Historians argue against closure of Iowa City Centennial Building archives

IOWA CITY — Historians, former state employees and researchers of all backgrounds are raising their voices to ask the State of Iowa to reconsider its decision to close a State Historical Society of Iowa building in Iowa City next year.

On June 17, the State of Iowa announced, starting July 9, the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) Research Center in Iowa City would face a series of changes in operations and hours, which will conclude with its closure June 30, 2026.

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It also announced it will find a new publisher for the Annals of Iowa, a quarterly Iowa history journal with approximately 300 subscribers.

Founded in 1857 when the Iowa Capitol moved from Iowa City to Des Moines, SHSI was intended to connect the new seat of Iowa government to its place of origin.

The 34,700 cubic feet of archival material in the Centennial Building, as it is called, ranges from small-town municipal code documents from over a century ago, to Iowa City Fire Department records and old letters from historical figures. It also includes Civil War diaries and historic newspapers.

Staffed by three employees, the Iowa City center provides these documents to researchers, students, reporters, and anyone else who’s interested in looking at Iowa history. Historical accounts are found in books, on microfilm, in photographs, documents, and more.

Retired Special Collections Coordinator Mary Bennett, who worked at the Iowa City center for 49 years before retiring in 2023, launched a petition opposing the closure. It has garnered more than 1,000 signatures.

In 2015, a similar petition gained more than 3,000 supporters amid confusion about reduced hours and a report recommending Iowa shift its focus to online archives.

The community response, while largely criticizing the choice to close the building, can more specifically be traced to distaste with how the announcement and subsequent work to close the building is being done.

Historian Eric Zimmer, who received his PhD in history from the University of Iowa, recently won the Benjamin F. Shambaugh award from the state for his book “Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement.” He said the project began as a master’s thesis over a decade ago, with the archive and resources at the Iowa City research center.

“We had a place where a graduate student could walk down the street from campus, down the Pentacrest from the history department at UI, on the advice of faculty members, go down and ask for a meeting and talk about what kind of stories could be told where there were gaps in the literature, and what kind of resources were available to make a project like that go,” he said.

Zimmer’s argument for keeping the archives in Iowa City is built upon his own experience; he considers the UI having such a close historical resource a boon for students, faculty and the community.

“If you're going to have a flagship state school with the history department, with faculty, and you are trying to recruit people from around the country and the world to do work there,” Zimmer said, “and in the name of streamlining you create the two-hour barrier between Iowa City and Des Moines for people to be able to go through that research, it creates all kinds of challenges.”

Rebecca Conard, a historian and professor emeritus at Middle Tennessee State University, said the archive’s collection of letters written by former SHSI Administrator Benjamin Shambaugh helped her expand a previously written biography.

She also said a large part of working in the archives is not necessarily the research materials themselves, but by the immersion of working with skilled historians and librarians.

“That’s part of the joy, quite frankly, of using a collection like that,” she said, “you also learn to rely on them for helping you find what you need.”

The debate around keeping versus cutting

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Bennett’s petition lays out various points about the state historical society’s legal and ethical responsibilities and the value of local history, all which can be summarized in one of its first lines: “Keep physical records of Iowa history accessible to all.”

Bennett said efforts to relocate or disperse records that are held in the Centennial Building will harm public access to important historical information.

“A lot of access to that material will be limited from now on, and it's shrinking our knowledge base,” she said. “And if you care about the other spectrum, whether it's a school student in the sixth grade working on a national history project or a person who just got their PhD in history, it's a continuum of people and books that are being written about our state.”

In the weeks following the state’s announcement of the closure, impassioned Iowans sprung to preserve the building and its contents in what they see as their rightful home. Now, the debate lies between SHSI and Iowans who see the attempt to close its doors as damaging to deeply rooted history preservation efforts.

Two points are the highlight of debate between the State and Iowans. According to SHSI, operating costs for the center are too high to maintain and a fair amount of the Iowa City record is duplicative of the Des Moines record. Bennett said this evaluation is incorrect.

SHSI Administrator Valerie Van Kooten said there are redundancies in the Iowa City archives, such as guides and atlases for states besides Iowa and duplications from content found in the Des Moines archives. These are among the various records that SHSI is looking to discard.

Bennett said the savings will be minor.

“People are looking to save money, but if you look at what our institution costs, it's like peanuts compared to the rest of state government,” she said.

Bennett adds that the Iowa City center is a regional hub for Eastern Iowa and a concentration of records in Des Moines will limit access of uniquely Eastern-Iowa history to those who live in the region.

“... If you're in Decorah or Dubuque and you want to come down here and do history, you can get down here pretty quick,” she said. “You cannot do the same with Des Moines unless you're going to stay overnight.”

SHSI says it is looking to localize the state’s historical archive in one location instead of a satellite to the Des Moines archive, which recently saw a $5 million allocation for a shelving expansion project set for completion in 2028.

The Centennial Building “currently has $750,000 in maintenance on the books that’s waiting to be done to it” Van Kooten said during a June 26 SHSI board meeting.

At the meeting, Van Kooten described a tight timeline, wherein her department only had until mid-May to return a budget that eliminated $800,000 in spending. The decision to close the building would satisfy that need, she said.

The timeline for the building’s closure is set, but Van Kooten said the effort to find appropriate homes for everything in the Iowa City archives is underway.

She said currently, SHSI is unsure how much material that will be moved to Des Moines and what state officials will find new homes for. However, she estimates 40 percent of the Iowa City collection can be relocated to Des Moines.

“It's going to be a very time consuming process to decide what goes where,” she said.

Comments: 641-691-8669; evan.watson@thegazette.com