UNK's Otto Olsen building demolished Wednesday

KEARNEY, Neb. -- A decades-old building a central Nebraska campus has come down.

The University of Nebraska at Kearney's Otto Olsen Building, which opened in 1955, was demolished on Wednesday. It was the last of four buildings to be torn down by the university. It had previously been scheduled to be razed in the summer.

The building housed several departments over its time on campus, most recently the school's industrial technology and cyber systems department. 

After spending more than two decades on the state’s capital construction replacement list, it was replaced by the LaVonne Kopecky Plambeck Early Childhood Education Center that opened in fall 2019, an addition to the Fine Arts Building and Discovery Hall, a state-of-the-art STEM facility that opened in fall 2020.

It was named after alumnus and former staff member Otto Olsen.

After graduating from what was then known as Nebraska State Normal School at Kearney, Olsen joined the school’s staff in 1919 and retired in 1957. He was chairman of the Vocational Arts Division and Industrial Arts Department and a pioneer in the field of driver education.

The school named the building after Olsen in 1961.

The former Luke & Jake’s Bar-B-Q restaurant, UNK’s east heating plant, Conrad Hall were also part of UNK's demolition plan.