The Making of Morrill

In 1927, Morrill Hall was completed. However, there was a considerable amount of work prior to that year to get funding for the new building off the ground.

After the fire in 1912 in the museum building, there was considerable concern for the safety of the collections. After all, all the glass panes had to be replaced, the collections repaired, preserved, and re-inventoried. The title of 'fire-trap' was hardly what the university wanted connected with their natural history museum. Barbour was frustrated over the inability to showcase the vast majority of their collected materials. While the exhibit floors were crammed full of specimens, the basement, attics, service hallways, and other nooks and crannies of the builiding, as well as several other halls on campus, were filled with boxed specimens and collections that the museum was unable to show due to lack of space. Either the university could continue to collect specimens without being able to show them, or a change had to be made. This demonstratable need was brought to the attention of the board of regents by the museum's director Barbour.

In 1926 the board of regents approved of the building of Morrill Hall. Barbour had been pressing for the last two buildings to be named for C.H. Morrill, and this time it was to be. After financing decades of field excavations and specimen collecting, Morrill was to be honored with the naming of the new museum building.

Work on the museum started fairly quickly, and by July 1st of 1927, Ms. Laveda Zutter was at work on the well-known murals of Morrill Hall.

Morrill Hall became open for the public on May 28th, 1927.