Creative Arts Buildings 1-5 (West Lafayette, Ind.)
Organization
Dates
- Existence: 1947 - 2004
Historical Information
The Creative Arts Buildings were originally Federal Works Administration projects. They were brought to Purdue in 1947 as pre-engineered buildings which were leftover from World War II. In order to be used for instruction, they were remodeled by the physical facilities department to include lecture halls, classrooms and laboratories. They were intended to be temporary spaces to accommodate a growing student body and were erected with the help of student workers. Over the years, the buildings were used as chemistry and physics classrooms and laboratories, Naval Science and civil engineering spaces, the office for veterans administration, and warehouses, before becoming the home of the Creative Arts department. In March of 1972, a fire in Matthews Hall forced the Creative Arts department to "temporarily" move to the FWA buildings. In 1975, the buildings were renamed Creative Arts Buildings 1-5. The Creative Arts buildings were demolished in 2004 by Dore and Associates of Bay City, Michigan for $289,600 in order to make space available for the construction of Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering. The demolition was more expensive than acquiring the buildings due to the difficult process of asbestos removal. The Creative Arts department is now located in Yue-Kong Pao Hall of Visual and Performing Arts.