Elmhurst College - Elms Yearbook (Elmhurst, IL)

Page 16 text:

Old Main, the building with the tower, holds a commanding position on the campus and in Elmhurst college life. Here are located the administration and business offices, class- rooms, and science laboratories. In the base- ment stands the Student Union store, place of hungry crowds, friendly gatherings, and coke dates. What was once the men ' s Y room has this year been transformed into a social room, a new project of the Union. The THE CAMPUS faculty room is invaded by students only on those occasions when they must creep in and sheepishly shove a late paper in some pro- fessor ' s mail box. Memories will long be treas- ured of happy days of spirited debates, in- spiring lectures and classes, gay informals in the Women ' s Union room, and friendships born and strengthened in quiet halls and stair- ways within those walls where ivy climbs. Old Main still casts the protecting shadow of its tower across the campus as it has since its erection in 1878. A new and unusual shot of the rear of Old Main provides an interesting study in lights and shad- ows, angles and perpen- diculars. 12

Page 15 text:

ON A PICTURESQUE CAMPUS ELMHURST COLLEGE EDUCATES HER YOUTH FOR THE BUILDING OF TOMORROW From huge, grimy cities hot beneath the noonday sun, from little farmhouses sitting alone on an open prairie, from tiny houses on side streets in small towns silent in the flickering of the streetlights and the stars come scores of young men and women to Elmhurst College to seek the desires of their hearts, to find — they know not what. In the shadow of the tower of Old Main they stroll about the campus beneath the elms; they scramble merrily with the autumn leaves to the commons; they hurry across the field to the gym on a windy winter day, they stop on the library steps on warm, spring days to laugh and talk together; they find at every step and turn memories to keep with them always of firm, old, buildings rich with tra- dition, of faces and voices of friends they will alwavs love, of a college life beautiful in both its happiness and sincerity. Keen, young eyes gaze with open wonder at a test tube held up to the open light of day: they search the printed page probing deeply into the questions of the ages; they stare with admiration at the beauties of nature; they pause silently in mute worship and reverence in the stillness of the chapel. Thoughts of the year 1943-44 will bring back memories of events peculiar to it alone. 1943-44. This was the year of the polio epi- demic and the campus quarantine. This was the year the bovs continued leaving, going on to Lancaster, to Eden, or into the unknown; the year the Student Union room was planned and decorated: when every room of Irion Hall was filled and the women outnumbered the men. This was the year when young hearts understood at last that to look into the future is to look into darkness — to look into it bravely is to see the dawn of a new hope. a

Page 17 text:

The Library, erected in 1921 as a memorial to Evangelical men who fell in World War I, is delightfully centered among trees and shrubbery. The Library is the intellectual center of Elm- hurst college life, where all the wonders and enchantments of far off places may be explored, famous men of bygone days met, and ideals of better things to come nourished bv those who wander alone along the trails between the book- ends. Quiet heads are bowed in deep concen- tration over a lengthy volume, ink and paper meet to hold ideas in their grasp forever, and the deep silence is broken only by an occasional greeting or scraping of a chair as one person gives way to another in the endless search for knowledge. The Commons, as may be expected, is one of the most frequently visited buildings upon the campus. In spite of ever-present quips and in- sults aimed at the tireless efforts of the kitchen staff, the lines at mealtimes are noticeably long and hungry. The long day begins with the sleepy trek to the dining room and nears its end as the Commons door closes on the last straggler at dinnertime. An important division of the building is the infirmary on the upper floors, also visited often, though perhaps with not such pleasant memories. A portrait of the Commons reveals much of the hidden beauty of this hall built in 1896. 13