "but it was a place to get in out of the cold."³⁹
• 810 S. Sixth St., 1937–1938. On May 27, 1937, two trucks moved the Y to temporary quarters while its new building went up.⁴⁰⁴¹

After the fire the Y gave up building on the Hut lot. Green Street had become a business street, and the new Library, the Commerce buildings and the Gymnasium were drawing the campus south.⁴²⁴³ On Nov. 22, 1924, Prof. S. W. Parr, chairman of the Board, bought the southwest corner of Wright and Chalmers, part of the old Hopkins estate, at a court-ordered auction for about $24,000. On Dec. 10 the Board voted to take it from him.⁴⁴⁴⁵⁴³ The corner house had been the home of Cyril G. Hopkins, of the College of Agriculture. In 1927 the Y bought the Fraser property next to it to the south, the home of Prof. Wilbur J. Fraser, for $29,500, giving it the whole site.⁴⁶⁴⁷⁴⁸

The choice started a fight. South Wright Street was sorority row. Dean of Women Maria Leonard and the Pi Beta Phis next door objected to a men's building there, and the Urbana Daily Courier argued against it in its editorials. On Feb. 11, 1925, Judge O. A. Harker brought the Board a petition with about 300 signatures from sororities, fraternities and businesses. The Board, with Dean Thomas Arkle Clark calling it the best site available, kept the corner.^4950515253

Wilson did not want another Association Hall. He wanted a modest center "out from which men will go to serve the campus rather than a building to which we will expect great numbers of men to come."⁵⁴ From the first plans on, the building was to have no pool, no gymnasium, no cafeteria and no dormitory.⁵⁵⁵⁶

• 1925–1929. In February 1925 the Boards set a goal of $1,020,000: $220,000 for the building and the rest for an endowment to pay for staff.⁵⁷⁵⁸ The drive stalled. Its first chairman missed every date he set. In April 1929 Mr. Pierce of Pierce & Hedrick, a New York fund-raising firm, judged the Y's following strong enough "for a million dollar campaign," and the Board hired the firm that May. Its plan was never carried out.⁵⁹⁶⁰⁶¹
• 1930. In January 1930 Wilson took over the campaign himself, now $1,100,000 for a $340,000 building and endowment.⁶²⁶³ It opened statewide in Danville on March 20. The Daily Illini ran a four-page supplement, and 250 students canvassed the campus that May. They raised about $50,000 on campus.^64656667
• The Depression. Pledges could not be paid, the Y's budget fell to $21,993 in 1935–36, and Wilson gave back as much as a third of his salary.⁶⁸⁶⁹ "Old Man Depression had the door slammed almost shut," he wrote in 1934, "we just kept a foot in it."⁷⁰
• 1935–1937. A gift from the Latzer family of Highland, Ill., revived the campaign, and George R. Carr '01 led it in Chicago.⁷¹⁷²⁷³ By May 1937 the $300,000 for lot, building and furnishings was subscribed.⁷²⁷⁴ On Sept. 30, 1937, the members were asked to let the Board borrow up to $60,000 to finish the work.⁷⁵

The building went through three designs.

1. 1922–1924. In December 1922 Neil McMillan of the national YMCA's Building Bureau, a former secretary of the Illinois Y, drew a plain two-story brick building for the Hut lot.⁷⁶⁷⁷ Prof. L. H. Provine redrew it in 1924, and the move to Wright and Chalmers meant starting over.⁷⁸⁵⁵
2. 1925–1930. On May 13, 1925, on the advice of the national YMCA's Building Bureau, the Board hired Childs & Smith of Chicago. William J. Smith was the partner who worked with the Y.^79808182 Their design, published in The Y's Indian's Building Edition of April 1926 and again for the 1930 drive, was a low, informal H-shaped house of brick with half-timbered gables, a one-story "Manor Hall" wing and a tower on Wright Street. The Daily Illini promised "just a low rambling house."⁸³⁸⁴⁶⁵
3. 1937. In January 1937 the Building Committee went over new sketches from Childs & Smith with J. W. Ogg of the Building Bureau.⁸⁵ What was built is that later design: "modified Tudor," of brick trimmed in stone, 113 feet along Wright and 89 along Chalmers, set as far into the corner as the lot allowed. Their working drawings, Job No. 9014, are dated March 29, 1937.⁸⁶⁸⁷ The drawings show steep gables with copper dormers, leaded steel casements, a stone-arched entrance on Wright, and a two-story hall at the back lit by tall stone-mullioned windows.⁸⁸

The 1937 plan put everything students would use on the first floor: a terrazzo lobby, a radio room with a fireplace, a 25-by-48-foot lounge with bay windows on Wright Street, a library in the octagonal bay, a faculty and graduate lounge, a canteen, and the banquet hall. Offices, a board and cabinet room, a recreation room and committee rooms filled the second floor. The third floor and much of the basement were left unfinished. The drawings show five small dormitory rooms under the roof, but the Y said it would have no dormitory, and photographs of 1953 show the third floor still an empty attic.^868990919293

Eight firms bid. On April 26, 1937, the committees chose Pere Anderson and Co. of Chicago as general contractor, at $124,550 once some extras were dropped, with E. Sendelbach & Son of Bloomington for plumbing and heating and Ernest Freeman & Co. for the wiring. The contract was signed in May.⁹⁴⁹⁵⁹⁶ The old frame house came down in early June, and excavation began on June 29. Concrete for the first floor went in that August on night shifts, and the roof was on by Oct. 20.^979899100 Prof. M. L. Mosher chaired the Building Committee in 1938, but he credited Prof. A. B. Mays, chairman of the Board from 1938 to 1943, with most of the overseeing, and The Y's Indian later named Mays as the committee's chairman.^96101102

The cornerstone, Nov. 21, 1937. About 650 people crowded into the heated, half-finished building on a Sunday afternoon to hear John R. Mott, president of the World's Alliance of YMCAs, who had helped start the Y's first building campaign in 1892. WILL carried the service on the radio. "It is a building where all may come and find a real home," Mott said.^{103104105106107} The stone, just left of the main door, holds a Bible; lists of the members, officers, staff and the donors to the building fund; Y publications, including The Y's Indian and the Freshman Camp brochure; the student directory and University catalogues; a map; and that day's Daily Illini, News-Gazette and Sunday Courier.¹⁰⁸¹⁰⁹

Moving in, April 28, 1938. Furnishing took longer than expected. The Y moved its records from Sixth Street on the afternoon of April 27, and the building opened to the public the next day. The Y spoke of a $300,000 building, a figure that took in the lots and furnishings. The Building Committee's accounts that May put the construction contracts at about $165,000, and about $187,000 with furniture, kitchen equipment and landscaping.^11011174112 The first official event was the installation of the Y's officers on May 5, 1938, when more than 200 people crowded into Latzer Hall.¹¹³ The Daily Illini called it "unique among University Y.M.C.A.s" for being almost entirely given over to recreation and meeting, with no dormitory or cafeteria.¹¹⁴

The dedication, April 29–30, 1939. The dedication, first planned for the fall of 1938, was put off to the spring. On Saturday evening, April 29, a dinner in Latzer Hall heard Willis D. Weatherford of Berea College, and six memorial rooms were dedicated.^{115116117118119} On Sunday afternoon, April 30, Sir William Bragg, the British physicist and Nobel laureate, spoke in the University Auditorium on "A Scheme of Life." Hannah writes that he came only because of Wilson's influence.^120121122 Bragg called the building "the student's own private house."¹²³ Wilson read the Board's statement, which Peters believes he wrote: "We do not have dormitories nor restaurant, nor other commercial enterprises." The building was to be "a spiritual power house in campus life," and the statement ended with a warning: "What shall it profit an organization if it gains a fine building and endowment, and loses thereby its sense of mission and its own soul?"¹²⁴¹²⁵

Six rooms were dedicated as memorials on April 29, 1939, each with a bronze plaque.¹¹⁸¹²⁶ Others were named later.

The building opened with its basement and third floor still bare, and it took the Y a generation to finish them.

• The basement. A game room opened in January 1939.¹⁵⁰ On May 3, 1946, the YMCA-YWCA Social Recreation Committee opened the Wigwam Room there, with a soda bar, a juke box and a dance floor.¹⁵¹¹⁵² In November 1950 a $65,000 project began to finish the rest.¹⁵³ The Kaeser Room opened as a coffee shop on July 9, 1951, and was dedicated on Oct. 7, with a mural by Robert Wilbert and a life-size photomural of the first Chief Illiniwek. An office, a meeting room and a darkroom were finished alongside it.^154155140156 The Kaeser family paid for a second room in 1961, designed by Smith, Kratz and Associates, which doubled its seating.¹⁵⁷¹⁵⁸
• The chapel. A room for meditation had been one of Wilson's unfulfilled hopes. Paid for by more than 200 of his friends, the Wilson Memorial Chapel was fitted into the second-floor bay room and dedicated on Feb. 22, 1953.^141159142
• The third floor. It had been left unfinished in 1938. In 1954 gifts from about 350 friends of Fred A. Poor paid for its completion, designed by Smith, Kratz & Associates of Urbana and built by C. A. Petry & Sons of Champaign. It held a library and historical room, a program room, a guest room, and two bedrooms for students who worked for the Y. It was dedicated on Oct. 9, 1954.^160161162143

Peters notes the irony: within ten years of Wilson's death, the building he had insisted would never have a cafeteria or a dormitory had both.¹⁶³ By 1972 the Kaeser Room was the "K-Room Cafeteria," serving full meals from 7 a.m., and about 1970 the little-used Poor library was made into two more rooms for residents. By 1971 the Y was advertising air-conditioned rooms for men.^164165166

The building was busy from the start. In 1951–52 it held 1,196 meetings, with 37,000 people attending.¹⁶⁷ On March 15, 1954, the Board restated its policy "to maintain an open door and an open forum to all groups."¹⁶⁸ That April, when political speakers were barred from campus, Vice President Richard Nixon spoke from the Y's front lawn.¹⁶⁹¹⁷⁰

• The YWCA moves in. In 1966 the University YWCA sold McKinley Hall to the University. In September 1968 it signed on as a tenant at 1001 S. Wright, and its offices moved in during the spring of 1969, the first time in 62 years that the two Associations had shared a home. From then on the building was often called the University YW-YMCA. The YWCA stayed for about fifty years.^171172173174
• Refurbishing, 1969–1971. A renovation fund, built on a challenge gift from Herman C. Krannert, paid for a new roof, tuckpointing, a redecorated Murphy Lounge and refinished oak doors.^175176177
• Tenants. The building became a home for causes. In the late 1960s and 1970s the basement and offices held a draft counseling center, a student record store, the Dragon's Eye Book Co-op and the Used Book Store, a voter-registration coalition, the Environmental Resource Center and the YWCA's Women's Center.^{178179180181182183184} From the mid-1980s, Peters writes, the building was "a kind of town meeting hall," and groups from the Graduate Employees' Organization to the C-U Coalition Against Apartheid had space there.¹⁸⁵¹⁸⁶
• The kitchen moves upstairs. When the K-Room restaurant's managers left in 1985, the Y moved food service to a renovated first-floor kitchen, where the Y Eatery, serving Thai food, opened in January 1986. The Y Thai Eatery is still there.^187188189
• The lower level, 1987–88. Architectural Spectrum of Champaign redesigned the basement, turning the old canteen into four meeting rooms divided by folding walls, the K Rooms, plus space for tenants. It was the largest renovation of those years, finished in January 1988.^190191192 In 1991 the Board of Governors removed the Chief Illiniwek portrait from the Kaeser Room.¹⁹³
• Upkeep. Peters lists a new boiler (1986), new roofs, wiring, carpets, drapes and tuckpointing. The chapel's pews came out in 1984, and every movable window in the building was replaced between 1990 and 1995.^194195196 Latzer Hall's roof was redone in 1997, leaded and etched glass went into the chapel and front doors in 2000, and the front limestone steps were replaced about 2003.^197195198
• The residence. The third floor became University Certified Housing for 12 or 13 men, with a house director.¹⁹⁹²⁰⁰

By 2005 the building was showing its age. A study by BLDD Architects found it "strong and sound" but in need of major work to last another 50 to 70 years.²⁰¹ It had one heating zone for the whole building, slate falling from the roof, leaking plumbing, old wiring, no air conditioning, no grounded outlets in the offices and no elevator.²⁰²²⁰³ In 2007 the Y's "A Legacy of Leadership" campaign raised $1.1 million for an elevator, a boiler, a roof and smaller repairs.²⁰⁴²⁰⁵

Then, in February 2009, the City of Champaign ruled that the plan also needed a second fire-rated stair. A May inspection found the third-floor residence had only one exit, and the city stayed an order to vacate it only on condition that a new stair be built. For more than a year a rented scaffold stair hung on the west wall as the residents' second way out.^206207208 The cost passed $2 million. The state's capital bill of July 2009 brought $500,000, secured with the help of State Sen. Michael Frerichs and State Rep. Naomi Jakobsson, and the Y took out a $250,000 mortgage.²⁰⁹²¹⁰ That fall the Board adopted four Principles of Stewardship, which treat the building and its location as integral to the Y's mission rather than a cost to be kept down.²¹¹

On April 28, 2010, the Board of Governors approved Phase I, designed by BLDD with GHR Engineers and built by Commercial Builders.^212213214 Work began that June and included:^215216217

• a three-story brick tower on the west side, with a new entrance, the code-required stair and the building's first elevator;
• a slate-style roof in place of the original slate;
• offices along the north side rebuilt, moving the Y's own offices to the first floor;
• accessible restrooms on the second floor;
• air conditioning for most offices.

Murphy Lounge became a gallery, and the first Art @ the Y show opened there on Sept. 23, 2010.¹³³ Some 220 people and organizations gave, and the project came to about $2.3 million.²¹⁸²¹⁹ More than 150 guests came to the Grand Re-Opening and ribbon-cutting on Feb. 3, 2011, and the building was rededicated at the annual meeting on April 9.²²⁰²²¹ The Board also voted to keep the third-floor residence "for the foreseeable future."²²² Phase II, in 2011–12, remodeled the third-floor lounge and rebuilt the basement Student Program Office.²²³²²⁴

• Energy and masonry. An energy audit in 2012 led to new lighting, sensors and air sealing.²²⁵ Masonry on the south, east and upper walls was restored in 2014–15, and the flat roof over the Wahl Room was replaced in 2015.²²⁶²²⁷ The Y studied solar power and LEED certification again and again from 2009 on, and the board files record neither one being completed.²²⁸²²⁹
• New neighbors. Illini Media, publisher of the Daily Illini, moved into the rebuilt K Rooms on April 26, 2018, with WPGU in the Annex. The paper had spent decades in the basement of Illini Hall.²³⁰²³¹ Other tenants of these years have included the Education Justice Project, Diversity & Social Justice Education, the UP Center, the Campus Faculty Association, Faith in Place and several congregations.²³²²³³
• The residence again. In September 2019 the Board was moving toward closing the third-floor residence. That November it decided to keep it, and the rooms are still full.^234235236
• Latzer Hall. A Building Committee handout of 2015 called Latzer Hall "the most iconic room in the University Y building," yet the 2010 work had not touched it, and seven of its twelve windows would not open.²³⁷²³⁸ The 2018–24 campaign, "Transforming Lives, Connecting Communities," made it the centerpiece. While the building was closed for COVID-19 in 2020, RATIO Architects and Commercial Builders refinished its paneling and trusses, restored the 1937 chandeliers and added new wiring, sound and video. It was finished in January 2021, and its roof was replaced that spring.^239240241242 The campaign closed on June 30, 2024, with more than $1.4 million pledged. It also paid for the brick patio on the front lawn and fully accessible basement restrooms, celebrated on March 19, 2024.²⁴³²⁴⁴
• Today. The 2023 program for the Y's 150th anniversary said the building was shared with "twelve student organizations, seven tenants, and nine student residents."²⁴⁵ The mortgage taken out for the 2010 renovation was paid off in December 2025, and the Y has begun a new capital plan, with the aging electrical switchgear first on the list.²⁴⁶²⁴⁷

The Union remodeled Association Hall as its Student Center in 1935 and deeded it to the University in January 1939.²⁴⁸²⁴⁹ It held University offices, the Daily Illini and, later, the Police Training Institute and Mathematics. It closed in 2020, and the University began tearing it down at the end of January 2023 to make way for a new mathematics and data science building.²⁵⁰²⁵¹

On Feb. 14, 2023, as the cornerstone of 1907 was lifted, the Y recovered the box inside it. It held the Y's annual report and constitution, the Champaign Daily Gazette of June 10, 1907, and The Illini of June 11, 1907. The papers were conserved by the University Library and opened at the Y's 150th anniversary on Sept. 30, 2023.^252253254 The University also gave the Y the stone YMCA seal from above Illini Hall's doors and some of its oak doors and woodwork. The seal was set into the wall of 1001 S. Wright in November 2023, and the old cornerstone now stands at the Y.^255256257 In 2025 the Y sealed two new time capsules there, to be opened in 2073.²⁵⁸

Henry E. Wilson's plan for the building, 1923: "a center out from which men will go to serve the campus."⁷⁷

Wilson to the Boards, February 1925: the Y needed a "simple, dignified structure, accessible and adequate in facilities, meeting places, quiet rooms, and lounge space."⁵⁸

John R. Mott, laying the cornerstone, Nov. 21, 1937: "It is a building where all may come and find a real home," a "generating center for great action and good causes."¹⁰⁷

Sir William Bragg at the dedication, 1939, as the Daily Illini reported it: the building was "the student's own private house."¹²³

Harold Hannah, 1973: "The Y is always there. It has a building, a home, friendly people inside."²⁵⁹

Ed Nestingen, 2007: "It's right at the geographic heart of the university ... it's a wonderfully designed building."²⁶⁰