A Johnson County judge has ruled against the state’s decision to close the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) branch in Iowa City. The court said the Iowa Department of Administrative Services (DAS) is required to maintain a research facility in Iowa City.
Mary Bennett is a retired archivist who worked in the Centennial Building, where the research center was located, for 50 years. She also was a plaintiff in the initial lawsuit against the department.
“It’s a miniscule part of Iowa’s budget on a yearly basis, and yet the value of the materials they were placing at risk were great,” she said. “So, denying the public access to things that belong to the public is what really drove me forward.”
Bennett started the Save Iowa History Coalition in June 2025 after DAS and SHSI first announced they planned to close the Iowa City research center. The coalition included community members, local historians and researchers in support of reopening the building. Most of the plaintiffs that joined her in the lawsuit were members of that coalition.
Bennett said even though the court ruled in their favor, she doesn’t think the fight is over yet.
“All along, our concern was the care of the materials, their future status, whether they might be at risk. So, we’ve waited now through various appeals for this ruling that was made by Judge David M. Cox last week,” Bennett said. “But as a person who worked in that building for 50 years, I’m very apprehensive. There’s a lot of things that have to be corrected and remedied in order for this to come back to life.”
Adam Steen, head of DAS at the time, said the closure was due to budget constraints. During the SHSI Board of Trustees meeting in June 2025, Steen said the facility needed to be looked at like a business.
“One of the decisions that was made, and it wasn't made easy, but we made the decision to shut down the Iowa City building because of money coming in and money going out," Steen said. "It did not make sense to try to keep that going."
According to court documents, the decision was made without public input.
Bennett said the department incorrectly handled the process of relocating some of the building's contents.
“They did destroy or take away things in a very nontransparent manner," she said. "We don’t know what they took and where they took it."
Bennett said most materials in the Iowa City collection were donated specifically under the condition that the items stay in Iowa City. The building houses print materials, special collections, photographs, sound and video recordings and fine art. She said the collections correlate with each other and that a lot of the items reflect the beginning of Iowa’s history.
“The earliest records of what’s going on in Iowa as we’re developing those first 100 years are actually in Iowa City, as they always were, because Des Moines did not come into that kind of existence until the 20th century,” she explained, adding that it’s a central resource for University of Iowa students and researchers and historians who can’t travel to Des Moines.
DAS has said it would transfer the collection in Iowa City to Des Moines. In the process, some materials would be evaluated to be removed or transferred to other history collections. In a statement on behalf of the department and the SHSI, DAS said it's still considering the next steps to take.
“We are actively reviewing the order with our legal team, keeping the best interests of the collections, Iowa taxpayers and our state's collective history in mind," the statement read.
