University Archives News

Object Lesson: A New View of an Old Friend

A monthly feature highlighting the artifact collection of the University Archives.

You've seen The Rock many times while walking across the Evanston campus—usually with an ever-changing coat of paint or slogan. It first came to Northwestern in 1902, and was originally a drinking fountain placed between University Hall and Harris Hall. Over the years it became a landmark and meeting place, eventually becoming a canvas for enthusiastic, undergraduate artists.

Here is a view of this monolith not many have seen: the actual rock inside The Rock.

This chunk of Northwestern history was acquired on August 16, 1989 when The Rock was moved by crane to its present location. Moved, you say? Yes! The boulder cracked in transit, and the damage repaired with mortar. But, fortunately for us, this little bit of raw, unpainted, unadulterated Rock - formed by nature in glorious tones of Northwestern purple and white - sheared from its parent stone and tumbled away, cadged by a wary witness to the event. This piece of The Rock made its way to the University Archives and sits on display so that you and all posterity can know what lies at the flinty heart of our quartzite icon.

Read the full story of The Rock and see more pictures on the University Archives' Northwestern Architecture website.

Picture of the Week: Dentally Yours

For anyone wondering whether all those years of academic drudgery are worth it, here's proof. This alum, an attendee at an NU Dental School homecoming event in 1969, is clearly tickled at how things have worked out in his life. See, learning IS fun after all, and if you're tempted to forget that, haul out this guy's photo for a timely reminder!

Northwestern's Shakespeare Garden

In a spot of quiet seclusion, Northwestern’s Shakespeare Garden transports its visitors out of the modern, suburban campus into a peaceful Elizabethan retreat.

The Archives has produced a short documentary on the garden. Watch and learn about this campus tribute to one of the language's greatest writers.

Watch the video (Quicktime)

August Newsletter: Project Survival

In this month's newsletter:

• Project Survival: The First Earth Day
• A new exhibit at the library on Daniel Burnham
• Civil War-era photographs
• Northwestern's Opera Workshop

click to read the newsletter

NU During the Civil War

No, they're not early participants of Northwestern's Dance Marathon (that didn't start until 1975); they're photographic portraits of two Union officers discovered in a recently cataloged photograph album from Melvin Pingree, a short-lived member of the class of 1865. Elliott Warren Rice led a remarkable career during the Civil War, enlisting as a private and completing his service in 1865 as a brevetted major general. John T. Macauley fought with his brother in the 11th Regiment Indiana Infantry, having risen to the rank of colonel by the end of the war.

In 1861, an impressive majority of Northwestern's students—sixty-four percent—answered President Abraham Lincoln's call to arms to fight in the Civil War (only two students cancelled their studies to join the Confederacy). In total, twenty-one Northwestern students and faculty became commissioned officers during the war—not bad for a school that had only thirty-six students in 1860!

Feel free to stop by the University Archives and take a look at the album, if you happen to be in the area. Otherwise, its contents have been scanned and can be found on the Archives website. For further information on Northwestern's involvement in the Civil War, check out Arthur Wilde's Northwestern University: A History (1855-1905) online.

More information on the Melvin Pingree album can be found in its finding aid.

Northwestern's Opera Workshop

In 1946, Ruth Heiser founded the Northwestern Opera Workshop "to give vocal students the opportunity to learn and perform roles in the standard repertoire." Directed from 1954-57 by Eugene Dressler and from 1958-83 by Robert Gay, the workshop sought both to provide students with performance experience and to advance a more popularly accessible version of the art form. Works were usually sung in English translations, the objective being "to take the 'Grand' out of opera and reestablish this type of art-form as an expression of real and comprehensible ideas."

The Opera Workshop's repertoire ranged from canonical works by composers including Puccini, Stravinsky, and Poulenc to contemporary pieces by notables such as Ralph Vaughn Williams. The Workshop also hosted the world premieres of The Knot Garden by Michael Tippett, Walker-Trough-Walls by N.U. music professor Anthony Donato, and The Number of Fools by Robert Beadell, as well as the Chicago premieres of the complete version of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and Samuel Barber's Vanessa.

The strong reputation of the Workshop, fostered by Gay, facilitated these premieres, and also drew high-profile attention. In the 1957-58 season, composer Aaron Copland visited to conduct The Tender Land, his three-act opera first performed in 1954 by the New York City Opera. For a number of years, internationally renowned singer Lotte Lehmann spent weeks as a visiting vocal coach. Civic Opera star Edith Mason, who also performed at La Scala and Paris, donated trunks of her old costumes for the Workshop's use. Bringing the Workshop's productions to an even wider audience, WTTW, the Chicago public television station, filmed several performances as part of their educational arts programming, including a one-hour adaptation of Verdi's Falstaff in 1968 and Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel in 1978.

In 1983, the same year Richard Alderson took over as director, the School of Music received a sizable endowment from William E. Ragland in honor of his wife, Edith Mason, and the Workshop became the Edith Mason and William E. Ragland Opera Theatre. Under these auspices the School of Music began presenting several mainstage productions each year, a tradition that still continues.

Notable alumni of the Workshop: Sherrill Milnes (Metropolitan Opera, Northwestern professor emeritus); Mary Beth Piel (The King and I with Yul Brynner, Dawson's Creek); Nancy Dussault (The Sound of Music, Do Re Mi, Into the Woods); Ron Holgate (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, 1776); and Ronald Hussmann (Fiorello and Tenderloin, both with lyrics by N.U. alumnus Sheldon Harnick).

July Newsletter: Mapping Evanston

Though we're just now getting it up on the blog, the Archives' July newsletter went out last week. Features for July include an interactive historical map of Evanston (useful for reseraching the history of local properties), notes on the North Shore Music Festival, and an Object Lesson about Northwestern's tug-of-war team.

Click here to read the newsletter

Remember, if you don't receive the newsletter and want to subscribe, email us at archives@northwestern.edu.