 The facility at 1110 W. Green Street in Urbana, IL, is the second building commissioned to house the department.It was constructed during 1958–1959 and dedicated in 1980 to the memory of Francis Wheeler Loomis (1889–1976), who during his tenure as head of department from 1929 until 1957 was instrumental in attracting world-class physicists to Illinois.It was under his leadership that the department established its world-renowned research program in solid state physics (now called condensed matter physics); that program—one of the first of its kind in the nation—today remains at the forefront of the field.