University of Wisconsin Madison - Badger Yearbook (Madison, WI)

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Another of the university’s treasured traditions, the tower clock of Music Hall, was brought from the Paris Exposition in 1878 by Professor James C. Watson and placed in the tower in 1882. When the clock was still a modern installation there were no radios to announce the time and the electric clock was nonexistent, so a reliable timepiece for the university community was a highly prized commodity. For many years the 9:00 p.m. striking of the clock was the signal for students to get off the lake, and see that the women got home by the 10:00 curfew. Electrical winding was installed in the clock in 1933. It is purposely set one minute ahead of the correct time so that students will arrive at classes time. In 1891. the Wisconsin State Legislature passed a bill approving the construction of a combination gym and mory. and the plans for the old Red Gym emerged. At the dedication ceremony on May 25. 1894. President Charles Adams said. The gymnasium was built to endure for all time. His prediction appears to be coming true. Prom was held in the armory for a number of years. Most of the dances' budgets were spent on decoration of the second floor drill hall. Fraternities built elaborate booths at the edge of the floor. At midnight couples ate supper in the armory, then danced until 3.00 a m. Spectators observed the dance from a balcony above the hall floor. Before World War I. the armory was the center of campus activity. Hockey, military drills, parades, and bonfires all began there. There were many “lake parties that began there: upper classmen of decades ago would herd innocent freshmen into the building and one-by-one toss them into freezing Lake Mendota. In the days during and after World War I. the armory served as a barracks An overflow of men too young for the draft enroled in the university and in the Student Army Training Corps. They slept on cots on the second floor. Their meals were cooked and served in the annex. In 1922. William Jennings Bryant spoke in the Red Gym. creating a controversy when he charged UW President E. A. Birge with religious unorthodoxy. Before the construction of the Fieldhouse in 1930. the university basketball games and the state high school basketball tournaments were held in the Red Gym. as were commencement exercises. The gym was also a cultural center: a temporary stage would be erected there for concerts . Ignace Paderewski, the great pianist, composer, and former President of Poland, played there, as did Pablo Casals, cellist: Percy Grainger, piamst-composer: Nellie Melba. Metropolitan Opera soprano: the Minneapolis and Chicago Symphony Orchestras: and John Philip Sousa andhis Marine Band. The noted modern dance pioneer. Isadora Duncan, danced on the stage before hundreds of appreciative devotees of classic dance. The Red Gym is also steeped in Wisconsin history — Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, and Robert M. (Fighting Bob) LaFollette spoke there. On January 3. 1970. the old Red Gym was heavily damaged by a fire which took 60 fire fighters nearly seven hours to extinguish.. A firebomb thrown through a window in the early morning was reported to have started the fire. Before the incident. 80 percent of the office space in the building had been used by the Army ROTC and the rest by various departments for storage. In 1894. the old Red Gym cost $130,000 to build. Today the gym is worth at least ten times as much in tradition, that is. 2J

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