"Today while I was at the special collections, Bob Parson told me that he had come across some Art Barn documents that I might find interesting. I looked through several folders and discovered quite a few documents of interest. It seems that when the Art Department shifted to the new art building, there were quite a few departments debating and asking for the space."
Among the documents he examined were letters showing several departments jockeying for space in the Art Barn, including the Art Department (which wanted to keep the kilns on the first floor for commercial ceramics production and community ceramics classes), the College of Natural Resources (which wanted a wet lab on the south end of the second floor, where plumbing and a concrete floor were available, and offices on the third floor, as well as proposing that some of the space might also be used for MX missile research), and the Department of Languages, Philosophy and Speech Communication. He also found architectural drawings of the first two floors of the Art Barn showing how the space was eventually divided between the departments, which are included below (these drawings give an incorrect date for the original building of the Art Barn).
Jason also said, "One thing which I could not copy due to size but which I thought was interesting were two architectural drawings (fairly large size) of a proposed Music Hall from 1952. Apparently the university was proposing, planning, or toying with the idea of transforming the horse barn into a Music Hall and musical instruction facility. From the date it is possible that this idea formulated well before the university even thought of the Art Barn."
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