As Iowa lawmakers return to the state capitol this session, two bills targeting the future of the nearly 70-year-old State Historical Society of Iowa Centennial Building join the months-long fight on the fate of the facility.
House File 2025 was introduced on Jan. 13 and changes how historical resource research centers, such as the Iowa City State Historical Society, are defined in Iowa.
The legislation adds to previous Iowa law, requiring that a research center not only be present in Iowa City and Des Moines but that both facilities be adequately staffed and open to the public.
A day later, Senate Study Bill 3033 was introduced, opting to change the language of Iowa law to only require one research center to be maintained in Des Moines.
Both bills look to implement a permanent solution to the ongoing debate around the centennial building’s closure after a temporary memorandum of understanding was filed between the State Historical Society of Iowa under the Department of Administrative Services and the University of Iowa.
Under the memorandum, which runs through the end of June, the university will be providing library space where residents can access State Historical Society of Iowa materials, a responsibility which the Department of Administrative Services claims counts the library space as the state’s official research center in Iowa City.
Anthony Jahn, the state archivist of the State Historical Society of Iowa, said that under the memorandum, the goal of the historical society remains to provide as much access to historical records to the public as possible as it faces an $800,000 budget shortfall.
Jahn said residents could visit the state historical society’s website and request to review a historical collection of their choice. The historical society would then determine if the item was safe to ship to the university, in which case the collection would be shipped and temporarily displayed in the Special Collections Reading Room on the third floor of the university library, Jahn said.
Jahn said a similar system is found in the state historical societies of Wisconsin and Missouri.
“This is very commonplace for institutions,” he said. “Loaning for the purposes of researching some collection or some piece of material. [Neighboring states] have this sort of arrangement where these collections will move between repositories.”
Although the method is used by neighboring states, Mary Bennett, a retired special collections coordinator at the Iowa City State Historical Society, said the UI agreement is not as streamlined as the Department of Administrative Services claims it to be.
“The entire month can only comprise three banker boxes — that’s about nine field records,” she said. “So, if 20 people in Iowa City asked for materials, only the first three that asked are probably going to get it because they’re going to have to wait until the next month.”
Bennett made her own request for collections through the university’s system to find most of her requested materials were denied because they were determined to be too fragile to leave the Des Moines facility.
Bennett said if students are also denied their collections request, they would have to travel all the way to Des Moines or pay for copies of historical documents.
“It’s really hampering the ability of university students who are choosing history as an area of interest to pursue that topic; the University of Iowa has the only Ph.D. program in history in the state of Iowa,” she said.
Bennett, with several other historians, filed a lawsuit against the historical society over the centennial building’s closure. The lawsuit brought about a temporary injunction in October, forcing the historical society to temporarily cease removing collections from the Iowa City location.
Bennett said the process could be ongoing until 2027, something she hopes will not be the case.
James Larew, an Iowa City attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit against the historical society, said his strategy will remain the same as it was for the temporary injunction.
“We will argue that the court had it right when it issued the preliminary injunction,” he said. “By the plain wording of the statute, the state of Iowa is required to have a research facility here in Iowa City.”
Larew said he would be surprised if both Democrats and Republicans in the Iowa House and Senate don’t come together to oppose the Centennial Building’s closure.
“The legislature was not aware of this action to close,” he said. “It was announced after the legislature had gone home last session. There were no public hearings, there were no meetings, there were no attempts to write administrative rules interpreting the statute. So there was lots of surprise there.”
Bennett said the goal of preventing the centennial building’s shutdown could be far away, but the Save Iowa History Coalition will still be raising awareness for the local history yet to be removed.
The coalition will host a Founder’s Day celebration on Jan. 29 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library. The event will commemorate the founding of the State Historical Society of Iowa and Iowa City, which took place on Jan. 29, 1857.
“That institution survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, two world wars, the pandemic, you name it. That institution has always been supported,” Bennett said. “I don’t understand how these people have the arrogance to say they can kill it off when generations of Iowans have depended on it.”