Arkansas State University Business Building – Jonesboro AR

Description

Constructed in 1939, the Science Building of Arkansas State College (now the Business Building of Arkansas State University), was one of multiple New Deal projects on the college campus. In 1936, Arkansas State College added a Reserve Officers Training Corps. With this new addition, the program needed a building to have classes. Talk for the new building began in the summer of 1937 when the Board of Trustees began planning how the funds should be budgeted for the project. The building was built as part of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works project as part of the New Deal created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This building housed not just the Reserve Officers Training Corps for military science classes, but also other mathematics and science classes. The building was completed in 1939 and a few years later in 1942, it was used by the Army when Arkansas State College accommodated them beginning in December. Around 1957, the Reserve Officers Training Corps moved out of the building into their own facility. By the 1990s, the building was no longer a science building, but was the business building on campus.
The front side of this building has not changed since it was built. There are three profiles of important military figures in the middle of the front side of the building. The three individuals are, from the top, Ulysses S. Grant, leader of the Union army during the Civil War and the eighteenth President of the United States, Cicero, Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher, and George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary War’s Continental Army and the first President of the United States. Having military men on the building ties into the history of the building formerly housing military sciences. The back of the building has changed however, with the attached fieldhouse being removed when the Reserve Officers Training Corps changed locations. The back of the building is now painted to look like it has windows where there are none.