The Classroom Building – Saving Prexy’s Pasture and Creating the “Standing Rib Roast”

Welcome back to our ongoing series “Designing the University of Wyoming,” which explores the stories behind the campus’s architecture, landmarks, and artistic features that have shaped the university’s identity over the decades.

If you’ve ever wondered why one of UW’s most distinctive buildings looks like a concrete spaceship that landed on the west side of campus, you’re looking at the Classroom Building—affectionately dubbed the “standing rib roast”¹ by students who clearly had dining hall food on their minds. But this architectural curiosity has a story worth telling, involving ambitious planning, a community uprising, and 1960s optimism about the power of modern design to transform education. Oh, and not to forget—more than a million tiny ceramic tiles.

The Great Prexy’s Pasture Panic of 1965

The Classroom Building’s journey began in 1962 as part of an ambitious Science Center project. The multi-building complex was designed to include biological and physical science buildings, a science library, computer center, and planetarium—all connected by underground facilities in what would become the most significant building project in the university’s history.²

There was just one problem: the trustees initially sought to build it right on Prexy’s Pasture. Concerned, UW President Duke Humphrey carefully leaked the decision to the Laramie Boomerang’s editor. The subsequent reveal of that choice accounts for the survival intact of the central campus square. Storms of protest battered the trustees from around the state—from alumni, students, legislators, and others.³ The outcry was loud enough that the trustees wisely decided to find a new location between 9th Street and the Arts and Sciences Building. Campus lost the Graduate School Building and the Post Office-Art building but gained a modern science complex—and democracy in campus planning proved it could work.⁴

Building the “Circle on a Square”

Construction of the complex began in late summer 1966, with the Classroom Building taking the lead. Designed by local firm Hitchcock and Hitchcock, the building was intended to accommodate 2,700 students at once in rooms ranging from 21-seat seminar spaces to 240-seat lecture halls.⁵ For context, that’s about the size of a decent concert venue.

The architects created what they called a “circle on a square” design, which solved a very practical problem: The circular interior layout helped prevent students from getting lost in what could have been a maze-like building. The building came equipped with all the latest 1960s educational technology: air conditioning, dimming lights, closed-circuit television,⁶ and deliberately few windows in many areas.⁷ The theory was that windows were distracting—whether this actually helped students learn or just made them feel like they were in a bunker is open to debate.

The Million-Tile Marvel

The building’s most impressive feature isn’t its concrete bulk—it’s the spectacular murals adorning the open staircase entrances. Created by four UW Art Department faculty members (James Boyle, Richard Evans, Joseph Deaderick, and Victor Flach), these murals use more than one million one-inch ceramic tiles.⁸ That’s a staggering number of tiny squares, and someone definitely earned their paycheck installing them all.

Each mural represents one of Wyoming’s four quadrants, though the artists took creative liberties with their interpretations. Professor Deaderick described his northeast mural as an “optical illusion” depicting “the environment of the northeast part of Wyoming—the history, the wildlife and the landscape.” According to Deaderick, while “the drawing of the design was not too difficult,” enlarging and proportioning the design proved challenging.⁹ Professor Flach, who designed the Yellowstone section, explained his approach: “Given limits in theme, how is it possible to achieve universality?” His solution was to create spiral designs that worked on multiple levels, from realistic to symbolic.¹⁰

The murals extend two and a half stories and can be viewed from multiple floors. They’re among the more ambitious ceramic installations of their era.

Modern Marvels and Missing Windows

When the Classroom Building opened on September 6, 1968, just in time for fall classes, the architectural world took notice: McGraw-Hill’s College and University Business magazine named it “College Building of the Month” in 1967, recognizing the university and architects for functional design excellence.¹¹

Students, however, had their own ways of honoring the building. The “standing rib roast” nickname stuck, reflecting both the building’s distinctive silhouette and the eternal student preoccupation with food. The trustees, meanwhile, went with the straightforward “Classroom Building” when they officially named it on April 25, 1968.¹² After all that architectural innovation and artistic effort, they chose maximum clarity over poetry.

Not everyone embraced the bold design, though. In 1975, a heated debate erupted in the campus newspaper between critics who found the building uncomfortable and poorly engineered, and defenders who argued it was one of the few buildings on campus with genuine “artistic and architectural value.”¹³ The exchange captured the broader tensions about modern architecture’s place on campus—was it a functional marvel or a concrete eyesore?

A Concrete Legacy

The building became part of the George Duke Humphrey Science Center, honoring the former president who had championed the science initiative. The formal dedication didn’t happen until February 6, 1971, with President Humphrey himself present to see his vision finally realized.¹⁴

The building’s story didn’t end with its dedication, however. Like many aging buildings, it faced both literal and figurative storms. In 1996, a broken water main flooded the lower level, causing significant damage to the planetarium and requiring extensive cleanup.¹⁵ As enrollment declined in the 1990s, the university found creative uses for classroom space—by 1997, former classroom CR 301 had been converted into a Grab-N-Go convenience store, leading one student columnist to quip about the building becoming “Laramie’s new mall.”¹⁶

The building received a major technological upgrade through a renovation completed in 2007, bringing it into the digital age with Internet access, smart boards, and modern projection equipment while carefully preserving its distinctive murals and architectural character.¹⁷

More than fifty years later, the Classroom Building continues to serve thousands of students annually. The circular corridors still help with navigation (mostly), the murals still catch the eye, and the building still looks like it could launch into space if someone found the right controls. It stands as a monument to 1960s confidence in modern design and a reminder that sometimes listening to public opinion—like saving Prexy’s Pasture—leads to better outcomes for everyone.

Whether you call it the Classroom Building, the standing rib roast, or just “that round building with all the tiles,” it remains one of UW’s most recognizable landmarks. And unlike some architectural experiments of the era, it has aged reasonably well, proving that bold design choices can actually work out in the long run.

Explore More Campus History

Want to see how the Classroom Building fits into the broader story of UW’s transformation? The American Heritage Center offers two online exhibits that bring this architectural evolution to life. “University of Wyoming: A Brief History of Campus” chronicles the development of the campus landscape, while “Keeping History Alive: 136 Years of Progress” presents a striking then-and-now photographic comparison, featuring 2023 images of campus buildings alongside historical photos to show how dramatically the university has changed over the decades.

Sources

1. “Classroom—western, psychedelic…” The Branding Iron, University of Wyoming, October 11, 1968, 11. ↩︎
2. “Dr. Humphrey Outlines UW Future,” Laramie Daily Boomerang, January 26, 1962; Vern Shelton, “Dr. Fey Outlines His Program,” Laramie Daily Boomerang, December 12, 1964. ↩︎
3. Deborah Hardy, Wyoming University: The First 100 Years, 1886-1986 (Laramie: University of Wyoming, 1986), 175. ↩︎
4. Harold Sohn. “Progress is education.” The Summer Roundup, published by The Branding Iron, University of Wyoming, July 8, 1966, 1. ↩︎
5. “Partially completed buildings to see activity this  semester,” Branding Iron, September 13, 1968, 4; “University Building Featured in Magazine, Boomerang, August 16, 1957, 3. ↩︎
6. “’Form follows function,’” Branding Iron, October 4, 1968, 12. ↩︎
7. “Center Construction to Start This Spring,” Branding Iron, October 29, 1965, 10. ↩︎
8. Steve Singleton. “’Art is the communication with the exterior,’” Branding Iron, May 17, 1968, 9; Greg Ray, Branding Iron, March 14, 1969, 1. ↩︎
9. “Classroom mosaic mural called an optical illusion,” Branding Iron, October 29, 9. ↩︎
10. Singleton, “’Art if the communication with the exterior,’” 9. ↩︎
11. “New structure receives honors,” Branding Iron, September 15, 1967, 8. ↩︎
12. American Heritage Center, “Keeping History Alive: 136 Years of Progress,” online exhibit, Virmuze, created January 23, 2023. ↩︎
13. Don Polson, “CR Has Value,” letter to the editor, Branding Iron, March 18, 1975, 2. ↩︎
14. American Heritage Center, “Keeping History Alive.” ↩︎
15. Dustin Bleizeffer and Marc Ethier, “Flood damages UW structures,” Laramie News Service, Branding Iron, April 19, 1996, 2. ↩︎
16. Gregory Delzer, “Classroom building to Laramie’s new mall,” Branding Iron, June 26, 1997, 4. ↩︎
17. Aaron LeClair, “Classroom Building nearly ready,” Boomerang, May 9, 2007, 6. ↩︎