Our Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Education Center

“Being listed on the National Register of Historic Places is an acknowledgement that this building is a vital piece of our cultural and educational heritage.”

EMILY PATTERSON, WSU executive director of facilities planning

Wichita State’s Corbin Education Center was dedicated on Sunday, June 28, 1964, in honor of Harry F. Corbin ’40 (1917-1990). A political science graduate of the University of Wichita, Corbin also held degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Kansas. In 1946, he joined WU’s faculty as assistant professor of political science and philosophy. In 1949, at the age of 32, he became the first WU alumnus to be appointed president. Inaugurated in 1950, he served until 1963, stepping down just after the municipal university he led for 14 years was voted into the state system of higher education. After a year away from university life, he returned to campus in 1964 to teach religion and political science classes.

As the university’s sixth president, Corbin oversaw a doubling of undergraduate enrollment, a tripling of graduate students, a quadrupling of the university budget — and a campus building boom that included the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed education center. After being approached by Corbin and Jackson O. Powell, dean of the College of Education from 1950-66, Wright was commissioned in 1957 to design classroom, office and laboratory space for the college. The renowned architect used his plan for a complex of cultural centers in Baghdad, Iraq, commissioned by King Faisal II but never built, as the foundation for his master blueprint for the education center, completing his plans in 1958, a year before his death. After funding delays, construction began in 1963 with Wright’s plans modified to include only one main structure instead of the two he had envisioned. His unbuilt concept was for a circular lab school for teacher training. Interestingly, one of Wright’s students, John Hickman, borrowed from that circular plan when he designed Century II Performing Arts & Convention Center in downtown Wichita. Years later, his plan also inspired the architecture of another education hub, the Phillips Fundamental Learning Center, which specializes in helping dyslexic students learn.

Opened for classes in 1964, the completed 27,000-square-foot, two-building education center showcases Wright’s world-renowned aesthetic sensibility, often described as an architectural “marriage of earth and sky,” and features many of his signature design elements, including bold geometry, long horizontal lines and a profusion of open courtyards, sheltered walkways and light-drenched interior spaces that organically marry inside with outside. When including the center’s outdoor esplanade, walkways and open, fountain-side patios, its footprint expands to more than 40,000 square feet.

The center’s two connected, L-shaped buildings feature fenestration (the arrangement of windows and doors) with large exposures of polished plate glass, later covered with bronze sunshades. Positioned 28 feet from the ground at the center of each of the buildings are belvedere roofs with fascia of exposed stone aggregate, colored to blend with the brick of the exterior walls. The concrete canopies of the belvederes are rimmed with turquoise fascia — the turquoise a prominent part of the terra-cotta, turquoise, orange and brown color palette chosen for the center by Wright’s third wife, Olgivanna. Perhaps most visually striking are the two slender light spires — reminescent of minarets and a nod to Wright’s Baghdad plan — that rise 60 feet into the sky through openings in the canopies.

The Corbin Education Center was added to the National Register of Historic Places in November 2025, after having been nominated in July 2022. Emily Patterson, Wichita State’s executive director of facilities planning, credits the efforts of Friends of Corbin, a local group organized to advocate for the preservation of the center, with the successful nomination. One of the group’s members is Craig Rhodes, design director at LK Architecture, who once took English classes in the south wing of Corbin. “Even as a student,” he says, “I was struck by how different the space felt — the natural light, the openness, the sense of creativity.”