(Editor’s note: The Old Gold series provides a look at University of Iowa history and tradition through images housed in University Archives, Department of Special Collections.)

Readers of Old Gold may recall April’s column in which we considered what seemed to be a mysterious building occupying the north side of Iowa Avenue, between Clinton and Dubuque streets in downtown Iowa City. The image of what was identified as “Fine Arts Building” was taken in 1922, not long after it was completed. Old Gold, however, could find few clues about the structure and asked for your help.

Boy, did you help—and thank you! Old Gold received over a dozen responses from readers. We’ll get to the bottom of this so-called mystery in a moment, but before we do, Old Gold wants to step outside the box—in this case, into Kansas—to invoke Dorothy Gale of The Wizard of Oz. The scene is near the end of that epic 1939 motion picture, in which Dorothy prepares to leave Oz and return to home with the help of Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. For this tale, Old Gold will don the ruby slippers instead:

Old Gold: Well, if I ever go looking for the correct building folder again, I won’t look any further than my own vertical file, because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that right?

Glinda: That’s all it is!

Scarecrow: But that’s so easy! I should have thought of it for you.

Tin Man: I should have felt it in my heart.

Glinda: No. Old Gold had to find it out for himself, by looking up the file by the building’s correct name. Now those magic slippers will take you home in two seconds!

Old Gold: Let’s do it! [clicks heels, chants “There’s no place like the vertical file...There’s no place like the vertical file...”

OK, so Old Gold doesn’t actually own any ruby slippers, but he did find the correct file and, thanks to you readers, established the correct name of the building. As it turns out, the photograph in question was incorrectly labeled as “Fine Arts Studio.” The building was, in fact, known alternately as “Art Studio” or “Faculty Art Studio.” And, yes, the answer was at home, in the archives’ vertical file, under the correct name. The photo, however, was not. Hence, the confusion. It was not really a mystery after all.

We know now that the Faculty Art Studio was exactly that—a space for members of the art faculty to produce their paintings and three-dimensional works. The jagged roof line, with ceiling windows oriented to the north, was designed to permit the maximum amount of indirect outdoor light possible. Constructed in 1922, the studio was designed by Charles Cumming, head of what was then the Department of Graphic and Plastic Arts in the UI’s College of Liberal Arts. An item in the Feb. 3, 1922, Daily Iowan noted its opening. (Thank you, Candice Smith, Iowa City Public Library.) The building was used until the late 1960s, when it was razed to make way for eventual expansion of the Biology Building.

Kevin Burford, the son of the late UI art professor Byron Burford, recalls many visits to the building as a boy: “My father had his studio there in the 1950s and 1960s. James Lechay and Stuart Edie also had studios in that building. It was directly across the street from Hamburg Inn No. 1 on Iowa Avenue. Occasionally my father would bring home a sack of burgers as a treat. When I attended University High, I would often stop by there on my walk home to pop in and see what my father was working on. The smell of the oil paint was intoxicating. The building was definitely gone by 1968.”

So there you have it. Again, thank you all for your responses and for bringing to light (so to speak) more information about a unique, longtime UI landmark. There are no ruby slippers available for Old Gold to click, but we have found our answer to the “mystery.” It was, of course, right at home, where it was all along.