University of Delaware - Blue Hen Yearbook (Newark, DE)

Page 22 text:

IN the early days of the history of the College, student and public assemblies were held in a large room in the Oratory , as Old College was then called. It was here that for several years the students were required to attend morning prayers at half-past six. At the end of their three- ear course this large room, bare and unadorned except For the decorations put up by the students in honor of their literary societies, served as a commencement hall. The public used the hall for lectures, entertainments, church meetings, and political rallies. With the increased enrollment in the student body, it became necessary to have a more adequate assembly room. This need was met by the inclusion ;L an auditorium in Wolf Hall when it was constructed in 1917. In 1929, Mitchell Hall was erected and given to the Univer- sity by an alumnus, H. Rodney Sharp. This, the most modern of the college buildings, provides a perfect assembly hall. t includes complete stage facilities, light- ing control system, and the finest collegiate organ in the country, the gift of Pierre S. DuPont.

Page 24 text:

IT is a task indeed to pick out of these all-too-short four years of undergraduate life at Delaware . . . years brimful of pleasurable incidents, long hours of study . . . some one thing or some one series of things which stands out above all the rest. Strong is the memory of laboratory, machine shop, class room, sports, and even studying now and then. Years will never erase these memories. But there is just one memory that stands out above all the rest, and that is a memory of a picture rather than of a happening or a habit. It is the picture of the wonderful old campus in the spring with its well trimmed lawn framed with those stately old lindens and young budding maples. Remember the luxury of the long, lazy twilights out under those glorious trees, when we gazed for hours at a time across the top of a stiffly posed book and never turned a page. We tried to study, it's true, but the trees wouldn't let us; they brought wonderful dreams of life to us. Those blessed old trees! Save 'em always!' Adapted from a letter by James Gilpin Lewis, Crass of 1912. The Editors acknowledge their indebtedness to Edward N. Vallandigham's Fifty Years of Delaware College from which much of the information for the foregoing sketches was obtained.