Flashback: The Original Campus View

 “A man’s home may indeed be his castle, but there’s a castle in Columbia whose days are number,” wrote Brad Riesenberger, a Columbia Missourian staff writer, in June 1976.

Built as a YMCA in 1909, the 120-room castle-like stone mansion served as a busy social center for university students and native Columbians. Its limestone rocks were hand hewn and hand laid and cost $99,000 for the mansion’s construction, approximately $2.3 million in today’s dollars.

During the mid-1920s, the YMCA had financial trouble, forcing a buyout in 1936 for $14,000. Many former servicemen lived there after World War II, when Columbia experienced a severe housing shortage. Then in 1952, Marvin D. “Jack” Murphy bought the landmark structure and turned it into the Campus View Apartments. He added 35 bathrooms and subdivided the 76-by-60-foot banquet hall into apartments.

The Missouri Farmers Association purchased the building from Murphy in 1974 and announced it would be demolished in July 1976. MFA and Oscar Roberts held a public sale of the building’s contents and fixtures.

The lot on the northwest corner of Elm and Eighth streets stood bare until construction began on the Missouri School of Journalism’s Lee Hills Hall on Oct. 22, 1992. The building now houses the Columbia Missourian and Vox Magazine.