In the back of a construction equipment auction house in Mount Pleasant, there is a row of storage units. In one, Alan Allsup and his friends have squirreled away a collection.
“This is the wood from the... I think it’s the ‘I-O-W-A’ from the ‘Iowa Wesleyan’ which was part of the old gym floor,” Allsup says, digging through the unit. Beside him stand a few antique crutches, some framed paintings and a stack of old chairs. It’s more or less junk. But for Allsup it’s an attempt to hold on to something.
“Everything happened so quickly and a lot of people didn’t know what was even being taken out or not,” Allsup says. “A lot of us, we want Iowa Wesleyan to be preserved somewhere.”
Last year, the Iowa Wesleyan Board of Trustees chairman said after 181 years Iowa Wesleyan University would turn its lights off.
“The board is committed that we would not start a semester if we did not have the funds to complete it,” Bob Miller said in March 2023 press conference. “That is what has forced us to this decision today.” He did not return numerous requests for comment for this story.
The town of Mount Pleasant was incorporated in 1842, the same year the university was established. The town and gown siblings grew up beside one another. And since the news of the closure, residents of Mount Pleasant have been working to preserve the memory of the university while making sense of its 60-acre campus.
A museum for IWU ‘pilgrims’
“That was my first thought: What is going to happen to the archives, to the historical collection ... that was housed in the university campus,” says Pat White, a board member of the Henry County Heritage Trust.
A short walk from campus, the Trust runs a museum — itself a repurposed elementary school. There, a whole room has been dedicated to archiving what remains of Iowa Wesleyan University.
“It's important that these things that happened here, in little Mount Pleasant ... that it stays local, as much as possible,” she said.
Per Iowa Code, the University of Iowa gets first dibs, absorbing official documents like transcripts and course catalogs. It also received the university's collection of 50,000 insects. But that still leaves a great deal.
“It is over 8,000 items, objects and that doesn’t include anything in the file cabinets,” says Spencer Barton. He worked as an archivist at Iowa Wesleyan in what became its final year, and he hung around after, working as an independent museum consultant on the collection.
Barton’s job is to take stock of the odds and ends. They range from the ordinary: a collection of history books from each county in the state; to the wonderfully bizarre: a macabre scene featuring eleven taxidermized frogs. Ten members play miniature instruments; the band’s desiccated eleventh hops through the scene, perhaps elated to still be playing since it was deposited at Iowa Wesleyan in the early 1900s.
In the end, Barton shows me a finished product: a sketch of a museum installation that will tell the story of this institution that is no longer.
“People who make their pilgrimage to the campus every year or every ten years — however long it takes them — can come back and relive a little of that experience,” Barton says. “Even if it is a completely new place, it is still close to home.”
Carving the campus
The largest single artifact Iowa Wesleyan left behind was its campus, 60 acres just north of the town square. And while many loose ends remain, there is a plan.
Before the closure in 2023, and before the funding crisis in 2018, Iowa Wesleyan got a $21.4 million loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development division. The USDA declined to comment for this story and sent a general statement rather than responding to questions about the closure.
In its statement, a USDA Rural Development spokesperson claimed the division never took possession of the physical campus. But the USDA was the primary creditor and fiscal agent of the campus. It worked with the leadership of the campus to bring items and property to auction.
“At USDA Rural Development, we don’t own colleges,” State Director Theresa Greenfield told IPR News for a previous story.
The USDA became responsible for liquidating its assets after the Board of Trustees announced the closure. In January the results were released.
“If we can get a gymnasium space and a performing arts center for about $1.1 million dollars, you know, we’d be crazy not to entertain that,” says Mount Pleasant Schools Superintendent John Henrickson.
The school district purchased the single largest share of the campus. This includes a large gymnasium, track and field space, an auditorium and office space — all of which Henrickson says was a growing need for the district.
According to cost estimate to build similar facilities, the district was looking at paying as much as $48 million. The total cost for all the property bought is less than $1.3 million.
“I feel terrible about the closure of Iowa Wesleyan,” he says. “But we were able to purchase those facilities for an incredible bargain to meet the needs of the district.”
While property has exchanged hands, plans are still in the making. One buyer from the Quad Cities is planning to make apartments out of one of the old dorms. Another would make office space out of the wrestling facility. In all cases, the campus will change to fit the needs of the town.
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