Charles M. Russell Center

Charles M. Russell Center. . This structure was originally built to house the Faculty Club of the University of Oklahoma in 1925. The original Faculty Club was organized in 1920 by a group that included such long time university leaders as Dr. Stratton D. Brooks, President of the university, Emil R. Kraettli, Secretary to the Board of Regents, and Dr. A.B. Adams, first Dean of the College of Business Administration to promote the intellectual interests of the members. In April of 1925, President James S. Buchanan presented the request from the Faculty Club to the Board of Regents for a lease on the plot of ground to the rear of Boyd House to construct this building, which is on the original site of the president's barn. , This structure was designed by Harold Gemino (class of 1921) who is also credited with designing the Sooner Theatre and the Gemino House, located at Elm Avenue and Parsons Street. It was completed in 1925 for the price of $15,000. Originally restricted to male members of the faculty and senior administrative staff, the University Women's Club was invited to hold its meetings in the Faculty Club in 1925. Female members were allowed only affiliate membership, without voting privileges until 1949 when the discrimination was ended. Clay tennis courts and two putting clocks were built near the club. Upstairs bedrooms of the club were used for official guests of the university. The Faculty Club remained at this site until the expansion project at the Oklahoma Memorial Union in 1951, where it moved to its current location. , Dr. George Lynn Cross in describing the club said, “It provides a place where new members of the faculty may meet new friends quickly, where all members can forget the trials and frustrations of academic life, and provides a program of activities which should have a refreshing effect on all of us.” , The old Faculty Club became home to the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art in the American West when it was established in 1998. The Charles M. Russell Center is the first such university-based program in the nation. Charles Marion Russell was one of the foremost painters, sculptors, and illustrators of the American West during the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. Born in 1864 in St. Louis, Missouri, he is said to have started serious sculpting before the age of 16. In 1896 he married Nancy Cooper, under whose influence and direction he developed from an itinerant cowboy into an artist. By 1920 he achieved financial success and traveled regularly to New York. He has been remembered from his death in 1926 to present day as a leader in American art who, through his art, captured the spirit of the American West and preserved it for generations to come. , The Russell Center was established at the University of Oklahoma concurrently with an endowed professorship in art history, the Charles M. Russell Chair. Both the center and the endowed chair were made possible through a generous gift from the Nancy Russell Trust. Prominent scholar Peter Hassrick, longtime director of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming and founding director of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was named as the first director of the center.