CHICAGO — Construction began in spring 2010.
The Wabash Building connects in five places to Roosevelt University’s signature building, the Auditorium Building, a national historic landmark that was completed in the late 1880s. Roosevelt University was founded in 1945.CHICAGO — The second-tallest university building in the country will be dedicated May 5. At 32 stories, The Wabash Building at Roosevelt University is being called a “vertical campus.”
The building will increase classroom capacity by 40 percent. It includes conventional classrooms with seats for 36 or fewer students, three tiered classrooms with seats for 60 to 80 students and three auditorium-style classrooms with seats for 78 to 108. Additionally, three floors are devoted to science education with laboratories for physics, biology and chemistry, including a laser table room.
The Heller College of Business will take up the 10th through 12th floors and contain faculty and administrative offices and classrooms, including a trading floor.
The first six floors of the building are devoted to student life activities. The offices of admission, financial aid and advising are on the first floor and mezzanine; the bookstore is on the first floor and in the basement, and a dining center with seating for 300 people is on the second floor.
Housing for 633 students takes up floors 15 through 31. To enter the residence floors, students take an elevator to the 14th floor where they must pass a security booth and electronic turnstiles to gain entrance to the residential floors via separate elevators. Most of the layouts have four or five people in separate suites sharing a common bathroom.
Wabash is slightly smaller than the largest university building in the U.S., the 42-story Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh.
The architect was Chicago-based VOA Associates. Wabash was constructed on the site of the 17-story Herman Crown Center, which was a residence hall built in 1973. Roosevelt has an enrollment of 6,800 students.