The University of Idaho has history hidden in every corner of campus. From the Administration building, built in a beautiful gothic style, to Brink Hall which was once a dormitory and is now offices with its reputation of being haunted. An odd remnant of this past lies below both the Wallace Building, and the UI library.
The Wallace Residence Hall was designed in July 1962, several months after the Berlin crisis, which created the Berlin Wall, and in the months leading to the Cuban missile crisis. In this period of tension and the threat of nuclear war, Wallace was designed to have a large fallout shelter for its residents.
This broad direction had been taken during the tenure of Doland Theophilus who was the president of UI between 1954 and 1965, with Theophilus Tower named after him. In a memo to the Financial Vice President of UI on October 11, 1961, Theophilus states, “I believe that the University of Idaho has a responsibility to provide minimal fallout shelter for all students at the university who do not have satisfactory fallout shelters or protection either in their home in Moscow or in their living groups.”
This fallout shelter remains today in small ways after multiple renovations and extensions. What once was seen on the original architectural plans for Wallace, kept by library special collections, and designed by Wayland, Cline & Small, an architectural firm from Boise. These plans detail the creation of decontamination showers which now are the east and west stairway halls. On the north side of Wallace, two large sleeping quarters, each measuring approximately two thousand square feet, were designed and built to house the residents of Wallace in event of nuclear Armageddon.
Though, a 1963 issue of the Argonaut accounts that approximately 200 students had to live in this shelter for over two months due to the lack of housing that year until the Stevenson Wing of Wallace was finished.
Along these sleeping quarters that was designed to be a large food storage facility and deep freeze freezer for the shelter. From the architecture documents, it appears this was also used as storage for the cafeteria above, connect via elevator. To the north of this storage, the design document shows two rooms designed to hold a communication room, and an infirmary.
Wallace isn’t the only building to have a fallout shelter, at the first height of fear of nuclear war, there was a total of 17 on campus. These shelters were designed to hold 10,757 individuals according to a document from the Latah County Department of Civil Design in 1964. Though much of the documentation of the designs and locations of the shelters are lost. In this period various civil defense documents for Moscow, and for the greater area, were created such as the gem of a booklet called, “Idaho Potato Supply and Production After a Nuclear Attack.”
Two other design plans for fallout shelters still exist in special collections, one being for “Plant Security Center Fallout Shelter,” at first investigation and glance was an unknown building. Several months ago, when The Argonaut first reached out to special collections a curator Robert Perret, “I have poked around a little and asked some of my colleagues but can’t really find any information about a Plant Security Center on campus.”
After some investigation by both The Argonaut and special collections. It appears this shelter designed to hold between 7-14 people and contained basic living space equipment such as a stove, chemical toilet, shower, a 280-gallon water tank and a small communications center with a transmitter, was the old Campus Police Substation, located on Third and Line Street, where now sits a parking lot.
The third known shelter with little details remains the UI Library fallout shelter. Little details still exist about the setup of this shelter as the design plans only detailing ventilation, latrines and a storage area. This shelter appears to be designed to hold 500 people in it according to civil defense documents.
Though these relics slowly fade and are removed from UI, they remain fascinating and are a part of the history of the university.
Cory Summers can be reached at [email protected]
Monica
Do you know if there was a fallout shelter under the the Law building on Raymond street or if the basement was engineered for possible fallout shelter use?
Tom La Pointe
Thank you for this interesting story. I managed the UI Information Center & its functions (Parking, Information, Nightwatch & Telephones from 1981 until 1993) located at the NE corner of 3rd and Line St. and had worked there in various positions from 1976. There was an intermittent police presence there during portions of that time. You might find it interesting to note that the Director of the UI Physical Plant from about 1947 until 1980 was a gentleman named George Gagon - a professional engineer and alum of the UI. Mr. Gagon oversaw the construction of many UI buildings in a period of explosive growth for the UI. Among those buildings are: the Library, the University Classroom Center (now remodeled into the TLC), Buchanan Engineering, Janssen Engineering, Wallace Complex, Gault - Upham Dormitory, Theophilus Tower, & the ASUI Kibbie Dome - as well as the UI Information Center - to name a few. I understand (from his son, a close friend and fellow History major Patrick Gagon) that Mr. Gagon worked with various federal sources to fund portions of these buildings, the foundations of which were built with certified fallout shelter capabilities. Gagon had amazing foresight in other areas as well - it was his idea, formulated in the 1960's and brought to fruition in the 1970's -to reclaim processed sewage water to water first the ASUI Golf Course and then much of the remaining campus. The post WWII "Mid Century Modern" era of history has been largely ignored and we as a society have repeated the errors of our ancestors by destroying important landmark buildings of this era. It is my hope that articles such as this will serve to awaken our awareness and lead to the preservation of this important heritage.