Mount Mercy tunnels keep faculty, students warm, dry

As light snow swirled across the Mount Mercy University campus on a recent day of single-digit temperatures, few students were seen walking to class and none of them were wearing shorts.

Below ground, it was a different scenario.

Students wearing warm weather attire are a common sight on frigid winter days as they walk to class through a network of tunnels that connect every Mount Mercy building except for the lower campus apartments.

“The tunnels are primarily used about three months out of the year. On really cold, icky days, it can be nice,” said Barb Pooley, Mount Mercy vice president for finance and business operations. “They're really not used the other nine months out of the year because people prefer to be outside. It also takes less time to cross the campus on the sidewalks than walking through the tunnels.”

Emily Muhlbach, media relations manager and a 2008 Mount Mercy graduate, said the tunnels are an asset beyond providing a refuge from cold or inclement weather.

“Having underground tunnels is a nice recruitment tool that not many other institutions have under their belt,” Muhlbach said. “Visiting students find the tunnel system a pretty cool feature of the campus.”

One stormy day during the tunnel system's early years, a citywide power failure caused the lights to go out on campus. A blind student was able to lead her friends to class through the pitch-black tunnels.

During the Cold War years, the government stocked the passageway with large containers of life-preserving biscuits and water, labeling the tunnels a civil defense bomb shelter, according to “Courage and Change: Mount Mercy College, The First Fifty Years,” by Mary Augustine Roth. Today, the tunnels are used as a tornado shelter.

Pooley said the tunnels originated in 1954 to carry steam lines from a central boiler in Warde Hall to McAuley Hall. Additional steam tunnels were constructed in 1965 to Regina Hall and 1975 to Donnelly Center.

Although Basile Hall, the Busse Center and the Hennessey Recreation Center have their own heating and cooling systems, tunnels were built to connect them with the rest of the system.

Muhlbach said Mount Mercy art students began painting the inside of the tunnels yellow, pink, and with other designs soon after each section was completed. Freshmen and other new students sign their names on the walls of the tunnel connecting the Hennessey Recreation Center as part of student orientation.

Pooley said the tunnels are swept and maintained, including repairing the occasional leak when the campus is undated with heavy rain. The underground system, also used by faculty and staff, is locked at night.

Mount Mercy's tunnel system may be unusual in Iowa, but a number of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada have extensive tunnel systems. At Carleton University in Ottawa, student lockers line some of walls and a small coffee/sandwich stand is located at an intersection.

Although the Mount Mercy tunnels are not open to the public, Muhlbach said “Courage and Change: Mount Mercy College, The First Fifty Years” recounts a notable exception during a 1956 carnival sponsored by the school's unit of the National Federation of Catholic College Students.

Mount Mercy students offered to take neighborhood children through the ‘longest underground passage in Cedar Rapids' for 2 cents a trip. One boy loved it so much he paid for three trips.