When Chris Flook attended Ball State University in the early 2000s, he wasn’t able to see the bell tower out his classroom window, attend a performance at Sursa Hall or walk through the Foundational Science building.
“[Campus] was ugly,” he said. “It [had] a utilitarian, mid-20th-century kind of look for everything.”
Chris, who’s now a senior lecturer in the Department of Media on campus, has witnessed campus flourish. He enjoys sitting in his office, looking out his window at the beautiful view in front of him.
Ball State has evolved considerably since the university opened in 1918. Each time a major moment of evolution occurred, whether it be the removal or addition of a structure, a cartographer was tasked with capturing that moment on a map.
At the turn of the century in around 1900, Chris said there was a movement called “City Beautiful,” as towns hoped to revitalize their communities in response to the Second Industrial Revolution. During this, factories were dumping polluted waste into the rivers, streets were filled with trash and the air was filled with smog.
When Ball State’s campus was built, they wanted to create a space for students to congregate, so they designed the campus Quad.
“There’s always been an effort to make the natural space good,” Chris said.
Comparing what he sees now to when he was a student at Ball State, Chris said that there are more hubs on campus for students to “just exist.” When he was a student, all they had was the library.
For over 20 years, Melissa Gentry has been the supervisor of the Paul W. Stout map collection in Bracken Library.
She said that maps are more than just for navigation; they are an “archive of the world.’ Not only do we see changes in the physical w o r l d around us, but also how political climates and society have changed through time.
In 1976, the collection started with 8,000 maps, but now holds over 140,000. The collection grew in part because of a federal depository, meaning any map made by the government was automatically entered into the collection. Paul Stout, the originator of the collection, attended summer workshops at the Library of Congress, where he would trade maps for the collection.
Maps can be used for much more than navigation. We can use them as resources in our history or as visual aids in presentations. Melissa said that maps are also great for visual learners when it comes to research.
“You can write a paper that’s thousands of words, but you can have that same topic represented on a map,” Melissa said.
The Paul W. Stout map collection has the entire set of Muncie’s maps and Melissa said it is interesting to see its changes over time.
One example she pointed out was in Muncie’s early history. There were “horse-related buildings” such as barns, stables and liveries. Years later, those buildings went away as the bicycle became popular. Now they are replaced by gas stations.
When discussing the evolution of Ball State’s map, Melissa said some may believe that the campus started from the Quad and moved north, but it actually evolved non-linearly, partially due to former university president John Emens.
During his time in the role, the Teachers College, Hargreeves Music building, Arts and Communications building, and LaFollette Hall were built. This left a large empty field between the Teachers College and LaFollette Hall that would later be filled in by other campus buildings, like Bracken Library in 1972.
Dean of the Estopinal College of Architecture and Planning David Ferguson has worked at Ball State for over 35 years and is trained as a landscape architect, an alum of the Ball State College of Architecture and Planning (CAP) program.
David said before the 1980s, campus was planned “haphazardly” until landscape architecture became intentional. It wasn’t until the 1990s that we began seeing pathways that are curvilinear lines.
“Most of the impact on our footprint has been generated by landscape architecture and master planning firms,” David said.
One of the first gathering places on campus came with the addition of the Frog Baby Fountain in 1993. Eric Ernstberger, a Ball State CAP alum, opened a design firm in Indianapolis whose team has designed many features on campus, such as the Shafer Bell Tower and the Frog Baby Fountain.
“We as human beings have an intuitive sense for spaces that have energy to them,” David said. “We can tell when there’s a good design in front of us.”
David said campus is not the same place as it was when he was in undergrad. When he attended Ball State, the CAP program was in what was then called the Quonset huts, former army barracks turned into classrooms.
After the original CAP building was built in 1972, the College of Business then took over the Quonset huts until the Whitinger Business Building was erected in 1979.
For some time, David said, he felt that the east side of McKinley would never be developed. At the time, that area was a path now referred to as “The Cow Path.” It wasn’t until 1984 that all of that changed when Robert Bell was built and the University Green became an official quad. In 1988, Ball Communications and the Letterman building were built, starting the central cluster of the current campus.
Currently, Ball State is moving into The Village, starting with a new performing arts center. This will serve as a catalyst to start The Village Revitalization Project.
Chris hopes to see a stronger connection with The Village in the coming years. He said that ideally, a grocery store or a movie theater would be added so students could live on campus without the need for a car.
As campus continues to grow, we will continue to see additions to its map. As we look towards the future, we can ensure that it will be captured in history.
This article is a part of Ball Bearings Fall 2025 magazine: The Archival Edition. Read more stories online at ballbearingsmag.com and pick up the print edition of the magazine across Ball State’s campus now.
