Kenneth Spencer Research Library

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

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 21,700 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Some of my favorites items in University Archives are scrapbooks created by former KU students. Most date from the early twentieth century and include items like photographs, programs for concerts and other events, tickets, dance cards, newspaper clippings, and holiday cards. A scrapbook created by KU alumna Mayrea Noyes contains the very clever valentine shown below.

KU senior Mayrea Noyes received this valentine from an
unknown admirer in 1911. It’s a series of nested envelopes, displayed here
in two columns, the last one opening to reveal a tiny red paper heart.
Mayrea Noyes Scrapbook, University Archives.
Call number: SB 71/99 Noyes. Click image to enlarge.

Mayrea Noyes was born in New York on May 4, 1889 to parents Ellis Bradford (1848-1924) and Elsie Jefferis (1859-1922) Noyes. She had two sisters, Elmira Elsie (1882-1961) and Aline (1892-1956). Mayrea’s father, a long-time civil engineer, graduated from KU in 1874, one of three students in the university’s second graduating class. Thus, even though Mayrea grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia, she attended the University of Kansas, graduating with a bachelor’s degree from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1911. She returned to KU the following year and earned a university teacher’s diploma. Mayrea later attended summer classes at Columbia University (1913) and Virginia Polytechnic Institute (1921).

Mayrea’s senior picture in the 1911 Jayhawker. University Archives.
Call Number: LD 2697 .J3 1911. Click image to enlarge.

Mayrea had a long career as a teacher at Maury High School in Norfolk, Virginia. After she died suddenly of a heart attack on December 2, 1954, the school’s yearbook printed a memorial to her: “Coming to Maury in 1914 she was one of its first home economics teachers and did much to build up that department, serving there until her retirement in 1949. In addition to her teaching she spent many hours counseling students with their personal problems and is remembered by many for her sympathetic attention and sound advice” (85).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

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

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 6,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

It’s Recruitment Week for KU’s sororities and fraternities, so today’s post features helpful and humorous information for freshmen girls deciding on which chapter to join. It’s from the 1916 Jayhawker yearbook, which covered the 1915-1916 academic year.

“Chart for Freshmen” in the Jayhawker, 1916. From left to right,
the sororities listed are Pi Beta Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta,
Kappa Kappa Gamma, Chi Omega, Achoth, Alpha Delta Pi,
Sigma Kappa, Alpha Chi Omega, Gamma Phi Beta,
and Alpha Xi Delta. University Archives.
Call Number: LD 2697 .J3 1916. Click image to enlarge.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

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

“Unique, playful, interactive” are words that describe the 1971 Jayhawker. Packaged in a blue box, the yearbook stands out amongst those that came before and after.

Box housing the parts of the 1971 Jayhawker yearbook

Inside, however, are the usual contents to any Jayhawker yearbook: sections on athletics, the seniors, Greek life, administration, hot topics, and more. But the way in which they were presented was unusual, satirical, and perhaps a commentary on the year that was by the Jayhawker staff. For example, the section on Greek life was titled “Agricultural Almanac of Flowering Plants in Eastern Kansas.”

Another part included an interactive “Love Sun” mobile. To see what this Love Sun mobile actually looked like, I put one together for the University Archives. Below are pictures from this endeavor, with the completed Love Sun hanging in the University Archives in front of the yearbook collection.

Left: Instructions for making the Love Sun mobile. Right: The six cards that form the mobile.

Right and left: Constructing the Love Sun mobile.

Completed Love Sun mobile hanging in the University Archives.

JoJo Palko
KU Sesquicentennial Research Assistant
University Archives

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 5,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Monday is Memorial Day, so this week we’re sharing selected pages from the 1919 Jayhawker yearbook. The volume, the first published after the end of World War I, was called The Peace Edition and dedicated to “the memory of the Men of the University of Kansas who willingly served their government in its great crisis, even to the supreme sacrifice of life itself.” The yearbook included tributes to twenty-seven of the approximately 130 KU students and alumni who died in World War I. (This number included two female students, Lucy McLinden and Fay Friedberg, who died from influenza.) KU’s stadium and student union memorialize these men and women.

Selected pages from the 1919 Jayhawker yearbook.
William T. Fitzsimons was also the first United States Army officer killed in World War I.
More information about him is also available at the KU History website.
University Archives. Call Number: LD 2697 .J3 1919. Click images to enlarge.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

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