Old Des Moines U.

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Second and Euclid is the home of Park Fair Mall, but it was once the site of an interesting piece of Des Moines educational history. Highland Park College, Des Moines University, and the University of Lawsonomy once stood on this spot.

Highland Park College was established here in 1889 and operated under that name until 1918, when the Baptist church bought it and renamed it Des Moines University. The school had some 40,000 students and 1,000 pharmacy graduates in its first twenty-five years. Trouble began when a fundamentalist group known as the Baptist Bible Union of North America took over the school in 1927. The administration required all faculty members to agree to eighteen articles of faith. Many faculty members objected to this, and several of them left the university and joined Carl Weeks (later founder of the Armand Cosmetic Company) in forming Des Moines College of Pharmacy in downtown Des Moines. All but two of the pharmacy students at the university left to enroll in the new school.

At the same time that faculty were being required to agree to the articles of faith, students were also having many restrictions placed upon them. It is reported that three girls were disciplined for doing cartwheels during a vaudeville skit. General unhappiness spread and things came to a head when board chairman Thomas T. Shields fired the entire faculty on May 11, 1929. A few hours later a riot broke out among the students. Angry students marched on the administration building in the afternoon, and that night 150 students attacked the building where the board of trustees was meeting. They threw eggs and rocks and attempted to break down the door to the room where the board members were hiding. Eventually, police drove the students from the building, but not before they had wrecked the front office of the school administration building. The school closed in September 1929, and the buildings remained empty until the third, and even stranger chapter of the area’s history began.

In 1943, Alfred W. Lawson of Detroit bought the property and founded the Des Moines University of Lawsonomy. Early in his career, Lawson was involved in the aviation industry. By the time he came to Des Moines, he was promoting Lawsonomy, sweepingly billed as “the study of everything.” It was said that students (men only) would be required to study for thirty years to achieve the degree of “Knowledgian.” Lawsonomy was based on forty-seven principles based on books written by Lawson, and the curriculum of the school consisted largely of memorizing Lawson’s books. Enrollment at the school was as much as 100 at one time but dwindled gradually to fewer than twenty by the time the university closed in 1954. The property was sold to developer Frank A. DePuydt for $250,000, and Lawson died two weeks later on November 29, 1954. DePuydt built the Park Fair Shopping Mall on the site, and a chapter of Des Moines' educational history came to an end.