New Life For Luhr Library
Empty since 2010, building now houses Webster U’s IT Department & chess program
by Mary Shapiro
After being empty since 2010, the Luhr building on the campus of Eden Theological Seminary is now buzzing with activity.
It reopened this month as the new home to Webster University’s Department of Information Technology and Susan Polgar’s Institute for Chess Excellence (SPICE), which hosts the university’s national championship chess team.
Finished in 1968, the 36,000-square-foot Luhr building originally was Eden’s main library. In 1969, Webster University and Eden agreed to share the library, and, for the next 34 years, students from both institutions used the building.
In 2003 after the book collection outgrew the Luhr space, Webster University opened its Emerson Library and holdings today are distributed between Emerson and Eden’s Luhr Reading Room in its administration building. Eden and Webster Univerity continue to share the Emerson space.
Webster University purchased the Luhr building from Eden in 2010. The university originally planned to convert the space into a science building, but some residents expressed concerns that the use could cause traffic and parking issues. After the university updated its master plan and proposed using the building for the chess team and IT, those uses were approved by the Webster Groves City Council last year.
Wm. Kenneth Freeman, Webster University’s chief information officer for all technology, said his department is using the second floor and lower level of Luhr.
“The lower level has a lab for storage, computer repair and quality assurance,” Freeman said. “The second floor will be used as IT’s office space and main technical call center.
“Before this space was made available, IT was divided among four buildings on the campus – in the basement of Webster Hall, at 200 Hazel St., in the Sverdrup building and in a building on Rock Road,” he said.
Not all of IT is in Luhr, Freeman said – some still remains in the basement of Webster Hall and also in the Sverdrup building to support, among other things, the School of Communications.
“But the Luhr building gives us a permanent home,” he said.
“Being in Luhr gives IT a main location to provide even better service. Also, there’s more collaboration going back and forth now. Before, some of our IT people didn’t see peers as much on a routine basis, being in four locations. Being in Luhr allows our teams to talk a lot more and resolve impacts a lot faster,” he said.
The main floor of the Luhr building will be home to SPICE. The team will use it as a practice space and for team meetings. That space also will occasionally be used to host chess tournaments. SPICE annually hosts the Susan Polgar Girls’ Invitational in St. Louis, a summer camp for children and the SPICE Cup tournament.
The SPICE program previously was located in a small classroom in the Sverdrup Building on Webster University’s home campus. Tournaments often had to be held in auditoriums or in leased spaces, said Paul Truong, coach and director of marketing and public relations for SPICE.
“The first event we’ll host here is the annual Susan Polgar Foundation Girls Invitational, the most prestigious all girls event in the country,” he said.
“The problem before was we could never have the entire 20-member team practice together because we didn’t have space,” Truong added. “Now, we have the opportunity to expand our program, bring in many more students, and be able to have more tournaments and more recruits.
“We already have about 20 more applications for next year, so we hope to be able to double the size of the team,” he said.
The university’s use of the building is good for Eden, said Deborah Krause, academic dean/professor of New Testament at Eden. “Webster University and Eden Seminary have collaborated for over 40 years on our library services, and the initial phase of that collaboration was in the Luhr building.”
“It is wonderful to see that building, which has been vacant for several years, come to life again with programs that enrich the community and support the educational mission of the university,” she said. “Eden welcomes our new colleagues and these new activities, and we look forward to the ways our proximity with these particular parts of Webster’s learning community will generate connections with our own.”