It’s a red-brick building like any other on campus – perhaps unremarkable to those who worshiped there in recent decades, or to those who still sip coffee in its dimly lit basement.

But the Interfaith House has served many purposes during its 90-year existence, as a home for religious groups and student clubs – and as headquarters for many protests and peace movements in Vietnam-era Pullman.

Now, decades after the building was a hotbed of counterculture and political activism, WSU has announced plans to tear it down.

The origins of the building are murky compared to those of other buildings on campus, mainly because WSU never owned it before May of this year.

“Since it wasn’t official university history, and it wasn’t something the university necessarily wanted history of, there’s not really much on it,” said Mark O’English, an archivist at the Terrell Library.

Because an official record was hard to come by, O’English scoured old maps and phone books in an effort to pinpoint when the building was constructed. He also looked for mentions of it – to no avail – in old issues of The Daily Evergreen.

O’English determined that the building was constructed in 1924 or 1925 as a home for WSU’s chapter of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority. It was originally called the Koinonia House, or K-House, after the Greek word for communion – a name which stuck until 2010.

The sorority relocated sometime between 1958 and 1960 and sold the building to a Presbyterian regional body called the Synod of Alaska-Northwest (the owners who sold it to the university). Notably, 1959 was the year Washington State College became WSU.

Religious groups thrived at the K-House for nearly 50 years under the umbrella of the Common Ministry, which managed the property for the Synod. The Common Ministry, which relocated several months ago to a church on Campus Street, is the group that re-branded the building as the Interfaith House.

Throughout the late ’60s and early ’70s, the Common Ministry regularly set aside space in the building for the Community Free University of the Palouse, a collective of volunteers who taught hundreds of alternative classes – including bicycle repair, French cooking and “Latin for Fun” – completely independent of the WSU curriculum.

Among those involved in the Free University was WSU English professor Paul Brians, who was 26 when he arrived in Pullman in 1968 with a newly minted Ph.D. Now retired, Brians said he immediately involved himself in anti-war draft counseling and agitating against nuclear weapons.

“The K-House was home to all kinds of activism in those days and ran a popular alternative coffeehouse in the basement with the walls papered with underground publications,” Brians said. “It was just a montage of underground newspapers, stuff from the Evergreen, posters, etc. that decorated the basement coffeehouse when it was a lively hangout.”

Among countless items included in that montage are pages from the underground newspaper Scorn – which, as one issue proudly declares, was “formerly, heretically” titled ‘Sblood and published by the Common Ministry. Both iterations of the paper were published in the K-House.

Many of those ephemeral documents remain plastered to one wall of the basement, which currently houses the latest in a series of popular coffee shops, Zoe Underground. Brians said it was Jim Nielsen, the Common Ministry’s director from 1976 to 1999, who insisted that the wall remain intact.

“When more conservative folks took over the coffeehouse, Jim insisted it be covered and preserved rather than destroyed,” Brians said. “He was really the moving spirit behind much of what happened at the K-House. The combination of the YWCA and Jim made the K-House what it was.”

Brians described the building as “a lively, inviting place, where groups could try out ideas that weren’t necessarily welcome on campus.” He added, “It provided shelter for experimentation, innovation, protest.”

Brians said he twice hosted an event called “The Men’s Auxiliary of Women’s Liberation Front Bake Sale” in the front yard of the K-House.

“Guys who were partners of feminist activists baked bread, brownies, etc. and sold them to raise money for the women,” he said. “A mind-stretcher for some who couldn’t figure out that we were not mocking the WLF (Women’s Liberation Front) but supporting it in a humorous challenge to stereotypes.”

But not everything that happened at the K-House was lighthearted. On May 21, 1970, WSU students gathered there to plan a strike and boycott against racism on campus – a direct response to the police shootings of 14 black students at Jackson State College in Mississippi, which resulted in two deaths.

The Jackson State shootings went largely unnoticed in the wake of another shooting tragedy that took place less than two weeks prior: the deaths of four protesting white students at Kent State University in Ohio.

Several recently formed student organizations – including the Black Student Union, the Chicano group M.E.Ch.A, the Women’s Liberation Front, and the Young Socialist Alliance – worked with the ASWSU Senate to present a list of 11 demands for equality to university administrators.

When President Glenn Terrell denied each of these demands categorically, several thousand students retaliated en masse by occupying the French Administration Building and causing a blockage on Stadium Way. Following this and other student efforts, the administration began working harder to meet the demands.

Today, the Interfaith House is slated for demolition in May 2015. Pre-demolition work will begin immediately after Zoe Underground’s lease expires on Dec. 31.

Robert Strenge, the assistant director of WSU communication, said because the building is located at a major entryway onto campus, the property will likely become a pedestrian area with added greenery.

The building “is not configured in a way that it can reasonably be made of any real practical use to the university,” Strenge said. “The location is strategic to our plans, but WSU simply has no need for a structure of this type in that area. Also, capital and operating costs for renovated buildings of this age are typically significantly greater than comparable new construction costs.”

Strenge cited the Pullman campus master plan, which was most recently updated in 2012, before the Interfaith House went up for sale.

The estimated cost the demolition project is $750,000; WSU paid $1.2 million for the building with approval from the Board of Regents.

“There is no doubt that the events that have occurred in the K-House, and the people who have participated in the events there, are a very rich part of WSU’s history,” added Kathy Barnard, the communication director. “However, the building itself has no historical significance.”​