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 34,500 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Commencement is this Sunday, and we join others in congratulating all graduating Jayhawks and wishing them the very best. This year’s graduates will follow the footsteps of previous classes by participating in the KU tradition of walking down the hill. But, they may not know about earlier commencement customs that are no longer practice. One such such tradition – smoking the peace pipe – is the focus of this week’s photograph.

Five KU graduates sitting in front of Strong Hall
with peace pipes, 1928. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/17 Negatives 1928:
University General: Commencement (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Additional information about the pipes can be found in a Commencement vertical file located in the Spencer Reading Room. One untitled and undated document describes the tradition this way:

The smoking of the Peace Pipe by all members of the Graduating Class had its beginning with the very earliest classes of the University in the 1800s. Records show that the Class of 1893 gathered on graduation day to smoke the Pipe of Peace, symbolizing the elimination of all past feuding on the part of Class Members — dissolving differences between the Laws and the Engineers, the Greeks and the Independents, and all other possible fractures of solidarity.

In the old days, a single pipe was passed around from one graduate to another. Today we are much more sanitary (and perhaps more wealthy); we can afford a pipe for each of us.

Now it is the time for all of us, men and women alike, to lift the pipe and light it signaling the complete and harmonious unity of the K.U. Class of 1967.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt 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 34,500 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

With Student Senate elections taking place today, this week’s photograph highlights the election for class officers that took place at KU during the fall semester in 1919.

Student election posters, 1919. Strong Hall is
in the background. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/0 1911 Prints: Student Activities (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

An advertisement for the Loyalty ticket ran in the Daily Kansan student newspaper on October 16, the day before the election: “Loyalty stands for class spirit, student government, faculty student cooperation, [and] better athletic support.”

On October 18, 1919, the day after the election, the Lawrence Daily Journal-World reported the results in a story entitled “Big Vote Was Out at Hill Election.”

The “Status Quo” Senior ticket at K. U., meaning “As It Was Before the War” went “over the top” in the class elections yesterday. Wint Smith being elected president of the senior class with a majority of twenty-five votes over Basil T. Church. Both are Lawrence men. Smith’s whole ticket carried, Eileen Van Sandt of Chanute for secretary running high with 200 votes. Fred Pausch was elected vice-president on the ticket and Warren Blazier of Lawton, Okla., was elected treasurer…

A larger per cent of the students voted in the elections Friday than in any previous year and showed a great amount of interest where there was a contest. Of 350 seniors 320 voted…

In 1947, senior class president Wint Smith was elected to represent Kansas’s (now obsolete) 6th Congressional District. Voters sent Smith to Congress for six more consecutive terms, and he served until 1961.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt 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 34,500 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

It’s a snowy day on Mount Oread, so this week’s photo shows what a snow-covered KU looked like roughly one hundred years ago.

View of campus, covered in snow, looking south, 1915.
From left to right are Spooner Hall (then Spooner Library), Dyche Hall,
Green (now Lippincott) Hall, Old Fraser Hall, Chemistry Hall, Old Snow Hall,
Bailey Hall, Strong Hall, Robinson Gymnasium, Old Haworth Hall, and
Marvin Hall. Potter Lake is also visible. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Snow 1915 Prints: Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt 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 27,700 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Last year we shared a fun aerial view of the KU campus from 1942. This week we’re sharing two more – slightly later – aerial photographs that show the site on which Spencer Research Library was built.

Aerial view of campus looking southwest from Marvin Grove, 1952.
Note the area along the top of the photograph; Naismith Drive stops at
15th Street and is undeveloped to the west.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/24/A 1952 Prints:
University General: Campus: Campus Aerials (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

The structures just north of Strong Hall – where Spencer Research Library now stands – were four of the thirteen temporary buildings constructed just after World War II. According to a December 1946 article in the Graduate Magazine (shown below), the buildings were funded by the federal government. They were used as “extra service units needed for the flood of students,” i.e. returning veterans who had enrolled at KU.

Buildings 5, 6, 7, and 8 shown on this map are the ones shown in the photograph above.
Note the description of Building 5 in the article. Graduate Magazine, December 1946.
University Archives. Call Number: LH 1 .K3 G73 1946-1947. Click image to enlarge.

The site of Spencer Research Library flanked by Strong Hall and the Campanile, 1966.
Construction of the library lasted almost two years and began soon after this photo was taken.
The library was dedicated in November 1968. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/A 1966 Prints: University General: Campus: Campus Aerials (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

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 27,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Pools are now open across Lawrence, so this week’s photograph shows a time when swimming at Potter Lake was a popular summertime activity.

Diving into Potter Lake, 1912. Strong Hall is visible in the background,
on the top of Mount Oread. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Potter Lake 1912 Negatives:
Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

You can see two other early images of swimmers and diving boards at Potter Lake – one from the 1910s and another from 1926 – in the University Archives online photograph collection.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

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