The Shack

 

From the September 1984 UNO Today

By Susan Tomich

 

In October of 1946, a grand opening was held at an Omaha University annex. Formerly a mechanic and welding classroom during Word War II, the building was redecorate and refurbished to serve as a student activities center on the 8-year-old campus at 60th and Dodge.

 

The annex contained lunch and soft drink facilities and was also used for card playing, ping pong, games and dancing.

 

A month later, the snack bar was christened the “Snack Shack.” The two winners of the naming contest were awarded $5 in trade for their winning entries. Among the 60 entries were suggestions such as the “Pow Wow Inn,” “The Crib,” “Happy,” and “Sittin’ Bull.”

 

The center was renamed the “Pow Wow Inn” in December because of copyright laws. In spite of the name change, the students called their gathering place, “The Shack.”

 

The “Pow Wow Inn” was vandalized in the spring of 1948. The leather chairs and sofas were slashed and initials were carved in the furniture. President of Omaha University at that time, Rowland Haynes, stated that the lounge would probably be converted into meeting rooms. By May, bids were being solicited on the pending conversion. Work was expected to begin in the summer. It didn’t.

 

By 1954, President Milo Bail was looking into the building of a student union. Preliminary sketches and cost estimates were ordered from John Latenser & Sons by the OU Board of Regents.

 

Yet, the University held another grand opening for the “Club” in 1955. The “Club” was in the same building that had housed the “Snack Shack” and the “Pow Wow Inn.” At a cost of about 42,000, the social area sported new plywood chairs and colorful tabletops. “The later guaranteed to withstand assaults by anything but diamond rings and you won’t find many of those here,” said Charles Huff, vice president for business management at the university. The walls of the “Club” featured murals of OUampi drawn by former OU student Harlan Petersen.

 

The students still called their meeting place “The Shack.”

 

The wooden building behind the Administration building that housed “The Shack” was redecorated about every two years after its conversion to a student gathering place in 1946.

 

In the spring of 1958, OU started construction on a student center. Opening in early 1960, it was the fifth new building on the campus. It contained a main lounge, 10 meeting rooms, a cafeteria and a bookstore that was described as a “self-service supermarket.” Its emphasis was on “social, cultural, recreational and intellectual life.” A brochure proclaimed, “This new building offers a wholesome, refined, atmosphere where people can meet, meditate, talk, relax, eat and, if they chose, just play.”

 

The student center was renamed the Milo Bail Student Center in 1965 when President Bail retired. At a cost of $1,340,000 the students no longer could call their meeting place “The Shack.”

 

After the opening of the new student center, “The Shack” was used at different times for AFROTC, the Purchasing Department, the Gateway offices and a ceramics laboratory. It was torn down in the summer of 1982. Upon learning of “The Shack’s” fate, one alumnus said, “If I’d known they were going to tear it down,a  bunch of us would have gotten together and ahead a party. That place meant a lot to us.”