Building+Facts

Rick Bein - Geography Professor 1978

"A year later when Jim Baldwin joined us in geography and he thought Cavanaugh looked like Noah’s Ark. The long narrow vertical windows on the fourth floor offered excellent places for the giraffes to stick their heads out. Thereafter, the secret was that all those offices on the fourth floor were occupied by giraffes and that included the Dean of Liberal Arts. I am not sure who and where all the other critters belonged, but that is a subject for another day."

"The windows only on the top two floors afforded nice views of the city, but the offices were tiny. For those of us who agreed to move down to windowless quarters were given slightly larger spaces. I often wondered, though, that maybe those window offices facing east to the downtown were plagued with radiation coming off the various communications transmitters on top of the downtown buildings. I noticed that, when those faculty retired a very high percentage of them came down with cancer with in a very short time. Very few of the sick ones remain today."

"Cavanaugh was build in the days when asbestos was the state of the art and much of the interior insulation, paneling, ducts and pipes etc are still there, but carefully covered with layers paint and/ or duct tape that contains it.They built Cavanaugh Hall so that the basement is below the level of the storm water sewer lines and even now when the sewers back up, some of the overflow enters our basement. Such an event seems to happen once a year."

Pat McGeever - 1971 "I understand it was built without windows on the lower floors for fear of student uprisings such as had recently occurred in Bloomington. I tried to picture rioting students on ladders trying to break into the locked-down building, while administrators opened the fifth-floor windows and poured cauldrons of steaming pitch down on them. Kind of far-fetched, but how else to explain the architecture?"

Jim Jones - Architect

No windows = Good strong building.

John Barlow

"I remember when it was being built in an area where many homes had been and where many people had lived. I did a TV-interview about the new building at the site, while it was being constructed, trying to explain its importance for Indianapolis. When we moved into the building, we were happy to have private offices, but disappointed that the offices were so small. But we had emphasized the importance of private offices and basically got what we asked for. I worked in Cavanaugh from 1970 until 1998. I think the building had a good impact on student and faculty life in general.

There was a lot of complaining about the lack of windows right from the start. Some said there were no no windows on the lower floors because residents of the area, protesting the university's presence, would try to break the windows; but I always doubted that reason. Throughout the entire period of my working in Cavanaugh, there was always competition to have an "outside window."

I don't remember being surprised by any changes to the building. I always wanted to see a walkway implemented to connect Cavanaugh to other buildings, but I never lost any sleep about it. It happened after I had left town. We used to have a terrible time with the air-conditioning system. Fixing that would have been a great change, but it wasn't that easy. I assume it's running better now."

Carolyn Hale

" I have been in Cavanaugh Hall since 1973. I left once so they changed my hire date to 1974, either way, I have been here a long time. I started out in the Liberal Arts Dean’s Office as a Receptionist and later was Associate Dean Dan Wolf’s Secretary. Later years was moved to the Office of Student Affairs which was called “Recorder’s Office” back in the day. I loved working in CA because there was a parking lot right close to the door that I could use on the East side in front of the Old Library(where University College is now) I have always been on the 4th floor with windows and it is true, folk have complained that did not have them. I cannot remember the exact year, but we had a fire in CA and since we had windows, WE had to continue to come to work and use a flashlight to use the restroom, use a manual typewriter to get our work done. I was happy to see the connector to the Campus Center, that was a pleasant surprise that we had wished for. I always wanted the lobbies to look better and thanks to Gail Plater, they now do. Back in earlier years, the Professor’s dressed up in suits and the Secretaries all dressed up and looked professional. "

Miriam Langsam

What I rememberr? I was with the IU extension so I was there when we moved to Cavanaugh. After the old building, the new campus was a miracle. The newness of the building after buildings that had been more than gently used. The old Carpenter building on Michigan had no air conditioning so opening the windows and competing with the truck noises was the norm. CA was quiet and the elevators worked. The thing that I enjoyed about CA was that Liberal Arts sharred the building with other schools - Social Work, Business, IU Science, Art and others that I've forgotten. Gradually these faculty and staff moved out as they got their own buildings but the friendships and working relationships that made IUPUI more than my school but a campus was for me something that continued over the years until I retired. The lack of windows in the class rooms was really the only issue. Most faculty and dept. offices were on the 4th and 5th floors for many years until the numbers just got too large and the number of associate faculty grew. The impact on the students of the new campus was tremendous. Food service was not limited to Ptomaine Hannah's; card playing in the basment of the library flourished; students could buy books right up to final times since the person that ran the book store didn't close the 2-3 weeks before finals. Also since the library at the old location was on upper stores we could not buy as many new books as we had money for but with the new library and space in CA students could get more books without trips to IUB. But I think that the most important thing about CA was that the faculty, staff and students began to take the operation seriously and raisee our sights to 4 year programs and possibly beyond. Our expectations were raised and see where we are today.

Linda Hill

I started at the old IU extension downtown the fall of 1968, the semester before IUPUI was “born”. I was a chemistry major so all of my classes were either downtown or at the Marott building at 9th & Meridian. I remember coming into CA before it was open to sign a scholarship check in the branch office of the Bursar which was located in CA 401, where Liberal Arts is now located. I remember that the elevators still had padding to protect the walls because the furniture was still arriving. The color scheme (yes, there was one) was really quite psychedelic – each floor had large panels of color on the walls. The 2nd floor was in orange/yellow/red-orange, the 3rd floor was in greens, the 4th floor was blue. I think the first floor walls were various shades of yellow. If you look at the walls next to the elevators, you can still see some of the color where the white paint has been scratched off! At that time, the three main buildings were surrounded by private homes. There was also Stan’s liquor store just northeast of the campus. I have seen many homes & buildings come and go over my 43 years here! I have heard different stories about why there are no windows in Cavanaugh. The one that seemed most logical to me was that they chose not to include windows on the lower floors because of the college campus protests against the Viet Nam War, but I was recently told that it was because of heating/cooling issues – no windows meant better insulation and there was an energy crunch. (That was told to me by a co-worker who knew the architect who designed CA, LE & the old library.) But I remember the energy crises as occurring later than 1970 and those designs would have had to been drawn up before then. I have also heard that psychologists’ studies show that windows in classrooms distract the students. My first class in Cavanaugh was a German class taught by John Barlow, later Dean of Liberal Arts, during the summer of 1971. I received an IU B.S. in Chemistry in May 1972 and an PU M.S. in Chemistry in May 1974. I worked part-time for the Registrar’s Office in Summer 1970 which (I believe) was the first registration held on this campus. (Prior to that semester, registration was held in the gym at the Marott Building.) I pulled key-punched class cards at $1.75 an hour in the Lecture Hall. Then the office started calling me to work other registration periods until finally they hired me full-time in May 1975. I’m still here…..and still working in Cavanaugh Hall. Changes to Cavanaugh? I miss the colored walls and I miss the floors that are now covered with carpet that really look pathetic in bad weather. Hard floors (like the 1st floor lobby) would be so much easier to keep clean. I think the best thing that has ever happened to Cavanaugh Hall was the skywalk to the campus center.

Robert E. Cavanaugh Hall
Robert E. Cavanaugh Hall is named for one of the academic visionaries who blazed the trail that eventually led to IUPUI. Cavanaugh was the second man to head the Indiana University Extension Center (1918-21) in the state's capital city, Indianapolis. From that post, he became director of the IU Extension Division, a post he held until 1946. His influence in the growth of IU's Indianapolis programs led university officials to choose IUPUI's first academic building - originally known as "building A" - to bear Cavanaugh's name. Cavanaugh Hall has long served a dual function: academic (it is the home of the IU School of Liberal Arts) and administrative (it is the longtime home of IUPUI's enrollment offices).

“The classroom-office building named Cavanaugh Hall had more than its share of limitations, too. Various economies employed in the design and construction of this windowless building (except its two top floors) may have cost more in the long run because of heavy maintenance and repair expenses. Moreover, the standard faculty offices were tiny, the five story building had no freight elevators (just two small passenger elevators frequently “out of service”), and its heating and air-conditioning system was notoriously unreliable, which eventually earned the structure a “sick building” designation. Moreover, the limited space for faculty offices, classrooms, and laboratories was reduced as more and more administrative offices took their place in the lower floors of Cavanaugh, which was centrally located on the campus. As many as fifty-six classrooms were converted to other uses by 1974” (Gray 124). “Among other positive actions taken was the consolidation of registration activities for all of IUPUI’s undergraduates in Cavanaugh Hall-this was first planned to take place there in February 1971, in time for spring classes that semester, but the newly opened building was not ready for that” (Gray 200). “The United Faculty Newsletter reported in 1980 that Cavanaugh Hall had lost fifty of its classrooms and administrative and student services offices” (Gray 202). “ A student lounge equipped with vending machines, televisions sets, and pool table, along with various organization offices took residence in the lower floor of Cavanaugh Hall across the hall from the campus bookstore [in the 1980s]” (Gray 216).