Freshman Class President Kidnapped!

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Jim Nicar

The attempted abduction of the wily Winchester Kelso.

Above: A photo of Winchester Kelso, placed over his class excuse card, which reads: “Mr. Winchester Kelso has been granted leave of absence because of being kidnapped as President of the Freshman Class.” The note was initialed “H.T.P.,” by Dean (and future Plan II honors program founder) Hanson Tufts Parlin.

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“Once upon a time, in Egypt, four or five thousand years ago,” joked Professor Harry Benedict, “some careless upper classmen, not knowing what they were starting, kidnapped a Freshman class president and held him out on a Nile sand bar until the grand march at the Freshman dance was over. Little did these careless Egyptians realize what they had done. Their Sophomore successors, being like sheep, were predestined to steal Freshman presidents to the end of time.” Benedict, a future UT president, was a keen observer of campus life and knew it didn’t take much to start a college tradition. “If a Sophomore does anything one year,” Benedict explained, “all other subsequent Sophomores have to do exactly the same thing with pathetic fidelity. There is no escape; “It is the custom,” is the mandatory reason.”

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It was a chilly evening on Thursday, February 26, 1915, as Winchester Kelso leisurely finished his dinner at the Cozy Corner, a popular café along the Drag at the southwest corner of 24^th and Guadalupe Streets. A first-year University student from San Antonio (his boyhood home still stands, remodeled as a bed and breakfast), Kelso had been elected freshman class president. Sitting at the café and chatting with friends, the discussion no doubt turned to Friday night’s Freshman Ball, the social event of the year for UT greenhorns. As the freshman chief executive, Kelso and his date had the honor of leading the Grand March, a traditional promenade around the dance floor to open the evening.

There were a few on campus, though, who wanted to prevent young Mr. Kelso from fulfilling his Freshman Ball duties. A group of sophomores, always eager to prove their class’ superiority, thought it would be a great sign of supremacy if the freshman class president were forced to miss his Grand March debut, and conspired to remove Kelso from the campus environs until the last dance had ended. Besides, this is what previous sophomore classes had done. It was the custom.

At the Cozy Corner, just as Kelso finished his evening meal, at least a dozen sophomores burst into the café, lifted Kelso from his seat, and took him outside to a waiting automobile. “The freshman showed much resistance at the beginning of the struggle,” reported The Texan student newspaper, “but was soon overpowered by his captors.” The car spirited Kelso to a campsite about five miles north of Austin, where he was to remain, in a tent and under guard, until late Friday night.

As Benedict later described it, Kelso, confined to quarters, “consulted the Book of Customs” and discovered “that while it is the custom for the Freshman president to be captured, it is not the custom for him to remain so.” Because it was nighttime, Kelso decided to create a diversion by tossing small objects out of the back of the tent, which caused enough noise in the woods that worried sophomores thought a rescue party was approaching. A few left the campground to investigate, and with the number of guards reduced, Kelso bolted out of the front of the tent and into the darkness. He managed to elude a search by frantic sophomores, who eventually gave up and went home, and left Kelso stranded in the forest.

“Effecting his escape by means of a bold ruse,” stated the Cactus yearbook, “the Freshman Prexy lost his way and wandered about for some time in the country.” It was only a few days before a full moon, but the added light didn’t help Kelso’s sense of direction. Well after midnight, he stumbled upon the tracks of Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad (popularly known as the K-T, or “Katy”) and discovered he was a dozen miles from Austin. Kelso followed the tracks through the night, and returned to the Capital City about 5 a.m. the next morning.

Wasting no time, Kelso went directly to his boarding house, gathered his suit, some food supplies for the day, and other items he’d need for the ball, told a few trusted freshmen of his plans, and then hurried downtown. Because the University didn’t yet possess any facilities suitable for a class dance, the Knights of Columbus Hall on Ninth Street had been booked for the Freshman Ball.

Ninth Street in downtown Austin. The popular Millet Opera House is center, while the Knights of Columbus Hall is two buildings to the right, on the corner. Image found in the Austin History Center.

Kelso found someone who let him in to the building. He went upstairs to the attic, found a large trunk, and in it hid himself, napping through the day. Twice searching sophomores arrived to check the premises, but left convinced Kelso was elsewhere.

Friday evening, freshmen couples arrived at the dance hall in horse-drawn carriages, only to meet a team of sophomores guarding the entrance. They searched each carriage and questioned the occupants, determined to prevent the class president from attending. As the starting time for the ball neared, the sophomores became more confident that their efforts were successful. But when the music began, the wily Winchester Kelso, none the worse for his adventure and dressed in his best suit, strolled downstairs to meet his date and lead the Grand March.

The 1907 UT Panorama Postcard

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Jim Nicar

Above: A rare, colorized, 1907 double-postcard panorama of the University campus. Click on the image for a larger view.

For those interested in University history, collecting old UT postcards is a part of the hobby. The postcards offer views not always found in old photographs, and the notes on the back, often written by University students of the time, provide glimpses into campus life.

Among the rarest are double-postcards. Twice the width of a standard card, the sender folded it in half, wrote a message on one of the outer sides, and addressed and stamped it on the other. Of course, at twice the size, the cards offer a great landscape view. In the early 20th century, several double-cards were printed with images of the University, but the best is the 1907 panorama of the UT campus. Drawn from a photograph taken from the south side of the Forty Acres, the buildings, topography of College Hill, and the locations and sizes of the trees are generally correct. In the image, what appears to be the “main driveway” that extends to the left is the future South Mall. It ends about where the Littlefield Fountain is seen today.

Above: Both color and black-and-white versions of the card were printed. Click on the image for a larger view.

What’s on the campus? From left, you’ll find the Woman’s Building, the first residence hall for co-eds, built in 1902. It’s construction was somewhat controversial. At the time, many thought that women students would be better supervised by staying with families in Austin, and were opposed to on-campus housing. When a bill that included $50,000 for the building was introduced to Texas Legislature in 1901, the House was deadlocked in a tie and it required Speaker Robert Prince to cast the deciding vote. The Woman’s Building was later used for speech classes and the theater department before it burned in the 1950s.

Next to the Woman’s Building, off in the distance (and what might look a bit like the Capitol dome), is the Littlefield Home. George Littlefield, a local banker who served on the Board of Regents and was a generous UT donor, built his Victorian mansion across the street from the original Forty Acres. Littlefield bequeathed the home to UT in his will, and it was briefly used as a sorority house and by the music department. In World War II, it became headquarters for the Naval ROTC unit, complete with two anti-aircraft guns installed on the front lawn and a firing range in the attic! Today, it houses the Development Office and used for University fundraising. The thin, rectangular “stick” just to the right of the home is one of Austin’s now-famous moonlight towers, and also just off the campus.

Continuing to the right is the Chemical Laboratory Building, opened in 1891. The chemistry department was initially located in the basement of the west wing of the old Main Building, but inadequate ventilation – and a real danger of fire – created the need for a separate structure. Chemistry professor Eugene Schoch taught classes here, and when he founded the ‘Varsity Band (now the Longhorn Band) in 1900, the group rehearsed in one of the labs. The building burned in the 1920s, and stood about where the biological ponds are today.

At center stage is the old Main Building. The first structure on the campus, limited University finances required it to be built in three segments. The west wing was opened in 1884, the middle section and north wing (which housed a library and an auditorium) was ready in 1889, and the east wing completed in 1899. Made of pale yellow Austin pressed brick and limestone trim quarried from nearby Cedar Park, the building was Victorian Gothic in style, popular for college buildings in the 1880s. Old Main was reluctantly razed in the 1930s to make room for the current Main Building and Tower.

To the right of Old Main is the original Engineering Building, the “newcomer” to this portrait of the campus. Constructed in 1904, it is the only UT building on the postcard to survive to the present. The engineers moved on to more spacious quarters in 1930, and the building was used by the speech and journalism departments. (Legendary broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite, who majored in journalism while a UT student, attended classes in this building.) In the 1980s, it became the Students Services Building and was renamed for Dorothy Gebauer, who served for decades as the Dean of Women Students. Today the Gebauer Building is headquarters for the College of Liberal Arts.

And last, but certainly not least, the structure on the far right is Brackenridge Hall, or “B. Hall.” The first men’s dorm, donated by UT regent George Brackenridge, it was opened in 1890 and intended as cheap housing for the “poor boys” of Texas. But what the residents lacked in pocket change was more than compensated by their character. It was here that The Eyes of Texas was composed, the ‘Varsity Band and student government organized, and The Daily Texan student newspaper launched, among other contributions.

Other postcards from the same time period help us to imagine a visit to the 1907 campus. Here’s a view of Old Main from the southwest corner of the Forty Acres, near where the Harry Ransom Center stands today. On the far right, part of B. Hall can be seen behind the trees.

And what about the view from campus? Here’s a look from the top floor of the west wing of Old Main, looking south toward the city of Austin. One of the moonlight towers rises abruptly just past the campus, and behind it is the Texas State Capitol, which, by itself, was the dominant feature of the Austin skyline.

The Littlefield Gateway

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Jim Nicar

The newly installed Littlefield Gateway in 1933, with the old Main Building in the background. This campus scene was a short-lived one. A year later, Old Main was razed to complete the current Main Building and Tower. Click on the image for a larger view.

[August 2015: An expanded history of the Littlefield Gateway was posted here.]

It’s a long-standing question frequently heard on the Forty Acres: why is a statue of Jefferson Davis on our campus, and placed next to, of all people, Woodrow Wilson? The fountain and statues on the South Mall – collectively known as the Littlefield Gateway – have been praised and condemned since they were installed in the early 1930s. Their presence is the result of an extended conflict between two very different University regents who, by chance, had the same first and middle names: George Washington Littlefield and George Washington Brackenridge.

Born in Mississippi in 1842, George Littlefield moved to Texas when he was six years old, and grew to cherish his Southern ancestry. He defended the Confederacy during the Civil War, rose to the rank of Major, and then returned to Texas to make a fortune in the cattle business with ranches in West Texas and New Mexico. He arrived in Austin in the 1880s and founded the American National Bank, which was eventually housed in the Littlefield Building that still stands at Sixth Street and Congress Avenue. Late in his life, Littlefield became a regent and benefactor to the University.

Brackenridge was a decade older than Littlefield, was born and raised in Indiana, and had attended Hanover College, Indiana University, and Harvard University. When Brackenridge was 21-years old, his family moved to southeast Texas, and he became a surveyor in Jackson County. But at the outset of the Civil War, while his three older brothers enlisted in the Confederate Army, Brackenridge became both a Union sympathizer and war profiteer, and smuggled cotton through Brownsville and around the Union blockade along the Gulf Coast to New York. After the war, he moved to San Antonio, founded a bank of his own, and ran the city water works. Brackenridge was appointed early on to the UT Board of Regents, and served for a record 27 years.

Because of the choices each made during the War Between the States, neither man held the other in high regard. According to Robert Vinson, president of the University from 1916-1922, “Their dislike of each other was profound. When Mr. Brackenridge spoke of the University of Texas, he emphasized the word University. Major Littlefield emphasized the word Texas.”

In the early 1900s, UT enrollment passed 1,000 students and was steadily increasing. Brackenridge realized the University would eventually outgrow its 40-acre campus, and in 1910, donated 500 acres of land to the University along the Colorado River. Known today as the Brackenridge Tract, it’s used primarily by the Brackenridge Field Laboratory, married student housing, and the Lions Municipal Golf Course. He had planned to purchase an additional 1,000 acres and eventually move the University to the 1,500-acre site, where it would have room to grow for generations. (In contrast, 50,000 UT students today occupy a campus of about 400 acres.)

The idea was popular with Austinites. Local newspapers printed cartoons of UT students jumping out of classroom windows for a quick swim in the Colorado. But Littlefield, whose mansion (photo at left) was just across the street from the University, would have none of a “Brackenridge campus,” and searched for ways to prevent a migration.

The need of a larger campus resurfaced in 1919, after the conclusion of World War I. Veterans returned from the trenches in Europe to fill universities across the country, Texas among them. Relocating the University to larger quarters was again discussed. To head off a potential move, Littlefield contacted Pompeo Coppini, an Italian-born sculptor living in San Antonio. Littlefield proposed to build an arch at the South entrance of the University to serve as a gateway to the campus. On it would be figures important to Texas and Southern history. While it was a memorial in appearance, it was also another nail intended to secure the campus from moving to the Brackenridge Tract.

Coppini built a model of the arch that was featured in an exhibition in Chicago, but the sculptor informed Littlefield that its construction would cost more than the $250,000 Littlefield was willing to spend. Coppini offered the idea of a fountain instead, and at the same advised against a memorial to the Confederacy. “As time goes by,” Coppini argued, “they will look to the Civil War as a blot on the pages of American history, and the Littlefield Memorial will be resented as keeping up the hatred between the Northern and Southern states.” Instead, Coppini proposed to honor those who had fought in the World War, as “all past regional differences have disappeared and we are now one welded nation.” A compromised was reached, and Coppini set out to design the Littlefield Memorial Gateway.

Coppini’s intent was to show the reunification of America in World War I after it had been divided in the Civil War. The scheme centered on a 100-foot long rectangular pool of water. At its head, in an elevated pool to create a cascade, was the bow of a ship, on which stood Columbia, symbol of the American spirit. Behind her were representatives of the Army and the Navy. The ship was to be pulled by three sea horses. As Coppini saw it, the fountain group showed a strong, united America sailing across the ocean to protect democracy abroad.

Coppini’s original 1919 design for the Littlefield Gateway. Steps on either side of the fountain rose to a small plaza, bounded by two pylons, in front of which stood the statues of Jefferson Davis and Woodrow Wilson. Click on the image for a larger view.

Immediately behind the fountain, Coppini created a small plaza bracketed by two large pylons or obelisks, symbolic of the North and the South. In front of each he placed the statues of two “war presidents”: Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy at a time when the country was deeply divided, and Woodrow Wilson, leader of a reunified America during the world war. The remaining statues of Lee, Reagan, Johnston and Hogg were staged on either side of the fountain, and were Littlefield’s choices of important men in the history of Texas and the South.

The contract was drawn, signed, and accepted by the UT Board of Regents in April 1920. Just in time, as Littlefield’s health was failing badly. He died peacefully the following November, but had anticipated what Brackenridge might do after his passing, and left nothing to chance. His will included $500,000 toward the construction of a new Main Building, $300,000 and land for a women’s dormitory (now the Alice Littlefield dorm), and $250,000 for the Littlefield Gateway, all of which were contingent upon the University staying where it was for the next eight years. Just hours before he died, Littlefield made one last donation: his Victorian mansion would be turned over to the University subject to Mrs. Littlefield’s life interest.

Brackenridge was unprepared for this turn of events. He had hoped to combine Littlefield’s gifts with his own to build a new campus on the banks of the Colorado. With his diminishing assets at just under $1.5 million, Brackenridge would barely be able to make up for the Littlefield donations that would have to be forfeited if the campus moved. Brackenridge fretted, worried about his money, and grew seriously ill. He died in December 1920, just over a month after Littlefield.

The debate over whether to move the University campus to the Brackenridge Tract was front-page news in the Austin Daily Statesman for most of the spring of 1921.

Despite the setbacks, UT President Robert Vinson, a longtime supporter of Brackenridge’s vision, was unwilling to give up the dream of moving the University to a spacious, riverfront campus. As planned, a bill to relocate the University was submitted to the legislature in January 1921. It received solid support from the regents, Governor Pat Neff, and the local press. But once the bill was read and debate ensued, some legislators saw an opportunity. If the campus were to be moved anyway, why keep it in Austin? One proposal would have allowed any city that could guarantee 500 acres and $10 million to be placed on a ballot, and a statewide election to decide the location.

Once the possibility of losing the University became known, the citizens of Austin quickly united against the whole idea, and vilified Vinson for opening a Pandora’s box. The bill to relocate the campus was defeated. Land was purchased east of the Forty Acres, and the campus was extended down the hill to Waller Creek. Littlefield had won.

Almost 10 years were required for Coppini to complete the statuary for the Littlefield Gateway. The project was delayed by a bronze workers strike, and cost overruns seriously threatened Coppini’s design. To save money, the regents proposed to strike out the planned obelisks, an idea supported by then UT President Harry Benedict, who thought they would block the view of the old Main Building. Coppini passionately argued that losing the pylons would destroy the intended symbolism, but to no avail. The obelisks were omitted.

Photo above: Visitors inspect Coppini’s work at his studio in the 1920s. The figure of Columbia, symbol of the American spirit, carries the torch of freedom in her right hand, and the palms of peace in her left.

By 1930, most of the statues had been delivered to Austin, and were temporarily on display in the Capitol rotunda. About the same time, the University hired Paul Cret, an architect from Philadelphia, to develop a new campus master plan. Cret was responsible for much of the layout of the campus as it is today. He designed the Main Building and Tower, Texas Union, Mary Gearing Hall, the “six pack” on the South Mall, and many others.

The Littlefield Gateway was installed on the campus in 1932 and the fountain activated for the first time in spring of the following year. In this image, just to the right of Old Main, the Geology Building, now the W. C. Hogg Building, is under construction.

Cret reviewed the plans for the Littlefield Gateway, and thought the six statues surrounding the fountain were too crowded. To give each figure its own space, Cret spread the statues out along the South Mall, but at the same time hopelessly blurred the symbolism of the Jefferson Davis and Woodrow Wilson figures that Coppini had intended. The fountain was finally constructed in the fall of 1932, and was turned on in March 1933.

Years later, in a letter to state senator Grady Woodruff, Coppini lamented, “After years of fighting, I was forced to accept the dismemberment of my original planned memorial, throwing to the four winds my conception and making of the various pieces of bronze just a senseless decoration of the campus.”

For many years, the Littlefield Fountain contained cattails, lily pads, and other varieties of flowering water plants. Click on image for a larger view.

Behind the Littlefield Fountain, and not as well-known to those on campus, a brass door leading to the underground pump room bears the names of 97 persons from the University who lost their lives in World War I. Flanking the sides of the door, inscribed in the limestone, are a pair of quotes by Cicero on patriotism. Here, “Brevis a natura nobis vita data est, at memoria bene redditae vitae Sempiturna,” translates as, “Short is the life given to us by nature, but the memory of a life nobly surrendered is everlasting.”