Snow Hall

Campus Building Directory

This Week in
KU History

The University
of Kansas

Snow Hall
Named for Chancellor Francis H. Snow

Present-day Snow Hall, the second campus building named after Professor Francis H. Snow (who also served as chancellor of the university from 1890-1901), opened in 1930. The modified Collegiate Gothic structure originally housed the departments of entomology, botany, zoology and bacteriology. Wings were added on the northeast in 1950 and the northwest in 1958, and a major renovation in 1986 improved and updated the building.

Mathematics and computer science programs are now located there, as well as the entomology museum, a branch of the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center that is headquartered in Dyche Hall.

The second Snow Hall was built to replace Snow Hall of Natural History, built in1885. It housed natural history exhibition rooms until Dyche Hall opened in 1903. The first Snow Hall was demolished in the early 1930s--its short tenure the result of a faulty foundation.

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Location: Jayhawk Boulevard and Poplar Lane

Occupied:
1930

Architects: Charles D. Cuthbert, State Architect and H.H. Lane, chair of the Zoology department

Contractor: P.D. Olmstead Construction Co., Lawrence

Levels: Six

Exterior Walls: Indiana limestone cut smooth and broken coursed

Foundation: Reinforced concrete

Structure Supporting steel and penitentiary brick

Roof: Red composition tile; gable, cross parapet gables, eight hipped dormers

Window and Door Surrounds: Limestone flat arches and lugsills; bay windows nd fourth-level ogee arches in end sections

Entry tower: Four-story limestone tower with octagonal side tower; crenellated roof and slit windows