The Project Gutenberg eBook ofSeeing LincolnThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Seeing LincolnAuthor: Anne LongmanRelease date: April 8, 2020 [eBook #61787]Most recently updated: October 17, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Kenneth R. Black and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEEING LINCOLN ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Seeing LincolnAuthor: Anne LongmanRelease date: April 8, 2020 [eBook #61787]Most recently updated: October 17, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Kenneth R. Black and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Title: Seeing Lincoln
Author: Anne Longman
Author: Anne Longman
Release date: April 8, 2020 [eBook #61787]Most recently updated: October 17, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Kenneth R. Black and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEEING LINCOLN ***
SEEINGLincolnPresented byGold & Co.LINCOLN, NEBR.Written for The Nebraska State JournalBy Anne Longman
Presented byGold & Co.LINCOLN, NEBR.
Written for The Nebraska State JournalBy Anne Longman
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Come with us, all you who are new to the city or you who bid fair to live and die in Lincoln without ever having seen her various faces. We’ll teach you in—well, we don’t know how many lessons—something about the city in which you are living.
Maybe we should begin with the capitol, known over the world for its beauty. But we think we’ll start with that handy starting and stopping place, O street. Lincoln is often described as an overgrown country town, O its Main street. But even New York has its lapses into the primitive, and who doesn’t like, in medium doses, the simplicity and the friendliness that spell country town.
When Lincoln was only a handful of blocks flung down on the prairie for hasty habitation by early salt seekers, restless young Civil war veterans, the railroad advance guard and those with an incurable pioneer fever, it huddled within the confines of what is now the most downtown part of Lincoln. Along O from Eighth to Fourteenth were its beginnings. The town spread slowly, like extremely cold molasses, into an indefinite shape with an undulating circumference at the present time of about 20 miles.
So, here’s O street, looking from Tenth east. Most of Lincoln’s buses head up O to Tenth, rolling around government square and then rolling back to O again. You can’t get lost in Lincoln. Just keep one foot, or at least an eye, on O and say your alphabet north and south. Or on Thirteenth and say your numbers east and west. And then there are a few streets on the edges with fancier names, just to make it a little harder.
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This city is one of 25 cities or towns in the United States sharing the name of Lincoln. Sixteen of these 25 were named for Abraham Lincoln. It is perhaps not unduly vain to say that Lincoln, Neb., is most noted of these Lincolns. To begin with, it is the capital of a state, and that state is the geographical center of the North American continent.
Among other things which have drawn attention to this city of 81,000 are its illustrious one-time citizens. From the home base of Lincoln William Jennings Bryan spattered the country with silver words about the silver standard. General Pershing was one of the Atlases on whose shoulders the weight of the first World war rested. Charles G. Dawes, a dynamic young lawyer of Lincoln in the 80’s, eventually became a vice president. Willa Cather, precocious university student in the 90’s, at the height of her writing career was conceded to be this country’s most gifted woman writer. Charles Lindbergh is claimed by Lincoln after a fashion and with some degree of justification. It was here that he learned the art of flying, after trundling into town unobtrusively on a day in April—April Fool’s day in fact—1922. And there are many other notables whose names are in some way linked with the city.
The famous sculptor, Daniel Chester French, left behind him several famous statues of Abraham Lincoln. One of these has stood on the capitol grounds since its dedication, Sept. 2, 1912. As the new, and fifth, Nebraska capitol burgeoned slowly it elbowed off the grounds every vestige of the outgrown capitol with one exception—the Lincoln statue. It is something difficult to outgrow.
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Lincoln was chosen as the capital of Nebraska in the summer of 1867 by three young men, David Butler, John Gillespie and Thomas Kennard, who had been named as a commission to do this task. They have become almost legendary figures in the minds of Nebraskans—three men in tall silk hats silhouetted against the prairie sky as they pounded their ponies over the countryside in search of a capital site.
They were very actual people, however; Butler was the state of Nebraska’s first governor; Thomas Kennard, first secretary of state and Gillespie first state auditor. Interestingly, the homes built by these three men still stand, perhaps the three oldest houses in Lincoln. Herewith is shown the one-time mansion of Governor Butler, which has stood at Seventh and Washington for almost 75 years. At that time of course there were no such streets. The mansion was a country home, from which the governor drove to the capitol and back in state.
The original house was square and high. Built of blocks of brown stone with a cupola and a front stoop instead of a porch it was considered very imposing. Here Governor Butler lived from about 1867 until his impeachment in 1871. The impeachment by the legislature came about because of Butler’s borrowing $17,000 from the school fund. Land which he had deeded to the state was said to have more than paid in value the amount borrowed, and great bitterness resulted from the legislature’s action.
“Lord” Jones, a rich Englishman, purchased the building in the early 70’s. Thirty years later the Lincoln Country club took it over and added wings. The mansion has been used variously since as the home of the ku klux klan, a radio broadcasting studio and a dance house. Now, hands patiently folded, it awaits the auctioneer’s hammer.
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Like the Butler mansion, the Kennard house at 1627 H was built in the late 60’s. Exteriorly it has been little changed and indicates fairly well the style of the more pretentious houses of that period.
Thomas Kennard was a colorful figure of the times. On the streets of the raw prairie city he sported a frock coat, black velvet vest and a silk hat, which was perhaps legitimate dress for a man of his importance. He had helped select Lincoln as the capital of Nebraska. Later he was railroad attorney, state senator and an appraiser of Indian lands for the federal government. In 1890 he organized the Western Glass & Paint company, still in existence. In 1898 he was appointed by President McKinley receiver of public moneys at the U. S. land office in Lincoln.
Choosing a site for the capitol was not as simple as it sounds 75 years later. Omaha clung to the honor with grim fingers. Ashland was bitter at not being chosen. The $50,000 bonds of the commissioners had been filed with the chief justice, but not with the state treasurer, as the law specified. Disgruntled Omaha people said the commissioners therefore had no legal standing and they planned to prevent the removal of the state papers, and in fact the capital, to Lincoln by having an injunction issued. Gov. Butler and Mr. Kennard formulated a plan. On Sunday morning Mr. Kennard drove to Omaha, entered the state house, took the seal of state, wrapped it up carefully and put it under the seat of his buggy. He arrived in Lincoln next morning after stopping in Ashland overnight. The governor’s proclamation, ready and waiting, that morning announced that the capital was now removed.
Mr. Kennard lived to celebrate his 90th birthday. He was by that time a gentle old man in quiet dress, yet about him still hovered, one felt, the aura of the empire builder.
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The official milestone of Lincoln, standing in front of the city hall at 10th and P, has caused considerable comment, mostly favorable, since it was placed there in 1926. The suitability of the covered wagon idea and the manner of execution are not questioned. This very portion of Lincoln was alive with prairie schooners, not always drawn by oxen however, in the first 30 years of the city’s existence—tied to the hitching posts, relaxing in government square for the night. The editor of The Journal often put his head out the window and counted the wagons on the square. Then he drew it back and sat down—not to his typewriter, in those days—and told his readers how many new settlers were coming into the state. Sometimes they needed encouragement, when grasshoppers were thick or dry dust piled high.
The only critical note indicated in comment is the fact that the prairie schooner is headed east instead of west. That seems to indicate the back-home defeatist attitude rather than the on-to-victory pioneer spirit.
The city hall itself was built early in the city’s history ... 1874. For 50 years it grew dingier and dingier. Then a sandman polished it off and it showed up as an attractive edifice made of limestone—quarried near the Platte river. The texture of its surface contrasts pleasingly with the smoother face of the postoffice building.
The city hall was first Lincoln’s postoffice. Not until 1906 was the first section of the present postoffice built. Until then the city edifice was on the present site of the municipal building on Q street.
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Today The Journal stars itself in this column. Justifiably, we believe. For it was 75 years ago—Sept. 7, 1867—that the first issue of the paper was brought forth, at Nebraska City, five weeks after the capital of the state of Nebraska was declared to be in existence. The next and all subsequent issues came out in Lincoln.
The present Journal building, at Ninth and P, has stood here almost 60 years. The life story of this world has pulsed thru it ceaselessly. Daily, feet have stormed up and down its steps, bearing humdrum news or perhaps a local bombshell of information. Loftily above, news from the outside has poured in over singing wires, every day occurrences of the world or sometimes catastrophic tidings.
On these steps stood Willa Cather, journalist of the nineties, a dauntless young female who nevertheless gazed about her fearfully after nightfall. For Ninth street in the nineties, and after dark, was a dubious spot. Up these steps to write his daily column reeled Walt Mason, for he had not yet reached Kansas and fame, and reform at the hands of William Allen White.
Noted people of the day sometimes came and went—sometimes a person with a grievance and a club. For newspapers of earlier days were amazingly flatfooted in their remarks. But come threat, come flood, come wars or disasters, the presses turned on, into the new century and now almost half a century past the turn.
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Of Lincoln’s downtown churches, St. Paul Methodist is most completely downtown. At 12th and M, the tides of business and everyday life flow all about it. It has weathered into its place, a hospitable building where passersby are welcome. St. Paul has been a boon to Lincoln during a good many years, at periods when the city was short of meeting places—and these periods have been frequent. St. Paul’s is big, it is very conveniently located. At the price of a crushed rib (and admission) one has been able to hear many stirring performances—Paderewski and other famous musicians, addresses of the great.
The crushed rib should not, however, be charged against the Methodists. Their serious purpose in 1867 was to organize a church in the new city. They expected to fling their doors open principally for church comers, and, sadly, huge entrances are not necessary to take care of the average church congregation.
The first church was put up in 1868—the First Methodist Episcopal church of Lincoln. In 1883 a new structure was erected and the name changed to St. Paul Methodist. In 1899 this building burned and two years later the present structure was completed. Among attractive features of the church are its two great windows on the east and south.
Dr. Walter Aitken, who resigned in 1942, had been pastor of St. Paul church 22 years.
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The photographer surprised us with this attractive picture of the Lancaster county courthouse, a testimonial to his art or to our lack of perception. Our initial impression of the courthouse was gained from the third story of The Journal building in the days when it still wore a conventional round dome, on top of which was perched a sad castiron statue of Abraham Lincoln. Once a painter clambered up and gave the statue a coat of bright red paint. Protests poured in. It developed that the red was only preliminary to a more suitable bronze. But eventually dome and statue disappeared, with pleasing results.
In its 55 years the courthouse has seen drama. The most sensational trials held within its walls were during the tumultuous 90’s—the John Sheedy, Irvine-Montgomery, George Washington Davis and Lillie cases. Sheedy was Lincoln’s kingpin gambler of the 90’s, a large handsome person who was found at his office with skull crushed. His beautiful young wife and a Negro, Monday MacFarland, were tried and acquitted. W. H. Irvine was tried for the fatal shooting of C. E. Montgomery, a Lincoln banker, and exonerated. Mrs. Lillie, found guilty of killing her husband at David City and later pardoned by Governor Mickey, here forced the Woodman company to pay her insurance for the death of the husband whom a jury had convicted her of killing.
George Washington Davis, a Negro, loosened part of the Rock Island track southeast of the penitentiary with the idea of notifying the company and securing a job as a reward. He notified them too late. There was a train wreck and 12 were killed. Davis was convicted.
A later incident was the trial of iron-faced Frank Sharp, found guilty of the brutal hammer murder of his wife.
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Hats off! The flag...! Shade your eyes down this vista and summon your imagination. Do you see, falling across these columns, the shadow of a great president and hear out of the past the distant marching of feet and the sound of muted fife and drum?
These columns at the O street entrance of Antelope park, between 23rd and 24th, were once a part of the old federal building in Washington. Standing between them Abraham Lincoln once reviewed the Civil war troops. Easterners, who live in an atmosphere crowded with reminders of the historic great, would smile at such a thin fancy—at attempting somehow to draw Abraham Lincoln across the Missouri river. So far as history shows, the east bank of the Missouri is as far west as Lincoln ever traveled. In the early years of the 60’s he was the guest of General Dodge in Council Bluffs, invited there to help decide where the eastern terminal of the Union Pacific should be. As we recall an early account, Lincoln stood on the bank of the Missouri and gazed westward, but even “on a clear day” such as we like to boast of from the Missouri on west, he could hardly have seen the little village which later would bear his name.
When the treasury building was remodeled in 1907 these sandstone columns were bought by Cotter T. Bride of Washington, a personal friend of William Jennings Bryan. He presented them to the city of Lincoln in 1916.
Halfway between the columns is a bronze tablet relating the origin of the pillars. The tablet, weighing 450 pounds and made from material saved from the battleship Maine, was presented to the city by the U. S. W. V.
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Of the 2,811 libraries which Andrew Carnegie magnanimously scattered over this globe before his death in 1919, five stand in Lincoln—a generous proportion, surely. Perhaps we would not have shared his bounty so fully had it not been that libraries in University Place, College View and Havelock were secured when these sections of Lincoln were still towns in their own right.
Before Mrs. W. J. Bryan interceded to secure a Carnegie building for Lincoln proper the library was as wandering as a poor sharecropper, and burned out about as often. It ceased its nomadic life in 1900, beginning in that year a dignified and permanent existence at Fourteenth and N.
We have it from the librarian, Magnus Kristoffersen, that as many as 2,000 people have been known to walk up the library steps in one day—to take out books or to linger and read. That sounds like a great many people and it probably doesn’t happen often. Even so, the library is doubtless one of the city’s valuable assets. The building is richly lined with 160,000 volumes, written by the great, the near great or the fleetingly great authors of all time. No wonder readers come often to draw mental and spiritual sustenance therefrom.
An attentive staff and a carefully worked system make access to books easy at any of the library buildings. Two branches not mentioned above are Northeast at 27th and Orchard and Bethany at 1551 No. Cotner.
Any Lincoln resident, any child attending Lincoln schools, anyone attending college here or anyone owning property and paying taxes to the city will be issued a borrower’s card, good at any of the city’s libraries. In addition to regular activities, service is given the three principal Lincoln hospitals. A still newer feature is the bookmobile, which makes five stops in the city.
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William Jennings Bryan, who spotlighted Lincoln from the nineties on, died in 1925, shortly after the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee. He had gone to that state to thunder disapproval of John T. Scopes, who was being tried for teaching evolution, contrary to Tennessee law. It is believed that Bryan’s death was hastened by his vigorous efforts in behalf of fundamentalism.
It is interesting to gaze upon this modest church—Normal Methodist, 55th and South—which Bryan attended after his removal to Fairview, and reflect that here, doubtless, were built up the religious convictions which accompanied him—perhaps hastened him—to his grave. Not always did he occupy one of the old fashioned stained oak benches. Often he spoke from the carved pulpit, his hand upon the old metal-clasped Bible, his pontifical and mellow voice filling the little church.
What W. J. Bryan believed he believed with great sincerity and articulateness. First intimations of his gifts as an orator came with the impassioned silver speech in 1896 in which he declared: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” His contemporaries did not always agree with the Great Commoner, but they could not do otherwise than respect his sincerity. He fought for the silver standard, for peace, for prohibition, for fundamentalism, often losing but never giving up the fight.
His lion’s face and mane, his broad hat, his golden voice, are gone, but gashes of his reform ax may still be seen on the surface of the commonwealth.
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For years preceding and following the turn of the century 9th street was definitely a street of wickedness. In fact it was dedicated to the ways of wickedness—it and the shadowy region west, extending down to about K street. There was a law on the books against the sort of houses that filled the redlight district, but instead of enforcing it the police exacted tribute. Every first Monday of the month proprietresses in silks and plumes rustled into the city hall and majestically laid down their gold. As the rate was, we are told, about $15 for inmates and $25 for managers per month, they left a considerable stack on the municipal desk. Most of it went into the public school coffers.
This noisome neighborhood kept police busy. No mere saunter up to the station for a list of parking offenders was the police run in those hectic days. Often a brief telephone call—murder or/and suicide at Rose’s or Rae’s or Kitty’s, took police and reporters hopping. The district was finally closed by the expedient of enforcing the law. The man undertaking this revolutionary method of procedure was Co. Atty. Frank Tyrrell.
One of the well known notorious houses, known as Lydia’s place, stood at 124 So. 9th st. This same building, cleansed in purpose and aspect, was a number of years ago turned into the City Mission by interested Lincoln churches. At the top of the house a lighted star now beckons shabby wayfarers to a free meal and night’s lodging. Looking in at the mission any evening one may see, not parading painted women in short skirts, smoking cigarets—unmistakable marks of sin in the 80’s and 90’s—but seated derelicts lending their cauliflower ears to the nightly religious service.
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When a blond young man, silent and tall, brought his smoking motorcycle to rest in front of E. J. Sias’s airplane and flying school at 2415 O, on April fool’s day, 1922, he probably had no idea, and certainly Lincoln had no idea, that what he learned at the flying school would one day catapult him into fame. Unnoticed Charles Lindbergh traversed the streets of Lincoln, quiet and untalkative.
After his spectacular air voyage of May 20-21, 1927—spectacular and yet on his part made as quietly as his entrance into Lincoln five years before, the flying school suddenly became a mecca. Young men were siphoned out of Australia, Scotland, China, New Guinea and dumped at the door of the school—young men talking in divers tongues but speaking the same language aeronautically. Since the war started men in uniform have almost cracked the walls of the aeronautical institute.
The name of E. J. Sias is synonymous now with the words flying school. But 30 years ago he was the energetic young minister who plucked Tabernacle Christian church out of a cocked hat before the startled eyes of south Lincoln. One day, June 21, 1912, he and a group in his home thought up a Christian church in that part of the city. Two days later they met and planned a building and 60 men volunteered to put up a structure between morning light and evening dark. The heat of late June prevented quite this much of a miracle, but anyway, on June 30, nine days after the initial meeting, the tabernacle was ready for occupancy. Rather, it was occupied—by 800 people listening to the dedicatory sermon. This building sufficed its congregation ten years. By that time Mr. Sias was deep in something else—flying.
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The postoffice is a noble building, filling half a block on P street between Ninth and Tenth. But, mysteriously, filtered thru a picture-taker’s lens it takes on the appearance of a toy model still sitting on the architect’s desk. This is most deceiving. It is really a handsome and majestic building, of Bedford stone, standing very massively on its green lawn.
It isn’t just a postoffice, as you learned when you were initiated into the Income Taxpayers lodge. Also, if you want to ask how about that money you’re going to get from Uncle Sam when 65, how about a loan for putting up a hog house, how about keeping the black dirt on your farm from drifting into the Missouri, how about enlisting in the army or navy, you go to the postoffice—and also the FBI will reach out from the postoffice and get you if you don’t watch out. If the United States wants to try you for some federal offense, that’s where the trial will be. Having steered clear of this court, the only case we recall offhand is the Nye committee hearing in the Grocer Norris senatorial case.
The first federal court was held in November 1864, in a log building on the south side of O between Seventh and Eighth. Elmer S. Dundy was the judge. The postoffice was run by Jacob Dawson in conjunction with a grocery in the front end, so that office and courtroom were enlivened with the smell of codfish, coffee and tobacco. Somewhere within the log cabin and between the codfish and the cases at bar Mr. Dawson kept house—it may be with the help of a Mrs. Dawson, but one can read early histories of Lincoln from preface to index without finding mention of a woman, so thoroly was the sex still in subjugation.
The postoffice began taking on dignity in 1879 when it moved into its new building on government square, now the city hall. The first section of the present building was put up in 1906; the last, which made it the impressive edifice it is today, only a year or two ago.
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Some day when you emerge from the Varsity, 13th and P, and look up at the weather your eyes may come to rest on “The Oliver” in old fashioned lettering on the battlements of the ancient building, and for a moment you may idly wonder about the playhouse’s past. It does in truth have considerable past, reckoned in terms of famous actors who trod its boards, of orators who thundered in debate over silver and gold standards, suffrage for women and other problems of the past.
The theater, first known as The Lansing, opened in 1891 with Ed Church in charge, and with Lillian Lewis and her company gracing the stage in “L’Article 47” with the sinister subhead “The trail of the serpent is overall.” Yet Gen. Victor Vifquain, rhapsodizing in the opening night souvenir booklet, said: “The Lansing will become an athaeneum where a husband can take his wife and daughter, the brother and sister without fear of bringing a blush upon the cheeks of those whose modesty is of priceless value to them and to the community of which they are the ornaments and the pride.” Anyway, it was a good old chest-expanding sentence.
A Journal man who has attended shows at this theater off and on for 50 years gives us the following list of famous players he recalls having seen at the Lansing (later Oliver): John Drew, Ethel Barrymore, Edwin Booth, Laurence Barrett, Joe Jefferson, Emma Eames, Sol Smith Russell, Blanche Bates, Billie Burke, George M. Cohan, Weber & Fields, Willie Collier, Otis Skinner, Maxine Elliott, Robert Mantell, Elsie DeWolfe, Nat Goodwin, Dustin Farnam, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Trixie Fraganza, DeWolfe Hopper, Virginia Harned, Elsie Janis, Margaret Illington, Mary Mannering, Julia Marlowe, E. H. Sothern, Lillian Nordica, Alice Nielsen, Chauncey Olcott, May Robson, Eleanor Robson, Stuart Robson, Madame Modjeska.
Vividly connected with the history of the theater, as it is with Lincoln itself, is the name of Frank C. Zehrung, to whom death came recently. For almost 70 years a citizen of Lincoln, he was for perhaps half that time manager of the Oliver.
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Before winter puts out a white hand to stay us (which we trust won’t be soon, altho there are hints of early frost), it would be pleasant to make a tour of Lincoln gardens. However, we wouldn’t want to flatten our sight-seeing noses against front windows, and the gardens which can be seen entire from the street are few. In a simpler day, we Americans put our iron deer and dogs, petunias and hollyhocks in a big front yard and then naively sat on our big front porches to see passersby and have passersby see our elegant homes and lawns. Now that we have grown more subtle and English and hide gardens in the back and put inscrutable faces on our houses, seeing gardens on a tour isn’t so easy. But the gardens are there and one can get pleasing glimpses.
Imagine a Lincoln in which all the houses perched desolately on barren lots. Not a tree, not a curving path, not a flower. Then you will indeed appreciate those patient and imaginative garden lovers who with a few rocks, seeds, hoes and hoses turn desert lots into oases. There are pretty little gardens around modest houses, large beautiful gardens around mansions, altogether making Lincoln a charming lady of gardens.
Peer with us thru Dr. Harry Everett’s gates at 2433 Woodscrest for a glimpse of his delightful ivory complexioned house with its maroon awnings and blue windows, and his formal garden. Dr. Everett is an iris specialist and is or has been president of the national iris society.
So charming is this quiet scene, with the September sun falling in bars across the lawn, the soldierly evergreens silently on guard, that even the sudden appearance of five beautiful senoritas on the five balconies would be an intrusion not to be desired.
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Doubtless you know the delightful and intimate sound of rain which only a staunch immediate attic roof keeps off your face. Walking into the Chapin home at 3805 Calvert one has a similar pleasurable sensation. It is a beautiful house, and of course actually very protective, yet one has the feeling of being near the earth—still in the garden. This possibly comes from walking into it levelly from broad low flagstones. Inside one looks out thru great wide-eyed windows so flawless that he seems not to be separated from the rock garden and its mountain stream or the green plush lawn which falls away into the wood.
We grew up near the woods, but “the wood” seems more suitable for this fairy house (glorified French peasant). And the nicest thing about these trees which circle the Chapins’ two and a half acres is that they are original ones and came along free with Nebraska. Luckily the recent dry years—do you remember them—did not affect the small forest, in which hundreds of birds sing.
Inside, as the earth slowly turns, the Chapins can watch the seasons as on a stage, or as a great framed picture turning slowly from green to russet and brown, from brown to white. On the sloping green outside a silver gazing globe pictures the lawn in miniature.
One could exclaim over many things—the garden to the north, where a thousand gladioli grow—the balcony from which one half expects a pretty peasant girl or a blessed damozel to lean.
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What, in the words of the atrocious daily puzzle of that name, is wrong with this picture? Very easy indeed. No angels in flat heels and sweaters are ascending and descending the stairs. Actually, they have begun the continuous zigzag on the Student Union steps for the season. They may be going to or coming from a spot of lunch in the Corn Crib, a friendly coke, bridge or pingpong, time out on the marshmallow upholstery of the lounge, or a late afternoon hour dance.
And cease your sighs and murmurs that when you and I were young we had lessons to get and nobody put us up a Student Union building. For one thing, the tots may have mastered all lessons up to and including next Tuesday morning. For another, the building is theirs, or will be in 80,000 easy payments. At six dollars a year, 10,000 university educations laid end to end ought to about close the Student Union books.
Incidentally, it’s well worth two and a half cents a day to city campus students, especially the ones who have made no entangling alliances with fraternity or sorority, and they’re in the great majority—probably 75 percent. Here’s a place to do almost anything you can think of—or they can think of, which is more comprehensive.
In the basement are offices of student publications, Awgwan, Cornhusker and Daily Nebraskan and a ping-pong room. Office of building manager, grill room, cafeteria, lounges and book nook are on first. On second floor are offices of alumni association, university foundation and University speakers bureau, ballroom, dining rooms, game room and faculty lounge. Dining rooms and student organization rooms occupy the third floor. Mortar Board and Innocents have fourth-floor dormer rooms.
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To get the desired three by four inch view of Nebraska’s stadium a photographer might walk around it seven times and his pursuit would still be in vain, for it ovals away from him endlessly. One could get a pointblank shot at it from the air, but empty seats, even people enmasse, bundled in blankets, aren’t as attractive as arched windows, which lend beauty to the mammoth structure. In the foreground of this picture is the military department’s reviewing stand, which furnished not only requisite proportions but perspective suitable to the times, war now having put college athletics in the background with no gentle hand.
The stadium, which holds 30,000 without the bleachers, is a memorial to U. of N. men who have died in the nation’s wars. The half million dollar cost was defrayed by students, faculty, alumni and friends. Many a tonsil shredding joust has taken place within the stadium’s great arms. The following from the helpful typewriter of Walter Dobbins gives details:
“The first game played on stadium sod was with the Oklahoma Sooners, Oct. 13, 1923, just a week before dedication of the bowl. With its building Nebraska became a ‘big time’ football school. Games were scheduled with top flight teams from north, south, east and west. The largest crowd ever packed into the home field witnessed Nebraska’s 7 to 0 victory over Indiana Oct. 20, 1937.
“Some of Nebraska’s gridiron triumphs have been recorded at the stadium, including the amazing 14 to 7 victory over Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen in 1923; the 17 to 0 win over Rockne’s eleven in 1924 and the last of the 11 game series with the Fighting Irish. New York U.’s national title hopes were blasted on the same field in 1926 and 1927. Greatest of all victories, however, are later ones—the 14 to 9 defeat of Minnesota in 1937 and the 6-9 win over the Gophers in 1939.”
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This decapitated building may look ready for the scrap heap, but sentimental Nebraskans would indignantly refuse to have it scrapped, for it is the remains of the original campus building. Once it housed the university entire, even offering sleeping room on the two upper stories for men students.
First recollection invoked is of “Miss Bishop,” Bess Streeter Aldrich’s filmed story of primitive university life, which had its premiere in Lincoln. Another is Oscar Wilde’s visit to the university in the eighties. There, garbed in his eccentric finery, he walked unhappy as a strange cat, distressed by the uncouthness of Nebraska and its university and especially by the ugly castiron stove which heated the premises. After expressing this distress, along with his regular lecture, Wilde, in knee breeches, buckled slippers and velvet coat, shuddered his way back to the Arlington hotel, 841 Q, and was soon lost to this region forever. Nobody was depressed over his disapproval and irrepressible Journal reporters put him and the castiron stove into facetious rhyme.
The cornerstone for U hall was laid Sept. 23, 1869, with ceremonies—Masonic ceremonies, in fact. An Omaha brass band led a procession and a thousand people banqueted—which must have more than depopulated residential Lincoln—then danced until 4 in the morning.
Lumber for the building was shipped from Chicago to Nebraska City and thence came slowly over the hills in wagons. Brick was burned in a kiln on Little Salt creek. On Jan. 6, 1871, the doors swung open and in walked ninety young men and women. Rumors that the building was unsafe continued off and on for fifty years. Every now and then some propping was done. Finally the two top floors and belltower were taken off, but classes are still held on the remaining first floor.
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The beautiful new library, now North Thirteenth’s visual shortstop, will make 1871-1942 students brothers to the pioneer who slept, ate, cooked, played and quarreled in one room. The new edifice has a student lounge, auditorium, social studies reading room, general and humanities reading room and browsing room. Those who did their lounging, their browsing, their studying of the humanities and their date making all in one big room under an uncompromising row of green shaded lights will feel outmoded indeed.
But casting envy aside, this generous gift, one of several from the late Don Love, is a welcome addition to the campus and the city. True, it turns its back on the city as it communes perpetually with its sisters of The Quadrangle—teachers’ college, social sciences and Andrews hall—but it is a slender ribbed, sightly and aristocratic back. Earlier buildings were sardine-packed on a small campus. Later edifices, given space on the avenue, took on social graces. To the north of the quadrangle, Memorial mall forms the center of another group of aristocrats—Morrill hall, Bessey hall, Memorial stadium and the Coliseum.
The new library is not yet completed. We had wondered if, when the day of occupancy came, the former library would go the way of the old cannon which once stood guard beside it. This cannon, brought to the campus from the fortress of Havana at the end of the Spanish-American war, was dedicated with ceremony as a memorial to Nebraska students who had fought for Cuban freedom. The cannon had stood in Seville in the time of Charles III of Spain.
A few weeks ago the cannon was ignominiously trucked off for scrap, without ceremony or apology. But the library is to remain and will now house the university’s extension department.
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That rugged old warrior, Grant Memorial Hall (campus, 12th and S) now resounds to commands no more stirring than a set-up singsong to which co-eds stretch muscles and limber joints in accordance with university physical education requirements. It was built, however, for sterner purposes. Once the shuffle and click of guns could be heard within its soldierly exterior as Lt. John Pershing sang out brisk orders to his cadets. The hall was erected in honor of Nebraska’s Civil war veterans in 1887, when those veterans were comparatively young men. Pershing was commandant from 1891 to 1895. The military department is now housed in Nebraska hall, a block to the north.
During the university’s middle years convocations were held in Grant Memorial. The pipe organ in the west half of the second story came from the Mississippi exposition held in Omaha in 1898. It was a gift from alumni who purchased it for $2,500. For years Carrie Belle Raymond, for whom one of the girls’ residence halls is named, played the organ for convocation. Thousands of graduates recall her always smiling face as she sat high above them, fingers hovering over the organ keys.
In Grant Memorial also are housed the U. of N. radio studio and the department of architecture.
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With the exception of the school of music, which began as a private institution, The Temple, at 12th and R, is the only university building which does not stand on the campus. The reason for this seeming ostracism of the Temple—indeed, actual ostracism at the time it was built, is that it was a gift from John D. Rockefeller, jr. The time was 1906, when muckraking and Rockefeller reviling were at their height. Rockefeller had been a student at Brown university when E. Benjamin Andrews, in 1906 chancellor at Nebraska, was its president.
The name of Rockefeller and the smell of oil were offensive to those who had to do with accepting and placing buildings, but the gift was not quite to be refused. The Temple was delicately dropped outside the gates. However, the Temple has been a useful and busy edifice these 35 years, and but for reporters with fingers always crooked hungrily over typewriter keys old ghosts would not have been disturbed. The Y. M. C. A. has used the Temple for headquarters and other innocent activities have been housed therein.
Principally, however, the building is known as the theater of the University Players, Lincoln’s theatrical stock company, personnel of which consists of instructors and advanced students of dramatic art. Six plays are presented each university year. Here Fred Ballard’s “Believe Me Xantippe” had its premiere—Mr. Ballard being a university student some 35 years ago. His more recent “Ladies of the Jury” also appeared here, but not the premiere. A number of the players have become known elsewhere—Zolly Lerner, Augusta French, Jack Rank and others. The name of Miss H. Alice Howell, for years director of The Players, is inevitably connected with this organization.