With the close of World War I, student unions honoring the veterans of that conflict came into vogue at large midwestern universities. The multifunction building served as a monument to students who had served in the Civil War, Spanish American War, or World War I. It became the center of social life on campus, a place for students to congregate and engage in extracurricular activities. Over the years, the Union has housed a bowling alley, a nightclub (the Silver Shadow), and faculty club. The latter organization, the Triangle Club, gave its name—and triangular light fixtures—to what is now the R. Wayne Richey Ballroom. The Main Lounge, host to performances, speeches, and dignitaries over the years (from Frank Lloyd Wright to Vladimir Horowitz and from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Howard Zinn), is still the most popular such venue on campus.
The Union’s original building consists of the Main Lounge and the three-story block facing Madison Street. It continues the brick- and-limestone Beaux-Arts Classicism of the nearby Trowbridge Hall (1918) and Chemistry Building (1922). That design included a channeled base on the first floor from which rise Doric pilasters, paired above the entrance portal and in the slightly projecting end wings. Limestone was used as detailing at the entrances, along the frieze, in quoining, and in Doric capitals. Ornate floral carving surrounding the main portal celebrates Iowa’s state flower, the Wild Prairie Rose. The original 1927 project envisioned a threefold replication of the extant east façade and a great central pavilion facing south and on axis with the north façade of the Main Library. But that was not to be. Additions in the 1950s and 1960s extended the building to the south and west, adding a new main entrance facing south, a hotel (Iowa House), and offices and meeting rooms for administration and student organizations—all in a spare Modernist style of unrelieved functionalism. The windows of the hotel wing from the 1960s merely puncture the wall—a Modernist response to the ornamented Beaux-Arts building it adjoins. The rejection of detailing of any sort and omission even of a cornice impart an austere character.