If one walks directly south from the Undergraduate Library, past the McFarland Memorial Bell Tower, they will eventually run into a rectangular building with half-circle wings on its east and west sides. The building may go unnoticed by University students who never make it south of the Bell Tower, but its significance to the animal sciences department, as well as a plethora of clubs and organizations on campus, is irreplaceable.

“The Stock Pavilion is a facility the department of animal sciences uses for animal laboratories,” said Doug Parrett, professor and interim head of the department. “It’s a facility where we can bring in cattle, horses, pigs and have hands-on laboratories for our students — it’s vital to us.”

According to the University Library’s Digital Cultural Heritage Community, the Stock Pavilion was completed in 1914 by English Brothers and designed by architect William Carbys Zimmerman. In the 1916 article “Stock Judging Pavilion at University of Illinois,” Zimmerman wrote, “this building was erected at the University of Illinois, Champaign, Ill., for the purpose, as its name implies, of judging and studying stock.”

Although Parrett said usage adjustments have been made with time, the building’s core purpose has remained the same.

“We’ve evolved,” Parrett said. “We use it totally different than they did in the 1920s and ’30s and ’40s, but it’s still used for hands-on animal labs.”

Not only has the building’s purpose stayed the same, but the building itself has only experienced one big alteration since being built.

“It is a historic building to campus,” Parrett said. “It has a lot of history (and) the architecture is really unique.”

Originally, the building’s northern side had nine arched entryways with outlining columns that formed a long horizontal hall. However, in the 1950s, Parrett said they enclosed the entryways and transformed the hall into classrooms and offices for professors. In the process of removing the columns, the builders removed 50 or so terra-cotta animal heads that were above the archways.

“Somewhere in the renovation they all got lost,” Parrett said. “I went scouring around all the barns and buildings on campus and I only came up with two — I wish I had (them all).”

Parrett, whose office was in the Stock Pavilion for 10 to 12 years before he moved to the Animal Sciences Lab, said he misses his “nice big office” and the “beautiful view” of South Quad. He said he often thought he had “the best office on campus.”

Today, the Stock Pavilion is not only used as an Animal Science laboratory, but also as a space for student clubs such as the Rodeo Club, the Hoof and Horn Club, the Illini Dairy Club and the Companion Animal Club. The building is also used for other campuswide activities and events, such as the YMCA Dump and Run and the Mom’s Weekend Flower Show.

“(The Horticulture Club) turns this place into a garden,” Parrett said about the Mom’s Weekend Flower Show.

Sam Kowalczyk, president of the Horticulture Club, said she had no idea what the Stock Pavilion even was her freshman year, and now, she feels like she lives there during the flower show.

“I feel like the Stock Pavilion is such an important place for the club during that event that it kind of becomes like a second home,” Kowalczyk said. “I can’t imagine it anywhere else.”

Rebecca Guyette, director of development for the University YMCA, said the annual Dump and Run, in which the YMCA collects items from the public in the spring and then sells them at a rummage sale in the fall, has been held at the Stock Pavilion since 2004.

“There really is no other space that could accommodate (the event) that’s of the size and that is as accessible as the Stock Pavilion,” Guyette said. “It’s not an exaggeration to say I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t have that space — it’s invaluable.”

Morgan can be reached at [email protected].