This building, originally the Field House, was completed in 1937.
The University had long had plans for a permanent, substantial gymnasium for both intercollegiate and student recreational use. In 1905, when requests were made ot the Arkansas General assembly for funding several buildings, a gymnasium was among them, but it was removed from the list. In 1911-13, Football Coach Hugo Bezdek led a fundraising campaign to raise private money for a new gymnasium, but the effort proved unsuccessful. A similar campaign in 1923 was successful and a temporary frame gymnasium was erected. Although crowded, uncomfortable, drafty, and cold, the new gymnasium was the home of several Southwest Conference championship Razorback basketball teams. Constructed about where the Fine Arts Building is now located, the gym was dubbed "Schmidt’s Barn" in honor of Coach Francis Schmidt, who introduced basketball to the University.
In 1935, the Board of Trustees made plans for a new field house. A new $307,000 loan from the Public Works Administration (PWA) was approved for the field house, a men’s dormitory, and additional steel stands for the football field. The successful bidder on the field house, at $128,999, was J.H. Leveck & Son of Little Rock.
Architects were Haralson and Nelson of Fort Smith. The building was designed in Plain Traditional style with Collegiate Gothic influences that followed the campus plan of Jamieson and Spearl of St. Louis a decade earlier. Unlike the other campus buildings of this period that were faced entirely with limestone, the new fieldhouse was primarily light buff brick, trimmed in limestone.
The Field House was completed before the fall semester 1937 and was dedicated on February 4, 1938, at a game with Texas Christian University. It was made to seat 3,500 spectators on folding bleachers. The floor could be utilized for all kinds of indoor recreational activity. The playing floor could seat an additional 4,000 in folding chairs when the area was used as an auditorium for concerts and commencements. It also was used for student registration. Athletic offices were housed in the building in addition to offices, classrooms, and laboratory space for the department of physical education.
When Barnhill Arena was built in 1954, the basketball team and the athletic department moved out and the physical education department took over the entire building. Since a Women’s Gym had been built in 1924, the Field House was renamed the Men’s Gymnasium.
In 1984, the Health, Physical Education and Recreation Building was completed, and the Men’s Gymnasium was given over to the University Museum. After some alterations to the gym, the museum moved from Hotz Hall, where exhibit space had been sorely limited, in September 1986.
The building was officially renamed the University Museum and added to the National Register of Historic Places in September 1992 under the name of Men’s Gymnaisum.
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