From as early as the 1920s until 1984, The Shack was a student hang-out on the University of Missouri campus.
Today, the MU Student Center is home to "The Shack" to replicate the student hang-out experience of decades in the 1900s.
KBIA's Ryan Barnes drew upon one of the Monroe Collection's oral histories' to take us back to The Shack and to debunk a rumor about the space's ties to the popular song, The Green Door.
This piece is part of Reverberations, a series from KBIA that uncovers the wealth of historical information housed within the State Historical Society of Missouri's archives and its Haskell Monroe oral history collection from the 1990s.
This episode of Reverberations features the voice of:
- Guy “Bus” Entsminger
Reverberations is a grant-funded, collaborative project from KBIA, the Missouri School of Journalism, and The School of Visual Studies, with support from Missouri Humanities. Special thanks to the State Historical Society of Missouri (SHSMO) for partnering with this project to digitize and explore the Haskell Monroe Oral History Collection.
Transcription of this episode is as follows:
(Music: St. Louis Blues)
Intro: This is KBIA. I'm Trevor Harris For the past few months, KBIA has been working with a team of students to engage with oral histories from the Haskell Monroe Oral History collection at the SHSMO. Monroe, a chancellor at the University of Missouri, had students in the 1990s conduct oral histories with Columbians who recalled life here in 1930s and 40s. The students' pieces are airing this week on KBIA. Ryan Barnes filed this report on University of Missouri alumni Guy H. “Bus” Entsminger, who discusses The Shack, and a popular song that many students associated the hangout spot with.
Ryan Barnes: It’s lunchtime at the University of Missouri campus, and after some quick thinking, you decide to grab a burger at Mort’s. As you wait, you notice the pool tables, Beetle Bailey comics, names inscribed on the wooden walls, and the familiar panel of the establishment students and alumni know as The Shack.
Ryan Barnes: The Mort’s restaurant in the student center today serves as a reconstruction of the Shack that existed decades before. Located on the corner of Tiger Avenue and Conley Avenue, the Shack started in 1921 as a simple sandwich cart. By the 1930s, according to the University Archives, the cart had evolved into a standalone restaurant that everyone referred to as The Shack.
Guy “Bus” Entsminger: “It’s indescribable. (laughter) It literally was a shack. It was a dark green building. I’ll say more about the buildings on the campus but truly did sit just almost on the precise land that we are sitting on top of today. When you walked in you had to stand for a minute or two to even see if there were any empty booths. It was so dark in there all the time.”
Ryan Barnes: “Bus” discusses how this dimly-lit burger joint gained popularity on campus.
“Bus”: “There were two things that made the Shack famous. If any of you are familiar with the old song, The Green Door. Now the myth is that, oh I forgot his name, an alumnus here who wrote that, he lived in Springfield a long time. But as soon as that came out with his name on it, everybody on campus here assumed that he had written The Green Door about the Shack.”
(Music “The Green Door")
Ryan Barnes: That song was called The Green Door", a 1958 hit written by Jim Lowe. With a catchy tune, the song really seems to match with the vibes of the Shack: a place with a happy crowd, enticing curiosity to the visitor who wonders what's going on inside.
(Music ends)
Ryan Barnes: Jim Lowe was in fact a University of Missouri alumni, so it can be easy to see why many students at the time thought the song was inspired by the Shack’s green doors. The restaurant had been featured in a Life Magazine article in 1941, according to the Columbia Daily Tribune, and by the time The Green Door was released, it seemed that The Shack was the cultural symbol of student life at the University.
Ryan Barnes: Despite the rumors however, Jim Lowe would tell “Bus” that the idea never had come to him.
“Bus”: “Several years later, I would run into him and we visited and I told him about this. He said, “Yeah, I heard about that a lot. But to tell you the truth Bus, the Shack was the farthest thing from my mind, it just happened. I’m not going to change it though because it’s going too well.”
Ryan Barnes: While Lowe said that the Shack wasn’t the inspiration for his song, the question over how the song originated is still under debate today. Nevertheless, it seems that the spread of pop culture helped to establish a popular social-spot on the university campus.
(Music “The Green Door”)
Outro: That was Ryan Barnes. He worked with audio from the Haskell Monroe Oral History Collection to produce that segment. Thanks to the State Historical Society of Missouri for digitizing the tapes and Missouri Humanities for their project support.
Outside Sources:
Dalton, Warren, “The Shack is Gone but Lives On.” The Columbia Daily Tribune, December 3, 2011. https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/lifestyle/around-town/2011/12/04/the-shack-is-gone-but/21462297007/
The Shack, University Archives. https://muarchives.missouri.edu/beetle-four.html
Background Noise recorded at Mort’s April 16, 2026
