Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Ninety-five years ago today saw an impressive event at the University of Kansas. As summarized by an article by John H. McCool, “Chancellor Lindley declared May 10, 1921, to be Stadium Day and turned loose hundreds of male students and faculty who proceeded to physically tear down the [McCook Field] bleachers in only 78 minutes.”

The marching band playing at halftime of the KU v. MU football game, McCook Field, 1910.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 71/66/14 1910: Student Activities:
Sports: Football (Photos). Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

McCook was KU’s “original outdoor athletic grounds,” and by 1920 the 25-year-old wooden bleachers were considered dilapidated, uncomfortable, and inadequate. According to McCool, “these conditions, coupled with a steady rise of alumni and student interest in KU football, made construction of a new, permanent stadium a top priority, and if it also served a commemorative function [to memorialize KU students, alumni, and faculty who had died in World War I], then so much the better.”

McCook Field bleachers prior to demolition, 1920. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/47 1920 Prints: Campus: Buildings: McCook Field (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

The University Daily Kansan announced Stadium Day on May 9th with a front page article. “Each student will have his chance to show just what his true relations to his University and his feelings toward it really are,” it read, continuing:

The removal of the old bleachers is not such an event in itself. The participation in clearing the ground for the new structure is the big feature of the entire school year. The ground is to be broken for the new stadium. The old gives place to new and every one present will witness the beginning of the biggest building project that K. U. has to date hoped to attain…This is the one big day of the entire school year, the last all-university holiday and frolic. Tuesday is the day! McCook Field is the place! You are the individual responsible! Be there!!

Reporting on Stadium Day on May 11th, the Kansan proclaimed that it was “a grand and howling success.” Below are some photographs of the event, accompanied by further descriptions from the Kansan.

University Daily Kansan, May 11, 1921: “In alphabetical order, the workers gathered at various sections of the bleachers, and began their task of lifting planks, removing joists, and prying side-pieces. As soon as a swarm of students would remove the ancient timber, another group would begin to carry it off the field…While the bleachers were undergoing their last rites, an immense company of men was building portable bleachers to contain crowds at the two track meets to be held here yet this year. This bunch of men were aided by two power saws, and the short time consumed in the construction of these temporary stands was miraculous.”

Bleachers being disassembled, 8:30am on Stadium Day, 1921. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/47 1921: Campus: Buildings: McCook Field (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Stadium Day, south bleachers at 9:00am, 1921. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/47 1921: Campus: Buildings: McCook Field (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Stadium Day, north bleachers at 9:30am, 1921. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/47 1921 Prints: Campus: Buildings: McCook Field (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

Stadium Day workers, 1921. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/47 1921 Prints: Campus: Buildings: McCook Field (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

Students working on Stadium Day, 1921. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/0 1921: Student Activities (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

University Daily Kansan, May 11, 1921: “Although by far the great majority of students turned out to assist in the destruction, a few sluggards stayed in their homes. Toward the censure of these, a personnel squad turned out, thirty-five strong, and made a tour of the Hill. Armed with paddles, the squad discovered sixty men, and the sixty were soon with the multitude of laborers.”

Stadium Day paddle squad, 1921. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/47 1921 Prints: Campus: Buildings: McCook Field (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

University Daily Kansan, May 11, 1921: “But work wasn’t the main pleasure of the day. Just after a bunch of Kansas City alumni and the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce pulled up Illinois Avenue headed by a band, fifteen ‘chow’ lines were put into motion, and 4,000 persons were fed in less than an hour. The fifteen lines proceeded past tables which were presided over by ten or twelve University women. Heaped upon these tables were thousands upon thousands of sandwiches – peanut butter, pimento cheese, and freshly barbecued beef, giant quantities of beans, pickles, innumerable ice cream cones, and gallon after gallon of steaming coffee. An orderly crowd then took plates to the cars and curbings on Illinois street, and was soon stuffed. ‘Seconds’ were allowed those who came back for more. Never before in the history of the University had such a feed been held, and never before anywhere had 4,000 appetites been so thoroughly satisfied.””

Stadium Day barbecue, 1921. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/47 1921 Prints: Campus: Buildings: McCook Field (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

University Daily Kansan, May 11, 1921: “A pushball contest was announced, the thousands adjourning to Hamilton Field. After this sport had resulted in countless bruises and boundless enthusiasm, the last scheduled event of the celebration took place.”

Stadium Day pushball contest, 1921. Many of the day’s activities were
filmed by a Pathé News cameraman. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/47 1921 Prints: Campus:
Buildings: McCook Field (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

University Daily Kansan, May 11, 1921: “Clad in overalls, Chancellor Lindley plowed a straight furrow across McCook Field. The ground for a new half-million dollar project was broken. The bleachers are dead! Long live the Stadium!” Earlier in the day, Lindley had “sounded the keynote of the holiday in a short speech. ‘The students of Kansas deserve everything that is given to the students at Princeton, Yale, and Harvard,’ he said, ‘and they are going to have it.'”

Chancellor Ernest Lindley (left, hat in hand) at Stadium Day, 1921.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/22/47 1921 Prints:
Campus: Buildings: McCook Field (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Construction of the new Memorial Stadium began on July 16, 1921. But, as John H. McCool wrote, “with only a quarter-million in the bank, the Memorial Corporation could only pay for the east and west sides; rounding off the U would not be possible until 1927 (when full capacity reached 38,000), and only then after raising ticket prices and floating hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bonds.”

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 27,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

It’s prom season, so this week’s post highlights a KU tradition that lasted from 1924 through 1941: the women-only, no-men-allowed Puff Pant Prom. Female students attended the dance as couples, dressed as a “Puff” (wearing fancy evening dresses) or “Pant” (donning formal men’s wear). By 1936 the Lawrence Journal-World described the event as “an affair of no small importance in the life of the coed at the University of Kansas.” The dance was ultimately a casualty of World War II; one was scheduled in 1942, but it was canceled because women students were busy with war work and didn’t have time to prepare for the event. The tradition was revived for a few years in the late 1990s.

Preliminary research indicates that KU was not the only school to hold a Puff Pant Prom in the 1920s and 1930s; for example, for a time it was also an annual event at the College of Emporia.

The description on the back of this photograph states “1926-27 girls dressed as men
ready to go to the Puff-Pant-Prom.” University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 71/26 1926 Prints:
Student Activities: Puff Pant Prom (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Helen Walker of McCune, Kansas, went to the Puff Pant Prom as
actor and 1920s sex symbol Rudolph Valentino and
won a prize for best “male” of the evening, 1926. Photograph by Duke D’Ambra.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 71/26 1926 Prints:
Student Activities: Puff Pant Prom (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Photographs of the Puff Pant Prom in the Jayhawker yearbook, 1927.
University Archives. Call Number: LD 2697 .J3 1927.
Click image to enlarge.

Photographs of the Puff Pant Prom in the Jayhawker yearbook, 1928.
University Archives. Call Number: LD 2697 .J3 1928.
Click image to enlarge.

The University Daily Kansan announced the first Puff-Pant Prom on March 3, 1924, with the front-page headline “Women Date Women and Do Your Stuff!”

Lady sheiks, notice! It’s time to ask that heavy love of yours to give you her time on the night of March 14, from 9 until 12. Why? Because that is the date and the hour of the puff-pant prom, a dance to be put on under the auspices of the Women’s Athletic Association for the women students of the University. Half of the women will dress as men, that is, if the men on the Hill will be kind enough to lend their wardrobe for the occasion, and the sheiks at the party must see to it that their ladies are in party dress. The puff-pant prom is to be a program affair. The only males allowed will be those in the men’s orchestra which will play for the dance, but the party will be chaperoned, to maintain order among the gay cake-eaters. The program committee has announced that there will be circle dances, Paul Jones dances, Dutch dances, clogging and stunts. Those working on the program committee are Elizabeth Bolinger, Gladys Snyder, Dorothy Barter, and Davida Olinger. Tickets for the party will go on sale this week. The price will be 75 cents a couple, and 50 cents for stags.

The Kansan also reported on the event after fact, in an article than ran on March 16. The headline noted that a “fashion show and dances furnish[ed] entertainment during intermission.”

“I am heartily in favor of making the Puff Pant Prom an annual affair,” said Dean Agnes Husband in speaking of the women’s dance given at Robinson gymnasium Friday night. “I think it was a great success and that everyone enjoyed herself. These women’s parties are a splendid means of getting acquainted.” About 150 couples, and 15 “men” and women stags, attended the dance. A grand march…started the first women’s varsity dance ever given at the University. The men of the Hill must have been generous in lending their clothes, for good looking tuxedos, tall silk hats, derbies and Sunday ties, were very much in prominence. The women of the party dressed as though they were attending the best Varsity dances given at F. A. U. hall…The four piece orchestra displayed as much pep as the hearty hand clapping and applause from the “men” guests could instill…The only lucky men at the prom were the musicians, two men who sold refreshments, and the four who came to the dance dressed as women. These last guests were not permitted to stay.

Each subsequent Puff Pant Prom followed a similar structure, although it was eventually relocated to the Union and moved from springtime to autumn.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants