Iowa City community members gathered to honor the historic Centennial Building on Aug. 23., as local musicians let out somber guitar strums and flute breaths that bounced around the walls of the Iowa City Public Library.

Hundreds of other marchers heralded an empty coffin, representing the upcoming closure of the landmark building.

Hosted by the Save Iowa History Coalition, the Reverse the Decision Rally featured a group of concerned citizens and historians gathered to oppose the closure of the State Historical Society of Iowa’s, or SHSI, Iowa City Research Center.

Guest speakers and songs captivated coalition members and attendees, reaffirming the building’s historic value. The rally began in the Iowa City Public Library and made its way to 402 Iowa Ave., the location of the soon to be closed research center.

The coalitions Iowa City Research Center, also known as the Centennial Building, was established in 1956 through an agreement with the University of Iowa and the SHSI.

Between the Iowa City and Des Moines SHSI facilities, it’s estimated that more than 200 million pieces of Iowa and national history call these facilities home. They are the sites of both archaic and familiar journals, pamphlets, books, pictures, and countless other crumbs of Iowa history.

The Department of Administrative Services,  which oversees SHSI, announced the closure of the Iowa City location on June 17, because of financial considerations and only one facility was needed.

By June 30, 2026, the society hopes to have the building emptied. At their June 26 Board of Trustees meeting, the SHSI revealed only 40 percent of the Iowa City collections could be moved to the Des Moines facility.

While the closure has already been set in motion, Colin Gordon, chair of the UI of History, walked through some possible solutions for the remaining 60 percent of the collections that can’t fit in the Des Moines facility.

“I have no objection to putting [the documents] in deep storage, so that you have to make a request to use them, and you can access them in a couple of weeks because they don’t have to be instantly accessible,” he said.

Gordon said the best solution would be for the UI to step in with its archival expertise and request SHSI to give it more time to assess the collections and store what couldn’t fit in the Des Moines facility.

The remaining 60 percent have not been given clear destinations.

“I do think it’s dangerous territory to start picking and choosing what you’re going to save,”Gordon said.

State departmental downsizing did not start with the building’s closing announcement in June.

RELATED: Iowans rally to save State Historical Research Center in Iowa City

In 2023, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds passed Senate File 514, a document reducing 37 cabinet-level departments down to 16. The SHSI lost its autonomy and was placed under the Department of Administrative Services. Valerie Van Kooten serves as SHSI administrator.

Kathy Gourley, an archaeologist and a historic preservationist who worked for the Des Moines facility for over 30 years, spoke at the rally about how the signing caught her attention in 2023.

“I knew something like the SHSI would be quite vulnerable because it was already such a small agency,” she said. “I spoke in the public hearings for both the House and Senate when they had an opportunity to comment — my remarks didn’t make any difference. I have to say that most remarks didn’t make any difference.”

Suzanne Wanatee Buffalo, a historian and the wife of Johnathan L. Buffalo, the director of the Meskwaki Historic Preservation Department, and attendee at the rally, said preserving history is an important generational practice.

“If you are exposed to history, no matter how you get it, if you don’t do something with them, if you don’t protect it and preserve it, if you don’t keep it, if you don’t touch it on you are the reason why the person who comes next doesn’t know it,” she said.

She used one book stored in the archives, “Prairie Voices: Iowa’s Pioneering Women,” as an example of the duality between the oftentimes hostile and sometimes tender relationship between Iowa natives and settlers.

One journal entry in the book described the grave robbing of the Sauk chief Black Hawk by a local doctor. A flip of the pages later, and Wanatee Buffalo found a journal entry by a settler woman who evaded starvation in the winter with the help of the natives.

“If you forget [the Meskwaki] are here, you’re going to forget how far back it goes those meaningful relationships, knowing each other as human beings, knowing that this is an awful, awful story, but there’s so many beautiful stories in [the book],” Wanatee Buffalo said.

In Des Moines, the Department of Administrative Services shows no sign of reversing or slowing down the closure. And in Iowa City, the Save Iowa History Coalition shows no sign of staying silent.

Besides welcoming the dozens of rally attendees, the coalition has been pushing for residents to sign their petition, Save Iowa History 2025. It has more than 5,000 signatures to date.

“It really underscores how broad the constituency is for these records,” Gordon said. “It’s not just an academic enterprise. I think it’s a resource for the people, for the state of Iowa to maintain its own history, for local history, for personal histories, and for academic histories.”