University of Nebraska Lincoln - Cornhusker Yearbook (Lincoln, NE)

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' iJ 1 r ( gfi j 1 I ' K fl ' ' 1 J ' - 1 1 B B rfte Street of a 1000 Columns

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THE, CORNHUSKER. 5S NIN E-TE ieNWTWE.IsnrY m Now who would have thought they could ever have gotten such an effect! Just gaze down Twelfth. It ' s a classic. Classic is the word. After they had huilt the Social Sciences and Chem. Lab., with their pillared porticoes, the idea came home that Twelfth must carry the conception straight through. I think it was in Zenobia ' s Palmyra — one of the ancient cities, anyhow, — there was a street called ' The Street of a Thousand Columns. ' We ' ve carried out the image here, — a series of pillared porticoes, a vista of majestic columns. The effect is magnificent! We call it the Court of Columns. It is a court, you see, and ends, three blocks down, in the pillared portico of the first building put up after the Great War. Oh, I know that all right. Like every other ' 20 I ' ve a financial stake in the Soldiers ' Memorial Gymnasium. Helped to build it. Yes, we all went in for it, and glad we were to do it. It gave us the needed gymnasium, and besides that it is a beautiful memorial to Ne- braska ' s soldiers and sailors and nurses, and all who gave themselves for the state. For years after it was first built the great floor served as an assembly hall for the University, when indoor space was needed. It has seen many a high fete in the past years. No building on the campus is richer in associations for the younger alumni. The Athletic Field is beyond, of course, — where it used to be? Yes, in the same place. But it is really fine now. All solid concrete. The trophies won in the big stadium year by year take their places in the Trophy Room. But you know Nebraska ' s record in athletics. She had hardly begun in our day. I suppose the new intra-mural program (it was new, then) had some- thing to do with it? Everything! It made us thrice leader in no time. But we shall learn more of that when we get to the dormitory quads. From here, beyond the Gym., rising high, you see the smoke-stacks of the heat and light plant, which is on the track frontage. Evidently it is a big one. Yes, it is for the whole campus, dormitories and all. Do you know, the stacks really make impressive towers, don ' t you think so? Yes, I do. Folks often guy me for admiring these immense modern sqioke-stacks. But they are wrong and I am right. They are really tremendous, in their way; and when there is a plume of smoke from the top, beautiful. The high smoke-stack, the tubular elevator, the silo, and the water-tower — these are to the western American Landscape what castles and fighting towers were to Europe, in the way of picturesqueness. We ' ve come to see it, and, as you ' ll notice, the architects haven ' t disdained giving the right touch of ornament even to a smoke-stack. Are we going down Twelfth ? ' The Court of Columns is no longer Twelfth street. It is a part of the University Campus and is closed to all except Uni traflic. But we shall not enter there. I want to take you in first by the entrance which every stranger in Lincoln asks for, and into the building which is the monument of them all. Can you guess? That ' s easy. Why even in ' 20 the first question put was, ' Which way to the Museum ' ? It ' s world-famous now. Yes, the Museum. And with it the State Historical and Fine Arts and 26

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CORMHUSKER. NIN E,Tr« ■BK-CtTWE.N ' TY triple from Is it the University Library all combined, as they should be, in one great cluster of halls. This is the facade of it, stretching down R street, Twelfth to Fourteenth, with what was Thirteenth street as its center, not fine? Magnificent. But why did you say the libraries and museums ought to be combined ? Think a moment. The core of a sound education is represented by the humanities and the sciences, that is, by knowledge of man and by knowledge of nature. And isn ' t it just these that libraries, preserving human history; and letters, and museums, which portray natural history and exhibit the rocks which are nature ' s letters, — isn ' t it just these, humanities and sciences, that are here memorialized? The core of every college is its books, printed by man on paper, by nature in the rocks. Here we bring them together. You make something of a case, I must own. You ' ll appreciate it more when you see how perfectly its application fits Nebraska ' s needs. Here is the Social Science Building, housing history, philos- ophy, economics, political science, — just the subjects that call for the most extensive use of the library and just the subjects most nearly interested in the story of man as museums tell it. And right here, meeting the south portico of the Social Sciences, is the west portico and west wing of the new Nebraska Hall, as we call it. The west wing (it is a building in itself) houses the State Historical Society and the Anthropological Museum. There are, of course, study and work rooms as well as exhibits; and it has long since become known as one of the leading institutions devoted to recording the history of America, not only in Nebraska, but in both the American continents. Oh, I know. You ' ve sent a lot of expeditions out, and made a lot of real discoveries. History cannot be localized. It branches wherever men go. Exactly. And that is part of the prosperity of having this investigational work as it were tete-a-tete with the instructional history of the Social Sciences. I can tell you that it has been a grand practical school for the students of the University. I don ' t need telling. But isn ' t this a superb entrance! Or, rather, series of entrances ; for it seems to be triple. Yes, it is so. I haven ' t yet more than begun on the general plan of this new Nebraska Hall, which you will see is pretty well named, for it answers and serves the whole state of Nebraska as no other single structure on the campus. We are standing at what used to be the intersection of Thirteenth and R streets, and at what is now the very focal entrance to the campus. This triple entrance leads into the three great divisions of Nebraska Hall. As I have just explained, this to the west is given over to the work of the Historical Society. The central structure, with the fine dome, is the University Library (I ought to say, the Nebraska Library, for its books circulate through the whole state nowadays). It is fitted like the key-stone of an arch into the whole campus plan. Here we are at the entrance only; but the completed structure leads north, covering what was formerly Thirteenth, as far as the Mall, that is, to the line of the north front of the Social Sciences, and there is another fine entrance, from the center of the campus. The arrangement, from the stu- dent ' s point of view, and from the town ' s too, is really ideal. Is it in this building that the famous murals are placed? Yes, indeed ; and we are about to go in and see them. But first I want to explain the third division of the building, which is actually the largest of all — the Museum. It has an entrance here, symmetrical with that to the Historical 28