NSHS RG2758-48-3
In this cabinet card photo, University of Nebraska Chancellor James Canfield delivers a speech to the graduating Class of 1892. As a gift to the university, the graduates purchased a three-ton red granite boulder and convinced the railroads to transport it from northeast Nebraska to Lincoln at no charge. The boulder was dedicated with speeches and photographs, and the class sang “Auld Lang Syne” to conclude the ceremony.
Twenty-three years earlier, Professor Samuel Aughey found the boulder on a hilltop four miles south of Hartington. Aughey realized that it was left by a retreating glacier, but what interested him most was a “beautiful engraving of a child’s foot, a half moon, a grape vine, and other hieroglyphics” on the rock’s surface.[i]
The boulder (which now lies outside Morrill Hall) was placed in front of where the new library would soon be built. Canfield may well be talking about the library in his speech. He took pride in the new building and kept a close eye on the contractors during construction.
Today the former library is known as Architecture Hall, the oldest building on campus. Although construction began in the months after this photo, the work stopped after the Panic of 1893, a nationwide financial meltdown that led to one of the worst economic depressions in U.S. history.
For two more years the library’s north wing stood unfinished (lacking even a door), and “looking about as disconsolate as a Nebraska cornfield after a hot wind.”[ii] Students, meanwhile, made do with a library jammed into two rooms of old University Hall, “jostling each other, breathing the foul air and straining their eyes” in the flickering glow of gaslights, according to the Hesperian student newspaper.[iii] Led by managing editor Willa Cather, the Hesperian complained repeatedly about the old library; the new building with tall windows and electric lights opened a semester after Cather graduated. A team of seven students carried books in hods like bricklayers, moving 1,500 volumes a day until all 30,000 volumes were placed on their new shelves.[iv]
—David L. Bristow, Editor
This article first appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of Nebraska History magazine.
“Library Hall – Summer 1902.” NSHS RG2758-10-15
The boulder at its present location in front of Morrill Hall.
Sources:
[i] “Hartington Rock Planted,” Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln), June 18, 1892.
[ii] Lincoln Evening News, Dec. 5, 1895.
[iii] Hesperian, Feb. 1, 1895.
[iv] “For the Opening Year,” Lincoln Evening News, Sept. 21, 1895.
