Looking back at the Navy Pier days

Before it opened as the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle 60 years ago, UIC was located on Navy Pier, jutting out into Lake Michigan.

The Navy Pier campus was primarily established for service members returning from World War II and attending school on the GI Bill, but the student population wasn't limited to veterans. In the 20 years it operated, the "Harvard on the Rocks" campus educated 100,000 students. They attended for two years before completing their degrees at other institutions, such as the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Among the alums of Navy Pier are Eugene Frank and Marsha Sheinin, who both attended in the 1960s, just before UIC moved from the pier to its current location, then newly built.

Now Navy Pier is a spot for tourism and entertainment, with restaurants, shops, the Chicago Children's Museum and Chicago Shakespeare Theater, all dominated by the nearly 200-foot Centennial Ferris Wheel. Not much remains from its days as a university campus, although Sheinin recalls attending gym class at the end of the pier in what's now the Aon Grand Ballroom, perhaps the most recognizable location on the pier from its campus period.

The campus closed in 1965, when the UIC we know today opened. Navy Pier as an institution of higher learning was gone but not forgotten.

Frank started classes at Navy Pier in 1962 and earned a degree in pharmacy in 1967 at UIC. Before graduating from Northeastern Illinois, Sheinin studied education and teaching at Navy Pier from 1963 to 1965.

On a Saturday at the pier this fall, Frank and Sheinin talked about taking classes at the school, professors they remembered, the lasting friendships they formed and the events of the day, including, for Sheinin, learning about John F. Kennedy's assassination in the common area where students gathered in the mornings for campus updates and news.

The years at the pier are part of UIC's rich history in Chicago. Six decades later, Frank and Sheinin still cherish their time as college students there. Watch the video of their visit to the pier as they recall that period of their lives.