It’s good to have friends. Even if you’re a building.
A group called the Friends of Corbin has succeeded in getting the Corbin Education Center at Wichita State University named to the National Register of Historic Places.
The group, composed of current and former WSU employees and other supporters, started meeting in 2023. The Corbin Center, designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright at age 90 in 1957, had previously been added to the city and state’s registers of historic places.
To bring attention to Corbin, the group has designed docent-guided and self-directed tours. A start date for those is expected to be announced soon. A virtual tour of Corbin is available through the pocketsights app.
Here are a few facts about the building, which sits on the north side of campus off 21st Street:
It opened in 1964 and is named for Harry F. Corbin, a WSU alum and nationally ranked collegiate tennis player who served as WSU president from 1949 to 1963.
Jackson Powell, WSU’s dean of education from 1950 to 1966, first proposed the building in a letter to Corbin.
It was originally called the Juvenile Cultural Center. Wright designed a second building for the campus, an elementary education facility, but it was never built. Corbin borrows elements from a building Wright designed for a client in Baghdad, Iraq, which also was never built.
The Corbin building actually is two buildings joined by an esplanade containing a fountain and pool (used for the WSU Battle of the Colleges rubber duck races). Including sheltered outside areas, Corbin encompasses about 40,000 square feet and cost about $1 million to build.
Corbin’s intricate entryway and courtyard are typical of Wright’s desire to mix the indoors and outdoors in his designs.
The lighted spires atop each half of Corbin are 60 feet tall.
It’s home to the College of Applied Studies, which trains future teachers, athletic trainers, exercise scientists and sports management professionals.
Corbin is one of two buildings in Wichita designed by Wright, the other being the Allen-Lambe House, designed in 1916 for Wichita Beacon publisher and Kansas Gov. Henry Allen. It was completed at 225 N. Roosevelt in College Hill in 1918.
Corbin was closed by a water leak in April 2024. Although school officials initially thought repairs would take only a few days, it didn’t reopen until September 2025, just in time for the current semester. Students and faculty used temporary classrooms in the meantime.
