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Eastern Illinois University, Then and Now
by Hiram F. Thut, Professor of Botany
1932-1973
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Bishop's Woods comprising 40 acres was acquired by the state in 1895 for
$3000 during the administration of Governor Altgelt for use as a college site.
Indiana limestone was the preferred material for the construction of Old Main
thus bypassing Embarras stone. The pictures begin with my arrival at Eastern in
the fall of 1932; however a few slides of Charleston and surrounding areas were
derived from other sources which have been acknowledged on the individual
slides.
(Ed. Bishop's
Woods ca. 1910)
When you carry a camera around, you take incidental pictures. It's
been kinda fun, but I should have been told 40 years ago that I was going to
have to give a speech. I have 80 slides in this batch and I ought to have 20 good
slides. And if the Chinese expression "a picture is worth a thousand
words" then with 20 slides, my lecture is 20,000 words long. So, I think
without further ado, I will show you some pictures around Charleston, Illinois.
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1. Summer,
1940 |
2. Fall,
1940 |
3.
Winter, 1941 |
4. Spring, 1941 |
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If you have ever driven a car on Sixth Street and have seen this sight, you were in the wrong. This is
sixth street looking north - and you're not
supposed to go north on Sixth Street. This
is just beyond Polk and there's the courthouse. Don't you see the
courthouse? All of us know in a deciduous forest area we have Spring,
Summer, Fall and Winter and that makes for some happy seasons and makes for
change. So, here is Sixth Street --- all approximately at the same spot. |
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5. Sketch of the campus plans by DuBois, the architect, as drawn in 1899. |
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I found in the Planner's Office an old, old record of sort of a sketch of
the campus. The campus is as you know Fourth Street and Seventh Street and Cleveland and of course at the top is Lincoln. This is Old Main. Right there and
behind Old Main, not very far, is the power house. If you ever have a
good friend in the maintenance department you can go in Old Main and walk under
what is now the Art Exhibit Room -- it used to be called the Old Auditorium -- you
could walk underground through a tunnel
that goes over to the power plant and a tunnel that goes over to McAfee Gym.
(Ed. Greenhouse
and powerhouse ca. 1903)
The campus not only had a circle in front of Old
Main but there would be a road here and a lake right there. Now the lake
never grew this big, in fact the lake was a little farther north than this
sketch illustrates, but you see, this is quite a sizeable lake and here on the
other part of it, is the road, it continues around... So this
is the scheme of the campus.
(Ed. Eastern
Illinois Normal School looking north on July 27, 1907)
And
because Charleston promised that they would supply the college with
all the water that they wanted, it was going to have a lake. Well, since we got
water for nothing, we could fill up a lake. But after a few years it got so
expensive that the town reneged on supplying us with water to fill up the lake
and we had to buy the water for the lake as well as the water for everything
else we needed for campus. Now this lake was built from what was partially an old tile
mill... the plants on this picture are schematic. The campus had a few trees here and
they called it the grove at the south end of the campus. [This was the
original] 40 acres.
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6. Old Main, 1954. |
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7. Old Main, 1973. |
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Old Main of course had an oval in front and you can see that the
cars are parked right by the front door way back when people couldn't walk
quite as far as they can today. But they've moved the parking area a little
farther out and of course they widened Lincoln Avenue. |
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8. First aerial view of campus ca. 1935 (From E.I.T.C. Summer Bulletin, 1937 No.
135). |
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(Ed.
Aerial view
of campus early 1940s)
(Ed.
Aerial view
of campus ca. 1950)
Now, here's a picture I've borrowed, an air-view picture and you can see
Lincoln Avenue here, just a side street, so to speak, a little two lane road.
Now there's the oval and you have to remember that Old Main was the only building on the campus
60 years ago and in Old
Main they
had everything that happened at the college. They had elementary grades. They
had some high school youngsters. In fact much of the work at the beginning of
the school was more or less high school work because these people had to catch up on grade
work so they could go out and teach. So this castle was originally just a
teacher-training institution for elementary grades, primarily.
(Ed. Eastern
Illinois Normal School campus, Summer 1902.)
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9. Corner of the campus at
Seventh and Lincoln in early years. |
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Here is Old Main and we had a botanist by the name of Otis Caldwell and he
was quite a famous chap. He left here and went to the University of Chicago and
then he went to Columbia and he became General Secretary of the AAAS for years
and years and years. I met him on many occasions and he always had a
very kind feeling for Eastern. It was surprising how he was so taken with how he had enjoyed Eastern. Now, many of these things in front,
Caldwell planted. He planted a lot of tulip trees, horse
chestnut, maples, cottonwood and many of those along Fourth Street disappeared.
And the oldest tree, there I think that's part of it, the oldest tree in the
circle was a hickory. I counted a hundred and seventy-five rings. So that tree
was there when the building was built and the circle did not eliminate the
hickory. |
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10.
Old Main after widening Lincoln Avenue. |
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Same picture, but you see we've eliminated an awful lot of the trees. And
the trees that they cut down at the time were exactly the same age as Old Main
because Mr. Caldwell arrived first and after two or three years he bought some
trees to plant out front. But, you see, he bought two or three year old trees and
the campus was also three years old, so you could count the rings on the trees
and you would know exactly how old the building was |
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11. Greenhouse as built in 1903 from Eastern Illinois Teachers College Bulletin No. 37 for 1912. |
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Now the power plant was just behind
Old Main. The first building on the campus, due to the energies of Mr. Caldwell
was a greenhouse. And, in this greenhouse Mr. Lord was happy that the
youngsters could see bananas growing and orchids growing and some other tropical
plants so he was happy to have a greenhouse, just back up against the power
plant. South of this place was then filled up when they built what
they used to call the Home Ec and Industrial Arts building. Now its called the
Student Service Center. |
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12. Hockey field from
the 1912 Senior Book. |
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Now we're looking northeast and there is the
greenhouse and this is the hockey field, although they occasionally did play
football and you see they had a drive around the greenhouse and it was a little
higher up than this hockey field. Right here, today, of course, is the Union
building. |
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13. Lily Pond south east of the old greenhouse from the 1912 Senior Book. |
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Looking northwest, looking at the greenhouse, there
was a lily pond. And, when they built this Industrial Arts [Student Services] building
the lily pond disappeared.
Now the next picture is standing approximately in this lily pond, although it
wasn't there, and we're looking northwest. Ready? |
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14. Site of the old greenhouse looking toward Pemberton in April, 1969. |
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Don't you see the
greenhouse right there? That's the greenhouse right there. So it was, as I
said before, just behind Old Main and right approximately in that position. Of
course the greenhouse was steel or iron and glass. And of course the iron rusted
pretty badly so that the last several years the greenhouse was held together by
nails and wire and goodness knows what else. They propped it up for several
years and when they pulled it down, they pulled on it and half of it collapsed. So it was pretty well
gone. |
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15. Pemberton Hall,
1973. |
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Of course, the second building on the campus was Pem Hall [built in 1909]. I wish I had an
early picture. This
is Pem Hall and this is the Cracker Box [image 14]. The Cracker Box was the gymnasium. The
only way that the school could get a gymnasium was to hitch it onto the girl's
dorm. So in this bookstore was where we used to see basketball games. Apparently before we had this basketball
court they played
basketball on the top floor of Old Main West. Some of those walls weren't in
there then, so they played basketball up there. But up to there was Pem Hall when we got here. And many of the social functions of the school,
including the Faculty Christmas Dinner were held in Pem Hall. [Many school
dances were held in the Cracker Box]
(Ed.
Pemberton
Hall, 1912 Senior Yearbook)
(Ed.
Cracker Box ,1912 Senior Yearbook)
(Ed.
Aesthetic
dancing in Cracker Box,1912 Senior Yearbook)
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16. West end of Old Main in September, 1973. |
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I think all of you have seen this picture from Lincoln Street looking south
you can see Pem Hall to the right. Beyond it of course is the Cracker Box. Beyond
that of course is the Physical Science building, ad infinitum. |
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17. East side of Blair
Hall, 1973. |
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(Ed. Blair Hall was built in 1913. Francis G. Blair was a personal friend of Mr. Lord's and was
the head of the training school. He later became the Illinois Superintendent of
Public Instruction. Mr. Lord insisted on being called Mr. Lord. He said that at
Harvard the teachers were called Mister. Blair Hall was originally known as the
"model school" and later as the "training" school. Mrs. Thut,
nee Elizabeth Howell, was a "critic" teacher and had an office in this
building. All practice teaching was done here on campus)
The third building of
course, was the Model School which became the Training School which became
Blair Hall which was taken over by the Commerce and what was the other?
Business Department. It started out as a
Model School and Mr. Lord thought you ought to have good illustrations of
teaching. We taught on Saturday so that the teachers of the surrounding area
could come in and observe student teaching in the Model School. I should add there is a road right along
the front of this school and it's
the road that went around Old Main and the greenhouse and past this
building.
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18. The school garden. Each grade school class had a plot. This picture is from the 1912 bulletin #37. |
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Now there's Old Main, we're looking north. Mr. Nearling was grounds man. Mr. Nearling had,
I think, an Instructor's rating and all the youngsters in the training school had plots and they raised garden stuff in these plots so they had red beets
and tomatoes and everything else including weeds growing in their garden plots.
(Ed.
Model
School garden)
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19. Garden south of the
power house, 1938. |
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When Dr. Buzzard arrived... Dr. Buzzard was an iris man, and so the iris
plants moved in [to this garden plot]. We were looking north - now we are looking
south. And these are peonies, you can see the peonies and iris, so
that south of the power house was this garden. And they put in a little lily
pond. And I don't know if any of you can remember back this stage or not, but
I would think some of you could, because this was Mr. Buzzard's pet flower
garden, and for one or two weeks of the year it was very lovely. There was nothing on the far [east] side, just nothing,
except the trees, of course. Then the area became Quonset huts for the grades,
but then it became something else - are you ready for something else? |
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20. Electric transformers south of the power house in 1967. |
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This is
approximately the same picture in the location that the garden was and I think all
of you recognize this. But, there was a beautiful flower garden here. |
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Slide
show page 2 Slide show page 3 Slide
show page 4 |
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