“Better Hid than Dead”

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Jim Nicar

UT’s Cold War Fallout Shelters

A surprise awaits those who wander into Waggener Hall. Opened in 1932 for the business school, Waggener’s outside walls are decorated with colorful terra-cotta panels that represent the exports of Texas. Cattle, oil, maize, pecans, oranges, and even a turkey, are here. Indoors, at the north end of the ground floor hallway, just above the door that leads out to the Speedway Mall, is an unusual yellow and black sign. It’s easy to miss, but 60 years ago, the campus was filled with them. This rare survivor, with its distinctive yellow triangles, is a reminder of a time when Waggener Hall was deemed a fallout shelter in case of a nuclear attack.

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For several years just after World War II, the University of Texas was focused on coping with its burgeoning enrollment. In 1946, returning veterans on the G. I. Bill more than doubled the student population in just three months, from 7,900 to 17,100 students. (See: Life in Cliff Courts) Finding additional faculty, classrooms, and dorms were the top priorities, though the University community was also aware of the increasingly tense relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The U.S. monopoly on the atomic bomb, which ended the Second World War, was a short one. The Soviet Union exploded its own atomic bomb in 1949. A few years later, in 1952, the United States conducted its first test of the larger and more destructive hydrogen bomb. The Soviets followed in 1953, and in 1958 announced its deployment of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles – “ICBMs” – which made the delivery of a nuclear bomb far more efficient and harder to detect.

As the U.S. raced to defend the new threat, discussions over how to best protect the civilian population shifted away from surviving a direct hit (thought by most to be nearly impossible) to avoiding “fallout,” the radioactive dust thrown into the air by a nuclear explosion. Riding on the prevailing winds before dropping back to Earth, fallout could extend several hundred miles from the blast point, and exposure to the radiation could be fatal.

The Eisenhower administration urged building home fallout shelters, either in basements or back yards, where a family could hide from the fallout for at least two weeks. It was presumed that much of the radiation danger would have then passed, and that additional government help would be available.

As it was entirely too expensive for the government to build shelters for the entire population (a 1957 estimate in the now famous Gaither Report placed the cost at $25 billion), the Office of Civil Defense provided printed materials for families to construct and supply their own. In 1959, a 27-minute film was made available: Walt builds a Family Fallout Shelter.

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Above: The Texas Capitol, UT Tower, and downtown Austin in 1960.

In Austin, efforts to educate the public on the dangers of fallout and promote shelters began in earnest in 1960.The city was considered a prime target in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, as it was both the seat of Texas government and hosted Bergstrom Air Force Base just to the southeast. (Today, it’s the site of the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.) In April, a model fallout shelter was ceremonially opened in Zilker Park. (It still exists, but is not open to the public.) With Austin Mayor Tom Miller and Governor Price Daniel on hand for the ribbon-cutting, it was the first publicly-funded shelter in Texas and part of a Civil Defense program to build a model shelter in every state. The shelter’s layout was based on one of the several do-it-yourself blueprints found in the free, 32-page Civil Defense publication The Family Fallout Shelter.

The Zilker shelter inspired UT alumnus Cactus Pryor, then working for Austin’s KTBC-TV station, to write and narrate a 20-minute film that dramatized what might happen if an atomic bomb exploded in the Hill Country just west of the city. Titled “Target . . . Austin, Texas,” it was filmed in June – with scenes in a family shelter taken at the Zilker Park model – and made its television debut on September 4. “The nature of the film is such that should a viewer tune in late he might become alarmed that the film is real,” warned the listing in the newspaper. (Watch: Target . . . Austin, Texas)

Above: The “Target . . . Austin, Texas film included a shot of an all-grass West Mall.

The Zilker facility also motivated the University’s Delta Zeta sorority, which built a new house over the summer just west of campus, near the corner of 24^th and Nueces Streets. Ready by September, the “Modern Monterrey” style home was designed by the local architecture firm Page, Southerland, and Page, and featured a reinforced 1,500 square foot basement outfitted as a fallout shelter. Nationally, it was the first such shelter in college sorority house. (Delta Zeta went inactive in the 1970s and the home was purchased and is still occupied by the Delta Kappa sorority.)

In the fall of 1960, the City of Austin acquired a new director for its Civil Defense program. Colonel Bill Kengla (photo at left) first came to Austin in 1958 for a three-year post as commander of the University of Texas Naval ROTC program. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a Marine, and a veteran of World War II, Kengla was well-received on campus, but decided to resign a year early in order to take the director position.

Kengla was quite passionate about his new responsibilities and was determined to thoroughly educate and prepare the Austin area for a nuclear attack. He spoke to students at school assemblies and parents at PTA meetings. He installed 17 Civil Defense sirens across the city, including one on the top of the UT Tower, and ordered monthly siren tests. In April, 1961, Kengla convinced the organizers of Austin’s annual Flower Show to include a walk-through display of a family shelter. A month later, encouraged by Kengla, a trio of UT architecture professors conducted seminars on planning and constructing shelters in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and New Orleans.

However, despite all of the activity, the response was less than enthusiastic. Too many Austinites didn’t take the nuclear threat seriously and had no plans to ready themselves accordingly. The attitude paralleled much of the nation.

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In the summer of 1961, the Berlin Crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union came to a head. Soviet Premiere Nikita Kruschev gave the U.S. six months to vacate isolated West Berlin. President John Kennedy’s response was to activate 150,000 armed forces reserves and increase defense expenses. On July 25, in a speech to the nation, Kennedy said, “I am requesting of the Congress new funds for the following immediate objectives: to identify and mark space in existing structures–public and private–that could be used for fall-out shelters in case of attack; to stock those shelters with food, water, first-aid kits and other minimum essentials for survival . . .” (Read and listen to Kennedy’s speech here.) The following month, the Berlin wall was erected, and soon afterward, the Soviet Union – very publicly – resumed its nuclear testing program.

The events sent a chill through the American populace, while Kennedy’s talk marked a shift in policy to promote both personal shelters as well as community shelters partly financed by government. At Kennedy’s request, Congress augmented the Civil Defense budget to about $207 million.

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Above: A Civil Defense poster advertised “The Family Fallout Shelter” booklet.

Through the rest of 1961 and into 1962, interest in personal fallout shelters soared. Some called it the “great awakening,” others dubbed it a “revival for survival,” but newspaper reports claimed Americans everywhere were stocking up on canned goods, reinforcing basements or digging up back yards, and speaking knowledgeably about radioactive isotopes. The Family Fallout Shelter publication, which had gone largely ignored, was suddenly, insatiably popular. “We printed 20 million of those booklets in 1959,” explained Civil Defense Information Officer Joseph Quinn, “and for two years they gathered dust in local CD offices. In July, we had to print three million more just to take care of known demand.”

The surging awareness of shelters, along with Congress’ increase in Civil Defense spending, brought with it a boon for business. “The subject of fallout shelters rates as the number one conversational topic in the nation since the nuclear test explosions conducted by Russia in the past few months,” announced the Texas Business Review, published by the University of Texas College of Business Administration (today’s McCombs School). An “immediate result of this public concern has been the recognition by the construction industry that the fall-out shelter could be very good business indeed.”

Texas newspapers were filled with shelter-related ads that marketed everything from construction materials to air filters to radiation detection kits to portable toilets. The Kinney Company touted its pre-fab shelters, showcased at the Texas State Fair, which could be delivered to a back yard and installed in a day. The Zenith Company pushed specially-designed fallout shelter clock radios, while General Mills advertised its Multi-Purpose Food, or “MPF.” Invented in the 1940s to help feed post-World War II Europe, MPF was made from fried soy grits and could be used as a high-protein additive to other foods. “One 4 ½ pound can will feed an average person for two weeks,” General Mills claimed, “and can be stored for an indefinite period.”

The spotlight on fallout shelters kindled debate as to whether the shelters were worth the effort and expense. Life magazine optimistically predicted that, with proper preparation, 97 percent of Americans could endure the fallout from a nuclear attack. “Your chances of surviving fallout in a big city would be good. If you are in a large apartment house or office building you could either go to the basement or an inner corridor.” In a rebuke of Life’s claims, well-known biophysicist Eugene Rabinowitz stated that a 50-percent survival rate may be “reasonable,” but only for “systematically protected populations with well-organized construction of large, deep and heavily protected stocked shelters in areas not likely to be the target for direct attack.”

In Austin, Saint Edward’s University equipped its newest building – Saint Joseph Hall for resident faculty – with a $10,000 basement shelter, while the Hilltopper student newspaper posed the ethical question: “Is the Christian required to give up his family fallout shelter to an unprepared neighbor or passing stranger?” It cited Roman Catholic Reverend H. C. McHugh, of the Jesuit monthly America magazine, who wrote, “It is the height of nonsense to say that the Christian ethic demands, or even permits, a man to thrust his family into the rain of fall-out when unsheltered neighbors plead for entrance,” then added that he doubted any Catholic moralist would condemn a homeowner who used violence to “repel panicky neighbors who applied crowbars to the shelter door.”

Despite all of the media attention and promotion, a Gallup Poll taken in late 1961 found that only 12 percent of Americans planned to make changes to their homes or add shelters to prepare for a nuclear attack. This was almost double the number before the Berlin Crisis, but still well below the number wanted by Civil Defense authorities. Certainly, the U.S. population was concerned about nuclear war with the Soviet Union, but were not convinced the family shelter was the best answer or worth the personal investment.

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In the meantime, the U.S. government plans for community fallout shelters began to take shape. “Civil Defense is now being permanently woven into the fabric of American life,” Colonel Kengla told the Austin American-Statesman, who described a year-long national effort to identify, equip, and stock fallout shelters for 34 million persons in existing buildings. Kengla hoped to establish 350 community shelters in Austin, including 90 on the University of Texas campus.

In late October, 1961, UT President Joseph Smiley announced a University Committee on Civil Defense, to “establish continuing contact with Civil Defense officials and other appropriate agencies.” Smiley continued, “We have a substantial responsibility to our large academic community for careful planning of precautions and procedures related to civil defense and general disaster measures.”

The seven-person committee included two members of the ROTC faculty, the campus directors of the Physical Plant (UT Facilities), Student Heath Center, Housing and Food Services, the Balcones Research Center (today’s Pickle Research Center) and an engineering professor who specialized in sanitary systems.

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On December 1, 1961, a Civil Defense press conference formally introduced the new community fallout shelter sign. Designed by Rob Blakeley, a graphic artist with the Army Corps of Engineers, the sign was reflective yellow and black, highly contrasting colors that could be easily seen and understood in low light. Three triangles pointed downward to indicate fallout material dropping from the sky.

Early versions of the sign included the radiation hazard symbol, with its three blades emanating from a central atom, but the notion was rejected in favor of a sign that indicated safety rather than a warning.

Above: Radiation warning and fallout symbols.

Civil Defense Director Steuart Pittman later explained that the six outer points of the triangles signified: shielding from radiation, food and water, trained leadership, medical supplies and aid, communication with the outside world, and radiological monitoring to determine safe areas and time to return home. “It is an image we should leave with the public at every opportunity,” Pittman added, “for in it there is hope rather than despair.”

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Early in 1962, UT sociology professor Harry Moore released the findings of a local survey and claimed Austinites were still largely indifferent to the idea of civil defense, shelters, and warning sirens. Colonel Kengla responded, “I do not contest the survey. But I am not satisfied with community education.” Kengla believed Austin was two years behind other cities on the east and west coasts, but thought the city had a “good hard-core nucleus around which community-wide interest can be built.”

At the same time, the University Committee on Civil Defense began to work with Kengla and his staff. The group’s first project was to test the “Big Voice.”

On Saturday afternoon, April 15, a public address system installed on the 10^th floor if the UT Tower shouted emergency instructions from all four sides. Kengla had seen a similar system used in Salina, Kansas and wanted to try it out on the Forty Acres. From 1 p.m. until sundown, the booming “Big Voice” issued its directives to passersby while the committee checked the effectiveness of the system’s range and acoustics. Ultimately, there were too many echoes and reverberations from other University buildings, and the “Big Voice” was abandoned.

Into the summer, the Committee continued to meet and identify potential locations for campus fallout shelters, as well as to compile and publish an 8-page booklet on emergency instructions in case of a nuclear attack or a tornado. While it listed what to do in case of attack (tune in to emergency radio broadcasts, stay indoors, etc.), it had as yet no information on public shelters. The guide was published in September for the start of the new academic year and distributed to all students, faculty, and staff.

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In October, the Cuban Missile Crisis once again elevated concerns over an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In Austin and throughout the nation, there was a run on stores for supplies. “Housewives by the thousands crowded into neighborhood grocery stores and shopping centers searching for $2 cans of Multi-Purpose Food,” reported the Statesman. “Grocers were caught by surprise at the MPF shelves, which had remained untouched for months, suddenly emptied.” The Statesman continued, “Their husbands headed for the hardware stores, buying plastic water cans, flashlights, tools, radiological monitoring equipment, and tear gas pens.” The last item, a hand-held, writing pen-size “weapon,” would presumably be used to repel someone trying to beak in to a shelter.

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Above: The view of the South Mall and downtown Austin in 1962 from the Tower Observation Deck.

On November 4, 1962, less than a week after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, the University announced it had signed a contract with the Office of Civil Defense to provide 84 community fallout shelters in 30 campus buildings that would accommodate 24,099 persons. In fact, UT’s Civil Defense Committee had been working on the project for months, but the timing of the announcement was a little early, in part, to allay the fears of parents who had contacted the president’s office.

The shelters were well-distributed across the campus. Residence halls, the Main Building (which held both the central library and UT’s administrative offices), and the almost-finished Undergraduate Library and Academic Center (today’s Flawn Center) were obvious choices, along with the Texas Union, Student Health Center, and Gregory and Anna Hiss Gyms. Classroom buildings were also selected, including Garrison, Mary Gearing, Welch, Painter, and Waggener Halls, the buildings on the South Mall, and the just-completed Business-Economics Building. On the east side of campus, the Band Hall, Art Building, Drama Building, and the Law School were all deemed fallout shelters.

Above: A Civil Defense poster reminded the public that the fallout shelter sign was a “sign of protection.”

Starting in February, 1963, the designated shelters were stocked with supplies. Food, water, medical kits, radios, flashlights, batteries, soap, basic tools, portable toilets, radiation detection equipment, and walkie-talkies – which would allow for communication with emergency officials and other shelters on the campus – were all included. As with family shelters, the plan was to keep people protected and alive for two weeks.

Photo at left: Boxed shelter supplies are loaded into the basement of the business building.

Food consisted of crackers, biscuits, or wafers, made from wheat and corn flour. The rations allowed for 10,000 calories per person staying in the shelter for two weeks, and presumed the person would be sitting or sleeping much of the time. Additional “carbohydrate supplements” were also available.

About 100 University faculty and staff volunteered to be shelter managers, one each assigned to shelters that could house 50 – 200 persons (a “space” for an individual was defined as a 10 square-foot area), and more to larger shelters. Managers completed an extensive Civil Defense-prepared training program. Basic first aid, use of the radiation and communication equipment, and how to distribute the food rations were all included, but the volunteers also learned to be crisis managers, organize the shelter population, create sleeping and medical areas, prevent radioactive contamination from outside, how to assist parents with small children, accommodate religious services, use of isometric exercises to maintain strength, and a host of other issues and situations.

On campus, the arrival of shelters received mixed reviews. The Daily Texan editorial staff published a column under the title “Better Hid than Dead” and seemed pleased that the shelters were in place. Student letters to the editor, though, expressed contrary opinions. “The specter of nuclear annihilation pales at the thought of being locked in the Union with 1,310 [the Union’s shelter capacity] Union people and surrogates,” wrote Hayden Freeman. “I’ve seen them fight for their daily bread and dread to see them fighting for their lives – I’m sure their manners won’t improve. Not only would I rather be dead than Red, I’d rather be dead than hid.” Nell Hendricks wrote, “What puzzles me about all this tomfoolery is that people seem to be taking it seriously . . . Given the ideal conditions usually postulated in CD folklore, a bomb explodes 25 miles away (the magical distance), and you simply hole up in your shelter for two weeks (the magical period). You emerge to an idyllic, pastoral existence, to rebuild a better world, facing the future free and unafraid. So runs the fairy tale. Isn’t it a pretty one? Like, who said the ostrich is a stupid bird?”

By mid-spring, fallout shelter signs had been placed at the entrances and inside designated buildings, and the yellow and black logos became part the campus landscape.

Above: While business students prepare for the annual BBA Week, a fallout shelter sign (at far left) hangs at the entrance to the business school.

Above: A fallout shelter sign becomes part of the backdrop to a student Can-Can dance performance in front of the arched entrance to Garrison Hall.

Above: Not wanting to drill into the ornately carved limestone entrance of Welch Hall, the fallout shelter sign was posted on the brick to the upper right of the door.

Despite all of the planning, however, one glaring omission remained: there were no instructions as to which persons should go to which shelters in order to best accommodate everyone. If the Tower siren warned of a nuclear attack, should students living on campus report to their residence halls? Or, was everyone expected to simply go to the nearest shelter? What if a shelter had filled? There was no central coordination to track which shelters were still open. There could be a case where students, studying on the South Mall when the siren blew, had to frantically dash from building to building to find an available space. What if an attack came at night? Who would unlock the University buildings? Certainly, shelter managers weren’t expected to leave their families and try to make their way to campus. In addition, as UT’s shelters were public, they weren’t limited to the University community. In an emergency, a visitor on campus was expected to make use of them.

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Above: The Business-Economics Building.

It wasn’t until late in the year that a simulation run of a fallout shelter was planned. On Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m., December 5, 1963, 40 volunteer shelter managers descended into the basement of the Business-Economics Building, or “BEB.” Opened the previous year, it was the largest classroom facility on Forty Acres. The basement level was reserved for student activities, with space for lounges, recreation, student organization meeting rooms, and the largest assembly of vending machines on the campus, including a newfangled dollar bill changer. (See The Big Enormous Building).

The volunteers were part of the latest shelter manager training group and had just completed nine weeks of classes. They limited themselves to the south portion of the basement so as not to disrupt too much of the usual student activity. In a real emergency, the BEB basement was the University’s largest shelter, with a capacity of 4,400 persons.

For the eight-hour simulation, it was presumed that Bergstrom Air Force Base had just been hit in a nuclear attack and that fallout was drifting northwest over Austin. John Gaulding, on staff at the University’s Personnel Office, was elected shelter manager for the exercise.

“Radiation in Austin increasing, keep shelter closed tightly,” said bulletin number 3 from Austin’s Civil Defense headquarters, which was in radio contact with the group. Professor John Scanlan, who directed the nuclear reactor laboratory in the Engineering Science Building, served as radiation monitoring captain for the day. He unpacked the radiation detection kit from the shelter’s supplies and determined that there were no radiation leaks. As the simulation continued, Civil Defense regularly updated the outdoor conditions.

A volunteer patient was brought in to the shelter, checked for radiation and treated for broken bones. The group spread cardboard boxes on the floor as hospital beds and improvised with strips of cardboard as splints. Large sheets of paper became blankets.

Above left: The standard Civil Defense provisions for a 50-person fallout shelter included 10 drums of water and boxes of food, medical, sanitation, and radiation detection supplies that could be stacked in a space 40 inches square. The BEB basement shelter was equipped to handle 4,400 persons. Image courtesy of the Cold War Museum online.

Gladys Hudnall, the Food Services Supervisor at Kinsolving residence hall, acted as food and water captain and distributed paper cups filled with water from the supplies. Each person saved their cup for future use and was allotted a quart of water a day. The evening mealtime was served at 4:45 p.m., when the volunteers received eight crackers apiece as their caloric ration.

After dinner, there were isometric and other muscle exercises, and discussion on sleeping preparations. The sleeping arrangement captain, Neil Taylor, who was the manager of the Chuck Wagon diner in the Texas Union (what today is the Cactus café), selected the best ventilated area for sleeping. In a real situation, single men and women would have been placed at opposite ends, with married couples and children in the middle. Whatever bedding that was available would have been shared.

The following day, Mattie Treadwell, the chief field officer from the Washington, DC headquarters of Civil Defense, told the Texan that UT’s simulation was the first conducted by a large university. “I hope that other schools will be inspired to try similar exercises.”

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And then, nothing. After the 1963 simulation, there were no more records of training sessions for shelter manager volunteers. No one was designated to check the status of the food and medical supplies. Nationally, interest in fallout shelters dropped dramatically and Congress cut the Civil Defense budget accordingly. By 1975, twelve years after the fallout shelter signs were first hung, the Texan reported that the University was clearing out the shelter supplies to create more storage space. The medical provisions only had a four-year shelf life and had long since expired. Some of the food containers were opened, but the crackers and wafers were declared “rancid” and discarded. What could be salvaged was returned to Civil Defense.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, most of the outdoor fallout shelter signs, by then either rusted or bleached by the Texas sun, were removed from University buildings.

Sources:

Briscoe Center for American History (UT Archives): UT President’s Office Papers, Civil Defense files

Blanchard, Boyce Wayne. American Civil Defense 1945: The evolution of Programs and Policies (Dissertation, University of Virginia, 1980)

Marten, James. Coping with the cold War: Civil Defense in Austin, Texas 1961-62 (East Texas Historical Journal, March 1988)

The Texas Business Review, January 1962, pg. 9-10 (University of Texas College of Business Administration)

University of Texas Emergency Instructions in event of Atomic Attack or Tornado (1962) Special thanks to Avrel Seale who found a copy in the University Communications office and photographed the contents.

Office of Civil Defense publications: Ten for Survival: Survive a Nuclear Attack (1959), The Family Fallout Shelter (1959), Federal Civil Defense Guide – Fallout Shelter Food Requirements (1962), Shelter Manager Instructor Guide (1963), Guide for Community Fallout Shelter Management (1963)

Civil Defense Museum online: http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/

Life magazine, September 15, 1961, pg. 95-108

Newspapers: The Daily Texan, Austin American-Statesman, St. Edward’s University The Hilltopper, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Fresno Bee, Provo Daily Herald, San Angelo Standard Times, Sioux City Journal, Wichita Falls Times

Why are we Longhorns?

Posted on March 15, 2024 by Jim Nicar

Why are University of Texas athletic teams known as Longhorns?

Mascots for American colleges and universities are usually connected to the rise of intercollegiate sports, particularly football, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Some nicknames are simply a university’s colors: the Harvard Crimson, the Syracuse Orange, or Cornell University’s Big Red. The stories behind others, though, are as diverse as the mascots themselves. Michigan has often been called the “Wolverine State,” as wolverine pelts were popular in trade between Native Americans and European settlers of the 18^th century. When the University of Michigan fielded its first football team in 1879, the Wolverine nickname was an obvious and appropriate fit. In the early 1880s, football players from Princeton University donned orange and black striped jerseys and stockings as part of their uniforms, which prompted local sportswriters to refer to the team as the Tigers. A dozen track athletes from the University of California competed in their first out-of-state competition in 1895, and brought along a blue banner that featured a gold grizzly bear – the symbol of California found on its state flag. Thereafter, Cal teams would forever be known as the Golden Bears. In 1908, Phillips Miller, a vendor in Gainesville, Florida, wanted to sell college pennants of the two-year old University of Florida, but realized it didn’t yet have a mascot. Miller’s son, Austin, suggested the alligator, as it was native to the state and likely hadn’t been claimed by anyone else. The pennants were ordered, sold, and UF teams became known as the Gators.

Above: An early University of Florida pennant with an alligator mascot.

When the University of Texas first played football in 1893, the team was referred to as “‘Varsity.” The term – with an apostrophe in the front – was a nationally accepted abbreviation of the word “university.” (Think: university -> ‘versity -> ‘varsity.) Browse through early editions of the Cactus yearbook, and the label can be found everywhere: ‘Varsity Band (photo at left), ‘Varsity Glee Club, ‘Varsity Debate Team, as a generic expression for a University organization. (It wasn’t until after World War II that the word “varsity” referred to the “A” team in high school sports.) In Texas, from the 1880s to the 1920s, a person studying at ‘Varsity was understood to be enrolled at the University in Austin, while someone going to the College was a student at the A&M College of Texas, or “AMC,” in College Station.

In the early 1900s, newspapers began to set aside extra room for stories about athletic events and scores, which evolved into today’s sports sections. But journalists who covered sports couldn’t simply refer to a team as ‘varsity, as that could be applied to either school, and always writing out the full name – the University of Texas football team, for example– was too cumbersome. Instead, the use of mascots as team names became popular, and if a university didn’t have a nickname, sportswriters (as was the case with Princeton) might try to invent one.

A month into the 1903 fall term, Alex Weisberg, then editor-in-chief of the weekly Texan student newspaper, asked David Frank, then the sports reporter, to refer to UT athletic teams as Longhorns in every article, “and we’ll soon have a name.” The Texas longhorn was a descendent of cattle imported by Spanish settlers in the late 1600s, and its impressive size and strength had made it a favorite symbol associated with the Lone Star State. Frank agreed, and starting in November, the name “Longhorns” (and sometimes “Long Horns”) appeared in stories about the football team.

On November 13, UT traveled north to what was then the Oklahoma Territory to play the University of Oklahoma and left with an 11 – 5 win, though The Daily Oklahoman newspaper out of Oklahoma City published the headline “Rangers Won It” in an attempt to name the team from Austin. “The Texas Rangers won a very exciting game from the Norman University yesterday afternoon,” reported the Oklahoman. The Texan, though, would have none of it, and promptly corrected the Oklahoman on its error.

The Texan kept it up into the spring of 1904, and expanded to the baseball and track teams, as well as the University’s debate team. With a debate scheduled in Austin against the University of Missouri, the paper explained, “The debate will be the first time the Tigers and Longhorns have met on the intellectual gridiron.”

Frank became the Texan’s editor-in-chief in 1905 and continued the campaign. By 1907, the nickname was in use by the entire University community, and the Athletic Council officially recognized the Longhorn as the University of Texas mascot.

Above: The first Longhorn “swag” appeared in 1913 when recent graduate (and future Board of Regents chair) Lutcher Stark donated orange blankets to the football team that read “Texas Longhorns.” One of the blankets is on display in the Stark Center, headquartered at the north side of the stadium.

Birth of the Alcalde Magazine

Posted on January 11, 2024 by Jim Nicar

And the near demise of Texas A&M

The University of Texas alumni magazine Alcalde arrived only after a Herculean overhaul of the Alumni Association, an unprecedented public relations campaign to promote higher education, a sumptuous turkey dinner, a near-fatal bout of appendicitis, and a legislative debate over merging Texas A&M with the University in Austin.

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It wasn’t the usual holiday greeting. Less than a week before Christmas, on December 20, 1910, University of Texas Alumni Association President Ed Parker (right) wrote a bluntly candid letter to his fellow graduates. “The Association has at this time,” he explained, “no complete records, no fixed habitation, no funds, no really effective organization.” Alumni dues were a dollar a year, but no one bothered to pay them. The treasury had been empty since 1905 and the office of treasurer left vacant. “That such a condition should not be permitted to continue does not admit of argument.”

Founded on Wednesday, June 17, 1885 by the 34 members of UT’s first two graduating classes – 1884 and 1885 – the University’s alumni group was full of potential. In its first years it provided several gifts and scholarships, and the group raised $1,000 as one-third of the cost of UT’s first athletic field. By 1910, though, the 25-year old Association had languished.

What activity remained was centered on a sparsely-attended “Alumni Day,” an annual meeting in June held in conjunction with the University’s Commencement Week. The meeting highpoints included a formal “alumni address” speech, a debate and selection of next year’s speaker, and then officer elections before the group adjourned to a barbecue lunch.

Parker, an 1889 graduate and Houston lawyer, was elected president at the June 1910 meeting, but didn’t fully realize the somber state of alumni affairs until his predecessor, Will Crawford, cordially stopped by Parker’s office months later. The two had a lengthy conversation and Parker resolved to place the Association on a more prosperous course.

After further discussions and a meeting with his fellow officers in the Executive Council, Parker crafted five ambitious goals intended to resuscitate the Alumni Association:

Acquire a permanent alumni secretary “charged with the execution of such plans as the association may adopt.”
“Furnish and equip” a room on campus as an alumni headquarters.
Add class reunions to the annual June meeting to increase interest and attendance.
Enforce the rule requiring $1 annual dues. With approval of the Executive Council, a $50 life membership was created, payable all at once or in $10 installments over five years.
Establish an alumni magazine.

University President Sidney Mezes was quick to support Parker’s objectives, and offered to fulfill two items on the list:

First, Mezes found an alumni secretary. John Avery Lomax earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at UT in 1897, and then spent six years as the University’s registrar before he was hired as an English instructor at the A&M College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). In 1906, Lomax took a sabbatical, went to Harvard on a scholarship, earned his master’s degree, and fulfilled a childhood ambition to collect and preserve western cowboy and folk songs. Encouraged by his Harvard professors, Lomax solicited songs through newspapers and journeyed throughout the west whenever time and funds permitted. In Fort Worth, he met cowhands who knew the words to “The Old Chisolm Trail” and discovered a gypsy woman who sang, “Git Along Little Doggies.” In San Antonio, an African American former trail cook who was then managing a saloon performed “Home on the Range.” Back in College Station, Lomax compiled the music into a book titled Cowboy Songs and other Frontier Ballads. It was to appear in November 1910 and would eventually make Lomax internationally famous.

Around the same time, Mezes recruited Lomax back to Austin to serve as Secretary of the University and Assistant Director of the Extension Department, and he was to start with the fall 1910 term. As an opportune coincidence, Lomax had also been elected secretary of the Alumni Association at the same meeting Parker was made president. Normally, the secretary – as with the other officers – served in a volunteer capacity, but Mezes made it a professional one. He added “Alumni Secretary” to Lomax’s job description, which provided the first paid staff position for the Association and tied the group more closely to the University. Lomax earned a $2,200 salary, though it would be raised to $2,700 within two years.

Above: The University Library – today’s Battle Hall – under construction in 1910 .(from UT’s Alexander Architectural Archives)

Mezes also offered the Association a home. In 1910, the University’s new Library (today’s Battle Hall) was well under construction. When finished the following year, it was expected to have enough extra room that UT’s administrative offices, including the president’s office, would be moved to the first floor. Mezes was confident that once he relocated to the new building, the Board of Regents would approve the use of his current office, room 119 in Old Main, as the Alumni Room, a new campus headquarters for the Association.

Having already attained two of his goals, Parker’s December letter was mailed to about 2,800 alumni, which laid out the troubling state of the Association and outlined the five objectives. “There can be no question,” Parker wrote, “but that a state university . . . has need for an active, vigilant, and loyal working body of alumni to look out for its interests.”

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Through the spring of 1911, Parker and the Executive Council diligently pursued the final three objectives. The June meeting and class reunions for UT’s first 10 graduating classes (1884 to 1893) were advertised in newspapers statewide. Parker sent personal letters to each member of the reunion classes and President Mezes did the same a few weeks later. “In case it is possible for you to attend,” wrote Mezes, “kindly notify me by wire, so that proper provision can be made for your reception and entertainment.”

Above: The Engineering Building, now the Gebauer Building. Opened in 1904, it’s the oldest surviving building on the Forty Acres. Above the ground floor labs and first floor offices, the alumni met in the second floor lecture hall, on the right side with the arched windows.

At 9:30 a.m. on the sunny and warm Monday morning of June 12, 1911, nearly 250 graduates gathered for the annual meeting, held in the second floor lecture hall of the Engineering Building (today’s Gebauer Building). With the entire nation experiencing an early summer heat wave, the windows were opened to catch any southeastern breezes that ventured up from the Gulf of Mexico.

The news was encouraging. Just over 600 alumni had paid their $1 dues and pledged to continue their payments in the future. Three alumni were $50 life members, and 36 more were on the installment plan. John Lomax was formally introduced as the group’s Alumni Secretary, and the Board of Regents had officially approved repurposing room 119 in Old Main as the new Alumni Room. The Association’s first class reunions were to be held later that evening at the Austin Country Club.

In the course of the meeting, the group approved the creation of 31 volunteer “district secretaries,” one in each state senatorial district, to organize social gatherings on March 2, Texas Independence Day. Meant to celebrate both the state and the University, the annual event quickly became a catalyst for the creation of local alumni chapters. (See Why Texas Exes Celebrate March 2^nd).

Above right: The Austin chapter of the Alumni Association organized in 1913 with a luncheon at the Driskill Hotel.

Also approved was a resolution to give the Executive Council authority “to establish and provide for a University of Texas periodical,” though it was felt that a magazine should be put on hold for a year. Instead, Lomax was to complete an updated alumni directory.

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Above: The University’s Old Main, with the newly opened Library on the left.

The surprise of the day came from Will Hogg, namesake for the W. C. Hogg Building on campus. The son of former Governor James Stephen Hogg, an 1897 law school graduate, and, like Parker, a Houston lawyer, Will Hogg fully supported Parker’s efforts to transform the alumni group “from a wishing organization to a working organization.”

At a time when a majority of the U.S. population remained unconvinced about the value of a college education, the 36-year old Hogg was believed that the only way for state-funded colleges and universities in Texas to be adequately financed and supported was for more Texans to truly understand what was happening on campus. While he had mulled over the idea for years, the momentum Parker was building with the alumni presented a ripe opportunity to put thoughts into action. Hogg proposed an ambitious and unprecedented five-year program to promote higher education to the people of Texas.

He originally called it “The Organization for the Enlargement and Extension by the State of the University Plan of Higher Education in Texas.” What a mouthful. It was quickly shortened to “The Hogg Organization.”

According to its proposed by-laws, the Hogg Organization was to be overseen by the President of the Ex-Students’ Association, President of the University, and Chair of the Board of Regents. Committees of volunteers would be organized to handle specific tasks, and Hogg explained that Arthur Lefevre, an 1895 UT civil engineering graduate, was to be hired as secretary.

While it would rest under the umbrella of the Alumni Association, Hogg planned to take on the funding himself and promised to find enough contributors to be able to spend $30,000 for five years, or $150,000 total, equivalent to more than $4.5 million today. The alumni enthusiastically supported the idea, many became contributors, and Hogg was as good as his word. In four months, he obtained enough pledges to finance the entire project. (No subscription larger than $250 per year was accepted.)

Over the next five years, the Hogg Organization made an enormous impact on the state promoting a single idea: that higher education was vital to the future prosperity of Texas. Articles regularly appeared in newspapers statewide, and it received coverage from as far away as Boston. Informational posters and charts espousing the benefits of a university education were placed in courthouses, libraries, and chambers of commerce. “Higher Education Day” programs were held in thousands of Texas public schools – most of them one-teacher schoolhouses in rural communities – to inform and encourage students to consider going on to college. (At the time, in-state tuition to UT and other state-supported colleges was free, paid through a legislative appropriation.) A series of pamphlets, published by the Hogg Organization and mailed to thousands across Texas, promoted the “cultural value” of education and detailed the economic impact of higher education on the state. Elaborate exhibits were placed at county fairs, where University alumni volunteers were there to explain and answer questions.

Perhaps its best publicity effort was in hiring about 30 recent graduates who represented every college and university in Texas, both publicly and privately funded. As something akin to higher education missionaries, they canvased the state, especially small towns, where they spoke about their own collegiate experiences. As John Lomax later remarked, “These men were carefully selected, and the hope of what they could accomplish lay in the fact that they themselves were Texas people who could talk pretty well and could show the people of the state what a college education had done for them. A great deal of good was done by these men.”

Of course, as the Hogg Organization was considered a project of the Alumni Association, the public profile of the latter was raised considerably.

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By June 1912, a year-and-a-half after Parker’s dire letter, the transformation of the Alumni Association was nothing short of remarkable. Attendance for the June 10 annual meeting had doubled to 500 and was moved to the newly-opened YMCA Building at the corner of 22^nd and Guadalupe Streets. Dues-paid memberships had topped 1,000 persons. Reunions were organized for the second ten graduating classes (1894 to 1903), and the first ever Alumni vs. ‘Varsity Baseball Game was held, pitting former UT baseball stars against Coach Billy Disch and his current team.

The signature event of the evening was a torchlight and colored lantern procession. Alumni assembled on the West Walk (the future West Mall) and with the University Band leading the way, paraded on the streets around the perimeter of the Forty Acres. Colorful floats built by academic departments and student organizations joined the “devoted foot-cavalry,” as Lomax described it, “plugging along amid dust and hilarity.” Student and Austin spectators crowded the route.

To prepare the campus, “the Senior Engineers have strung thousands of electric globes along the main walks,” reported the Austin Statesman. Additional strings of alternating orange and white lights were hung under the eaves of the new Library (above right) and the front of the old Main Building was brightly floodlit. The parade wound up at a wooden stage just west of Old Main, where the participants were entertained by skits and songs performed by UT students.

“Everybody was tired, but everybody was happy,” reported Lomax. “Alumni Day, 1912, was at an end – a day filled with much pleasure for many people, and a day marking probably the largest and most successful home-coming of old students the University has ever known.”

The most important and far-reaching events, though, were during the morning business meeting. In an effort to recruit still more participation (and, it was argued, missing friends who hadn’t completed their degrees), the alumni approved a constitutional amendment to expand membership from graduates-only to anyone who had attended the University. Hereafter, the UT Alumni Association was renamed the Ex-Students’ Association of the University of Texas.

The group also gave the go-ahead for an alumni magazine and set a target date of January 1, 1913 for the first issue. A committee was appointed to get the ball rolling and meet with President Mezes about potential financial assistance.

Left: Ribbon from the 1912 alumni meeting. In lighthearted fashion, the alumni were divided into three 10-year sets and given special designations. The oldest group was dubbed the “Ancients,” the middle group called the “Medievals,” and the most recent graduates were the “Old Timers.”

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Of course, deciding to launch a periodical wasn’t the same as putting all of the pieces together. The magazine needed a name. There wasn’t yet an editor, editorial board, final decisions about content, completed articles, photos and illustrations, a cover design, advertisements to help defray printing costs, and a host of other details. Given all of the work that needed to be done, the New Year’s publication date wasn’t all that distant.

Lomax didn’t waste any time, and used the summer to solicit possible article contributors for the first issue. “The Alumni Association of the University of Texas has voted to begin an Alumni Magazine,” Lomax wrote to Alexander Macfarlane, who led the physics department from 1885 to 1894 and had since retired to Canada. “One purpose of the publication is to obtain a record of the early days of the institution from the men who were the chief actors in making this history.” McFarlane declined, but Lomax had better luck with John Mallet. A longtime chemistry professor at the University of Virginia, Mallet was among the eight-member inaugural UT faculty in 1883 and served as the faculty chair. He obliged with a three-page “Recollections of the First Year.” Lomax’s request was a timely one, as Mallet passed away only a few months later, in November.

In the meantime, an alumni committee approached President Mezes about financial support. Mezes offered to help, but wanted the alumni publication to replace The University of Texas Record. A UT-sponsored journal first published in 1899, it provided a wealth of information about academics and student life on the Forty Acres, but as many of the topics would overlap with an alumni magazine, it didn’t make sense to fund both. About 5,000 copies were printed for each issue of the Record, and Mezes hoped the new magazine would have the same circulation.

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Progress on the magazine continued through autumn. On Friday morning, October 18, 1912, the Ex-Students’ Association Executive Council assembled in the brand-new and majestic Adolphus Hotel (left), opened less than two weeks beforehand in downtown Dallas. President Mezes attended as well. The group officially endorsed the alumni magazine and appointed an eight-person editorial board, which included Lomax. Among its members: Dr. Harry Benedict, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Eugene Barker, chair of the UT history department, and Fritz Lanham, a 1900 graduate who had served as the first editor-in-chief of The Texan student newspaper. In addition to the board, an ad hoc committee of Association Vice President John Philip, Will Hogg, and John Lomax was organized to look after the business affairs for the first issue.

Just over a month later, on Wednesday, November 27 (Thanksgiving Eve) the editorial board gathered in Austin for its organizational meeting. Five additional members had been selected, including Richard Fleming and Mary Batts as student editors, who would contribute news about campus life and Longhorn sports.

The group met at the Lomax family home in west campus at 910 West 26^th Street, a one-year old, two-story, yellow-brick bungalow with a hillside view of what today is North Lamar Boulevard and Shoal Creek, and where a pre-Thanksgiving turkey feast awaited everyone. “Carefully cooked by Mrs. Lomax,” Harry Benedict recounted years later, “in strict accord with all the finer principles of gastronomy, it was set, not before a king, but before certain unroyal personages who were met to destroy the turkey and to found a Texas alumni magazine.”

After dinner, the first order of business was to select an editor-in-chief, at the time an entirely volunteer position. Fritz Lanham (at right) received the nod. A lawyer from Weatherford (just west of Fort Worth), he was best-known on the Forty Acres as the founder and first editor of the Texan newspaper. The group hoped Lanham would bring that experience to the new alumni magazine.

Like Will Hogg, Fritz Lanham was also the son of a former Texas governor. Samuel Lanham held the office from 1903 to 1907, after having served 18 years in the U.S. Congress. Though Fritz never ran for governor, he did follow in his father’s footsteps to Washington, where he represented Texas’ 12^th congressional district from 1919 until his retirement in 1946.

Following the choice of Lanham as editor, the board held an animated conversation well into the evening, debating the purpose and content of the magazine. Benedict quipped, “This enthusiasm was, it must be admitted, in part due to the fact that Charles K. Lee, Will Hogg, Dr. David H. Lawrence, and John Philip had agreed to back the proposed magazine to the extent of a couple of thousand in case a deficit should unfortunately arise.” Its pages were to be filled with reminiscences from faculty and alumni, news of current campus events, discussions over University problems, and literary efforts, including poetry.

The publication date was pushed back to March 1, 1913, just before Texas Independence Day on March 2 and the planned alumni events across the state. What better time to distribute the first copy of an alumni magazine than on the day ex-students came together to celebrate Texas and their alma mater?

Perhaps the most anticipated question was the magazine’s title. Professor Barker was chosen to lead a sub-committee to select a name, and the nominations included: The Orange and White, The Bronco, The Lone Star, The Alamo, The Ex-Students’ Record – a nod to the retiring University of Texas Record – and The Alcalde.

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The word “alcalde” (al-CAL-day) originated as the 7^th century Arabic term “al-qadi,” or, “the judge.” Early Muslim kings, known as caliphs, appointed qadis to administer justice in local civil and criminal cases. When the caliphs expanded the Arabian Empire west across northern Africa, and then north into the Iberian Peninsula in 718, they brought the al-qadi custom with them. Local Spaniards later modified the term to “alcalde,” though it retained much of its original meaning. Eight centuries later, after the Spanish regained control of the peninsula, the conquistadors sailed across the Atlantic to invade what is modern day Mexico, and the alcalde tradition arrived in the New World.

Starting in the 1500s, Spanish military and missionary explorers often designated the chiefs of Native American villages as alcaldes, and the term expanded to mean not only a local magistrate, but the town spokesman. By the time Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836, alcaldes were an integral part of the political and legal landscape north of the Rio Grande. With the founding of the Texas Republic, the system was outdated and replaced.

The term, however, endured. Texas Governor Oran Roberts, who shepherded and then signed the 1881 legislation that created the University and later served as one of UT’s first two law professors, was widely known as the “Old Alcalde.” In his honor, the first campus newspaper, a weekly launched in 1895, was named The Alcalde (above). The publication lasted only two years, but John Lomax had been one of its editors. He thought the title appropriate for a UT alumni magazine, both with its connection to the University’s past and in its purpose as the “town voice” for the alumni. Professor Barker’s subcommittee agreed.

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With the coming of the New Year, the 33^rd regular session of the Texas Legislature convened on a sunny and mild January 14, 1913. Higher education was to take a prominent part, and the Hogg Organization had been busy. Secretary Arthur Lefevre authored an extensive survey on the state-funded colleges. Titled, “The State Institutions of Higher Education in Texas: Their Past Services, Future Possibilities, and Present Financial Condition,” it was published in time for the beginning of the session and consulted regularly by lawmakers.

One of the pressing issues was the relationship between UT and A&M. The 1876 Texas Constitution designated the A&M College a “branch” of the University, but UT’s Board of Regents and A&M’s Board of Directors met a week before the session began and agreed to ask the Legislature to formally separate them. The Legislature would need to pass a constitutional amendment that would then be ratified by a statewide vote.

Some lawmakers, though, urged just the opposite, and called for A&M to be merged with the University in Austin, while the College Station campus would be renovated into a “state hospital for the insane.” Arguments for consolidation focused on the costs for maintaining the remote A&M College, with duplicate libraries, labs, and faculty. Lefevre’s study seemed to support a merger. While A&M’s enrollment was less than half of the University (1000 to 2300 UT students), the survey listed the cost per student as more than double ($700 vs. $300 at UT).

On February 5, Texas Governor Oscar Colquitt presented a special message on education. Officially, he was in favor of separating UT and A&M and discussed the constitutional amendment, but he also described his idea of a “Greater University” at length. Colquitt imagined a single campus of “ample acreage” as a place for A&M, a law school, a medical school, the state normal colleges, and arts and industry. “In the center of the campus I would build a magnificent main building of Texas granite,” the governor continued, “and I would call the whole the ‘University of Texas.” To some, it seemed as if Colquitt wanted consolidation on the grandest scale.

The case for a merger was strengthened by headlines from College Station. In January, 27 members of A&M’s Corps of Cadets were dismissed for repeatedly violating hazing rules. On February 1, a petition signed by 466 A&M cadets – nearly half of the student body – was presented to the faculty, insisting their fellow cadets be reinstated. If not, “none of the undersigned men will attend any academic duties from now until such time as our demands are acceded to.” The faculty convened and promptly voted to expel all of the cadets who signed the petition. Eventually, the crisis was solved and the 466 petition signers reinstated (though not the original 27 cadets), but not before the governor became personally involved and the Legislature took time to pass an anti-hazing bill.

Above: The A&M College’s old Main Building. (Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M)

Controversy was no stranger to the A&M College. In 1879, when the College was in its third year, bitter disagreements between professors led to the dismissal of the entire faculty and the president, and two-thirds of the students withdrew. Through the spring of 1908, a series of incidents between President Henry Harrington and the students, investigated twice by the Board of Directors, led to a well-publicized mass exodus of students and ultimately Harrington’s resignation. An early morning kitchen fire destroyed the student mess hall in November, 1911, and just over six months later, in May, 1912, A&M’s original Main Building burned. Only the brick walls were left standing, and most of the College’s records, along with the entire library, were destroyed. The Legislature had to approve additional funds to replace the facilities.

The latest incident, taking place during a Legislative session, only served to increase the volume of the voices who thought A&M should be relocated, and more lawmakers were listening.

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Above: The Southland Hotel in Dallas.

While the Texas Capitol was full of activity, work proceeded on the alumni magazine. On January 30, 1913, the Executive Council met in the Southland Hotel in Dallas. The group officially approved the name Alcalde, set the subscription price at $1 per year (in addition to the $1 Association dues), and created the Alcalde Founders, a designation for alumni who donated $5 a year for five years to support the publication and would then be entitled to a lifetime subscription. The Council also recruited University Registrar Ed Matthews as the magazine’s business manager.

By February, most of the first issue’s content was ready, as Lomax and Lanham had been working for months to secure both authors and articles. Since the magazine was supposed to debut on Texas Independence Day, an image of the Alamo was the choice for the cover. The publication date, though, had to be pushed back yet again to April after Lanham’s wife, Beulah, suffered a near-fatal attack of appendicitis. “My wife was stricken with appendicitis and has been quite sick since,” Lanham wrote to Hogg on February 17. A few days later, Lanham described a “midnight auto trip to Fort Worth for a nurse . . . the doctors concur in the belief that an operation will be necessary as soon as she is able to stand it.”

While his wife convalesced, Lanham created a list of about 300 University friends and sent an appeal for support from his home in Weatherford on March 15. “This is a personal letter, not a waste-basket letter, “Lanham began. “You have likely read about the Alcalde . . . I can imagine nothing which will bind us closer together in our esteem for each other and the University than this publication.” Lanham made his pitch for a $5 annual contribution. “I’m willing to pay my fiver and work hard on the job . . . Don’t pass the ice water; it won’t quench this burning desire we have to do something for the University and each other.” The same day, Lanham took the train to Austin to complete the first issue with Lomax and Matthews.

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When Lanham arrived in the capital city, the Legislative debate over whether to separate or merge the University and A&M was at full throttle. The hazing problems in College Station only bolstered the arguments that the A&M campus was too remote. A consolidation bill had been introduced in the House and much of the Legislature supported it.

On March 22, less than two weeks before the session ended on April 1, a pamphlet appeared signed by 12 members of the House. It outlined several reasons for consolidation, including:

“The recent strike is but the last of a series of similar troubles of the College . . .”
“These periodic upheavals are not due to the inefficiency of the Faculty and the unruly character of the students, but rather to the location of the College and the conditions under which the students are forced to live.”
“The State is wasting a large sum of money in maintaining rival engineering schools and in duplication of libraries, laboratories and the teaching staff.”
“The agricultural and other interests of the State would be better cared for by one strong unified institution like the University of Wisconsin or Illinois . . .”

The pamphlet reprinted editorials from the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, San Antonio Express, Austin Daily Statesman, Fort Worth Record, and Farm and Ranch. All endorsed a merger. There were recent testimonials from university presidents across the country: Wisconsin, Ohio State, Arkansas, and Minnesota, among them. “I regard the separation of the Agricultural and Mechanical College from the State University as illogical in conception, inefficient in practice, and always wasteful,” wrote Sam Avery, an agriculture professor and Chancellor of the University of Nebraska. “The best scheme I can think of to waste the State’s money is to maintain the college of agriculture and mechanical arts separate from the State University,” stated Ross Hill, President of the University of Missouri. Ben Wheeler, President of the University of California, was direct. “The place for your Agricultural and Mechanical College,” wrote Wheeler,” is undoubtedly at Austin in connection with the State University.” The Texas Cattle Raisers’ Association added its voice, and thought that merging A&M with UT “would be wise and prudent from every point of view.”

Most important was the view of David Houston, who was appointed President of A&M (1902 – 1905), then was UT’s President (1905 – 1908) and was currently serving as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under Woodrow Wilson. “The present location of A. and M. is exceedingly unfortunate, agriculturally and educationally,” wrote Houston. “The Faculty and students both suffer . . . Consolidation would result in a great strength for both institutions, and the A. and M. College interests would be the chief gainers . . . In my judgement, the friends of the A. and M. College should be the strongest advocates for the proposal.”

When asked about space for a College farm in Austin, supporters quickly pointed to the 500-acre tract of land along the Colorado River, recently donated to the University in 1910 by San Antonio Regent George Brackenridge (and known today as the Brackenridge Tract). Will Hogg was initially for separation, but gradually changed course, thought it financially prudent to headquarter A&M in Austin, but also wanted it to direct four or five sub-campuses of the College in various parts of the state, with “practical training adapted to the agricultural resources of that section.” When asked about consolidation, Baylor University President Sam Brooks approved of the idea, “properly safeguarding the rights of both institutions and the alumni of both.”

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The discussion in the Legislature injected eleventh-hour uncertainty with plans for the Alcalde. If the lawmakers passed a constitutional amendment to merge A&M with the University, there were calls to have some kind of article in the magazine about the legislation and the issues. And if the amendment were approved in a statewide vote, it would mean that the A&M alumni organization would merge with the Ex-Students Association, and the magazine would need to reflect the interests and historical memories of A&M alumni as well.

As it was necessary to know the final outcome of the consolidation debate, it was agreed not to send the Alcalde to press until after the session ended April 1.

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As March came to a close, A&M alumni and other supporters rushed to the College’s defense, including six members of the Corps of Cadets who remained at the Capitol for days to personally speak with every lawmaker. Perhaps the most prominent was Clarence Ousley, Chairman of the UT Board of Regents, who wanted to adhere to the January agreement between the regents and A&M Board of Directors and was firmly in favor of separation.

The 33^rd Legislative session was set to adjourn at noon on April 1, but the clocks in the Capitol were turned back several times to accommodate the usual last-minute flurry of bills. The final gavel was heard closer to 4:30 in the afternoon.

The House unanimously passed a constitutional amendment to separate the University and A&M, but the Senate favored consolidation, leaving the issue at an impasse and the relationship between UT and A&M unchanged.

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Printed, bound, and ready at last, the inaugural issue of the Alcalde was delivered from the publishing house April 15. At just over 100 pages, square bound, and 7 by 10 ½ inches, it better resembled an academic journal than a magazine. The next day, Lomax mailed Hogg the very first printed copy, along with a handwritten note. “I am sending you . . . the first copy of The Alcalde, the real first copy of all copies received from the press . . . to you is due the credit of its appearance . . . For your activity, brain, and generosity is giving life to the whole Alumni movement.” The note was a gracious acknowledgement of Hogg’s support and financial backing, but everyone knew that it was Lomax’s diligent labors which deserved the most praise.

The cover was yellow (officially “old gold”), with its masthead – “The Alcalde” – and a version of the University’s Seal at the top in orange, and with a large, shaded image of the Alamo in the center, a reminder that the issue was six weeks late. The color choice wasn’t arbitrary; it had deep roots in the University’s history and resonated with the alumni at the time. While orange and white had been formally recognized as UT’s colors in 1900, all of the buildings on campus, except for the new Library, were made from Austin pressed yellow brick and cream limestone trim, still seen today in the Gebauer Building. The use of similar construction materials not only provided a unifying visual element to the Forty Acres, it influenced how students and alumni identified with the University. In 1893, UT’s first football team listed its colors as “old gold and white” and wore yellow beanie caps with black and white jerseys. Gold and white were also contenders in the final color selection in 1900.

Above: The yellow-bricked Gebauer Building.

The Alamo cover design was the product of Ed Connor, a 1905 graduate who earned both engineering and liberal arts degrees. As a student, Connor’s artistic talents were always in demand, especially in the Cactus yearbook. He even spent a summer in Europe to study drawing in Paris.

Connor married into the Lanham family on January 1, 1907, when he wed Governor Lanham’s daughter, Grace, at the first marriage ceremony held in the Governor’s Mansion. As brothers-in-law, Fritz and Ed were close. The Connors named their first child Fritz Lanham Connor after the boy’s uncle. While Connor pursued engineering as a career, he was happy to help when Fritz asked about a cover for the Alcalde.

Just inside the cover, the front matter included a subscription form, the Table of Contents, a full-page ad by the University Co-op, the names of the Executive Council and district secretaries, lists of the Association’s life and endowment members, and names of 58 Alcalde Founders, which would grow to 170 by the end of the year. There was also an Alumni Law Directory for those who paid a small fee to be listed. In future issues, it would expand into a full Professional Alumni Directory, connecting ex-students by their occupations.

President Mezes penned the Foreword. “I rejoice from my heart at the inauguration of The Alcalde,” he wrote. “It should be a bond of ever-growing power tying former students to each other and to Alma Mater. Through it they will learn how fare the others over the broad back of the Earth. Through it they will revive fond memories of their college days . . . Through it they will learn of the progress of the institution to the goal of its ideal and have an orderly record of its life and work.”

Readers were treated to memories of UT’s earliest years written by the late John Mallet and Milton Humphries, the last surviving member of the original faculty. George Carter’s article, “Who Spiked the Canon?” relayed details about UT’s first Texas Independence Day celebration in 1897, when students borrowed a canon from the Capitol and fired it in front of the old Main Building. Another article in the second issue, “The Choosing of the Colors” by Venable Proctor, explained how orange and white was introduced to the University. Without these important contributions, the stories behind some of UT’s popular traditions might have been forever lost.

Here, too, was news from the campus, the latest in Longhorn sports, a lighthearted anecdotal column authored by Dean Harry Benedict, and occasional poetry composed by alumni. Personal updates by class year were listed under the heading, “Texas Exes,” the first time the now-familiar term was published.

Five thousand copies of the first issue were published by the Von-Boechmann-Jones Company in Austin and sent to alumni (subscribers and potential subscribers) as well as those who used to receive the University of Texas Record. Some copies were for sale in Old Main and the University Co-op. Mary Batts, one of the Alcalde’s two student editors, set up a table at the second floor entrance to the Library’s reading room (what today is the Battle Hall library) and did not let a student pass until they subscribed. “Truly the greatest present problem of THE ALCALDE is financial,” wrote Lanham in his editorial column. “This first issue of five thousand copies is put forth on faith.”

The magazine received glowing reviews from the local press. “The contents of the periodical require no apologies on any ground. The articles are timely, interesting, and well written,” declared the Texan. “The Alcalde should find a ready acceptance, not only with the alumni of the University, but with the student body as well.” The Austin Statesman gushed, “In point of print and paper, the Alcalde can lay more claim to art – spelled with a capital A – than any other magazine published in the Southwest.”

Just a few days after the release of the first issue, on April 19, Jessie Andrews, the first woman graduate of the University and its first female instructor, penned a five-stanza poem to welcome the new alumni magazine. It was published in the May 1913 issue:

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Epilogue

The Alcalde magazine enjoyed a very adventurous first few years. Among the highlights:

The third issue of the magazine, ready in time for the June 1913 commencement and the University’s 30^th anniversary celebration, featured a special cover (right) in tribute to engineering Dean Thomas Taylor and his 25 years on the UT faculty. A popular and respected figure across the campus – known affectionately by the students as the “Old Man” – a color rendering of the rusty-haired Taylor was drawn by Ed Connor, but was published in the usual gold tint. The original version, though, with its weathered and battered frame, still resides in the Alcalde offices in the Alumni Center as one of the few surviving artifacts of the magazine’s first year.

A photo of UT’s football coaches, labeled “Greatest Coaching Staff in the South,” appeared in the November 1913 issue (at right). The image included Assistant Coach Burton Rix, a Dartmouth graduate, Assistant Coach Lt. Joseph Weir from West Point (Army), and Head Coach David Allerdice, who played for the University of Michigan. All three wore their college letter sweaters, which appeared in the photo as “D A M” and sparked a complaint letter to The Daily Texan. “I think that the editors and staff of the Alcalde should at least have a say so as to what goes and leave the ‘cuss’ words out . . . The grouping is excellent, considered from the ‘cussing’ standpoint . . . Now honestly, don’t you think that these figures should have been reversed or changed in some way?” The note was anonymously signed, “J. B.”

On Saturday, March 21, 1914, the University of Texas Ladies Club held its organizational luncheon at the Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin. Along with electing officers and making plans for future activities, Bess Lomax, wife of alumni secretary John Lomax, voiced her disappointment that there were almost no women authors in the Alcalde. She came prepared with copies of a pre-written letter for members to pass along to their friends. “The fact will always remain,” Bess wrote, “for the first twelve months of its existence, the men have written practically all of the Alcalde.” She continued, “I am writing to you as a representative University woman . . . Whatever happens, we must not let the Alcalde become merely a man’s magazine, any more than we would allow Varsity to become only a man’s college.” It wasn’t long before more female bylines appeared in the pages of the magazine.

With interest in the Alcalde growing, the August 1914 issue was an impressive 200 pages long and included its first color image (above). A photo of the University Library (above), the front balustrade was carefully drawn as it would appear. The decorative railing was part of the building’s original design, but never constructed. As was so often the case during Austin’s warmer months, the windows were open to catch any cooling breezes.

In 1915, the Alcalde’s high typographical quality and the use of monotype for its cover and other graphics made it a featured publication in the printing exhibit at the San Francisco World’s Fair, as well as the San Diego Panama-Pacific Exhibition in 1916.

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Sources:

Alcalde magazine

University of Texas Record

Briscoe Center for American History (UT Archives): Robert Batts Papers, William J. Battle Papers, Harry Y. Benedict Papers, Will C. Hogg Papers, John A. Lomax Papers, UT Ex-Students Association Records, UT President’s Office Records

Alexander Architectural Archives

UT Board of Regents minutes

House and Senate Journals, 33^rd Regular Session of the Texas Legislature

Report of the National Conference of Alumni Secretaries 1913 – 1916

Benedict, Harry. A Sourcebook of University of Texas History (UT Bulletin, 1916)

Dethloff, Henry. A Centennial History of Texas A&M, 1876 – 1976 (Texas A&M, 1976)

Porterfield, Nolan. The Last Cavalier: The Life and Times of John A. Lomax (University of Illinois, 1996)

Newspapers: Austin American-Statesman, The Daily Texan, Galveston Daily News, Fort Worth Telegram, Fort Worth Record and Register, San Antonio Daily Light, Houston Post

100 Years of “Texas Fight!”

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Jim Nicar

The 1923 University of Texas football season could not have started better. Undefeated after the first six games, the team had shut out its opponents 202 – 0. “When Longhorn gridiron prospects are as good as they are,” stated The Daily Texan student newspaper, “the average male student doesn’t care much about the rest of the University anyway. From registration to Thanksgiving, most of us major in football, with a few bothersome minors thrown in by [degree] requirements.”

Guided by first-year coach Ed “Doc” Stewart (so nicknamed because he had a medical degree), the Longhorns posted a 33 – 0 rout over Tulane in a game held in Beaumont, Texas, and a 16 – 0 win over a strong Vanderbilt team at the Texas State Fair. Vanderbilt would go on to win the Southern Conference title, and its only other loss was to eventual national champion Michigan.

The Texas steamroller was slowed by a 7 – 7 tie against Baylor in Waco on November 10. Though it wasn’t a loss, it left Coach Stewart more than a little concerned about the physical condition and morale of his team. The Longhorns left Waco plagued with injuries, and Stewart was forced to cancel practice and allow his players to heal. Only two games remained on the schedule. Rival Oklahoma was coming to Austin the following week, and the Thanksgiving Day game against the A&M College of Texas, in College Station, loomed on the horizon.

Above: The old Men’s Gym at Speedway and 24^th Streets, where the Peter O’Donnell Building stands today, was packed for a football rally.

As part of the lead-up to the OU game, a raucous Thursday night football rally was held in the men’s gymnasium. Freshmen sat on the gym floor, the other male students filled the bleachers, and the women’s student section, closest to the stage, though still discouraged from yelling as it was deemed “unladylike,” made it the largest rally crowd of season. Despite the lack of football practice, Stewart was in no mood to lower expectations. Instead, he challenged the students. “I didn’t think you had it in you,” the coach told the crowd. “The spirit that you have . . . shows that Texas fight is not dead.”

“The team fights only as hard as the rooters fight,” Stewart continued, “and they go out on the field Saturday and on the Aggie gridiron with just the fight that you rooters put into them. It is up to each of you individually . . . supporting with all your might the men that represent you on the field. The men have not practiced this week due to injuries and it is up to the rooters to help the Longhorns.”

The coach urged the students to adopt the motto, “For Texas, I Will,” for the rest of the season. Thoroughly inspired, the students responded with some of their favorite UT yells, shouted so loud that “the sides of the building shook with the volume.” Against the rules, even the women contributed to the decibels.

Stewart’s new motto was quick to spread across campus. Friday morning, the Texan announced, “Coach Sweeps Crowd Off its Feet by Virile Exhortation,” and included “For Texas, I Will” on either side of its masthead. Large painted signs – “For Texas, I Will” and “Longhorn Fight” – appeared on the walls in the University Cafeteria, and “Texas Fight” was printed in supportive ads by local businesses in the Austin newspaper.

The Longhorn roster numbered 16 athletes: 11 starters who played both offense and defense, and five substitutes. By kick-off at 3 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, most of the team was still battered and bruised. Three starters, including team captain David Tynes, were out for the game. The student fans, though, were in full voice, and despite the odds, Texas defeated the Sooners 26-14.

The Thanksgiving Day game against A&M was almost two weeks away. While the teams had played each other since 1894, the contests were held either in Austin or Houston. Games at Kyle Field in College Station didn’t begin until 1915, when the Aggies constructed large enough stands to handle the crowds Thus far, the Longhorns had never won on Kyle Field, and A&M was favored again.

The Longhorn football team, Longhorn Band, and Longhorn fans wasted no time preparing to do battle with their state rivals.

Fortunately, the University would have a surprise arrow in its quiver: a song.

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Above: The Aggie football team and campus of the A&M College of Texas in the 1900s. – Texas A&M University archives.

Among the many traditions in College Station, the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets had their own yells and songs, one of them informally known as “Aggie Taps.” The tune first appeared around 1900, and was simply the words “Farmers fight” repeated to the tune of the bugle call “Taps”:

It wasn’t long before University of Texas students spoofed the song with one of their own, usually sung when the football game wasn’t going well for the Aggies. Created in 1903, it was a call to “hit the showers” and retire:

For the next two decades, “Aggie Taps” continued to be sung (separate from the “Farmers Fight!” yell still heard today) and gradually gained importance on campus. By the 1920s, it had evolved into an unofficial alma mater, sung at the end of student banquets and former student gatherings. In 1923, the Corps of Cadets elected to stand and sing “Aggie Taps” as their football team ran onto the field.

Above: The 1910 University of Texas band, part way through the fall term. The football schedule and results are painted on the bass drum. Walter Hunnicutt, the student director, is seated front row right, with a trumpet at his side and holding a baton.

The song also attracted the attention of Walter Hunnicutt. A 1914 UT law school alumnus, Hunnicutt – called “Hunni” by his many friends – served as the student director of the Longhorn Band from 1910 – 1914. After graduation, he returned to his hometown of Marlin, Texas (about 30 miles southeast of Waco), where he briefly joined the law office of fellow Texas Ex, and future U.S. Senator, Tom Connally. After only a year, Hunnicutt was elected Marlin’s city attorney, then enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War I. Returning to Marlin after the war, he was elected a Falls County judge in 1922.

Hearing the Corps of Cadets sing “Aggie Taps” in a unified voice made quite an impression on Hunnicutt, and he later described it as “one of the most effective and awe-inspiring songs used by any student body.” Texas A&M’s other songs, though, weren’t so appreciated, especially “The Aggie Battle Hymn,” which included lyrics such as “Well it’s goodbye to Texas University,” and “Saw ‘Varsity’s horns off.” Hunnicutt wanted a song the Longhorn Band could use to “strike back,” and in the fall of 1923 set out to compose a UT version of “Taps.”

For the parts of the song that followed the bugle call, Hunnicutt substituted the words “Texas fight” for “Farmers fight,” but also added to the melody so that it was an original tune. The initial lyrics were:

Above: Walter Hunnicutt’s original score of “Texas Taps.”

The last line – “to hell with all the rest” – didn’t sit well with the University administration, which considered it vulgar and inappropriate. Burnett Pharr, the Longhorn Band director, took a look at the song, smoothed over the lyrics that seemed a bit clunky, and replaced the last line with: “so it’s goodbye to all the rest.” Hunnicutt agreed to changes, and the song became:

Hunnicutt and Pharr asked Jim King, the band director at Marlin High School, to orchestrate the song for the Longhorn Band. It was to be ready in time for a Thanksgiving Day debut.

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Above: The University of Texas campus in the early 1920s, as seen from University Avenue. Old Main stands where Tower is today. – UT’s Briscoe Center for American History.

On the Forty Acres, the excitement over the A&M game was everywhere, and if the possibility of an undefeated (and one tie) season wasn’t enough, the campus was buzzing with talk about building a new stadium.

Just after the First World War, improvements to the nation’s roads, combined with the popularity of Henry Ford’s Model T automobiles, meant that more Americans were able to travel and willing to drive to sporting events, such a college football games. By the 1920s, attendance at games increased significantly, and it launched a national stadium building boom.

Above: Ohio State’s horseshoe stadium opened in 1922. A similar design was later used for UT’s Texas memorial Stadium. – Ohio State University archives.

In 1922, new stadiums opened at Vanderbilt and Ohio State Universities, along with the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and the following year, the Universities of California, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Illinois joined them. By the end of the decade there would be more than 20 new football stadiums – including Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, and Duke – and the facilities were often dedicated as a memorial to those who had fought and perished in recent world war.

In Austin, the University’s Clark Field, constructed almost entirely by students (see The One Week Stadium), was aging and needed more that its 20,000 seats. Though riding the train was still popular, more Longhorn fans were driving in from the Hill Country towns of Burnet, Marble Falls, and Fredericksburg, and making weekend trips from San Antonio and Dallas, which made the limited seating a serious problem. For UT to build a new stadium, a win over the favored Aggies was rumored to “put the idea over” on the Board of Regents, which was set to consider the issue at its December meeting.

On Thanksgiving Day, November 29, 1923, thousands of boisterous Longhorn fans made their way to College Station, many wearing armbands that read: “Win or Lose, Stadium for Texas by Thanksgiving 1924, For Texas I Will.” At the start of the game, just after the Corps of Cadets had sung their “Aggie Taps,” the Longhorn Band sprung Hunnicutt’s surprise, “Texas Taps,” which was an immediate hit with the University crowd.

In the course of the game, the song was played several more times, and as the Texas fans learned the words, the air was filled with the sounds of “and it’s goodbye to A&M.” The Longhorns eked out a 6 – 0 win, their first on Kyle Field. The following month, the Board of Regents approved a new stadium. One year later, Texas Memorial Stadium was officially dedicated in Austin on Thanksgiving Day, 1924.

Above: The Texas A&M Corps of Cadets form a large “T” on the field at the 1924 Thanksgiving Day dedication of Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin. – Portal to Texas History

“Aggie Taps” survived a few more years. While it was popular with the Corps, it had less support with the residents of Bryan and College Station, as well as the College administration. The lyrics didn’t really measure up for the song to be an alma mater. Instead, “The Spirit of Aggieland” was introduced in 1925 to fill the role, and “Aggie Taps” was discontinued soon afterward.

“Texas Taps” has been played for a century, and was officially renamed “Texas Fight!” in the 1970s.

Listen to recordings of “Texas Taps”:

* 1928: The first recording of the song was made by the Longhorn Band and Men’s Chorus, and released through Victor Records. A pair of yells precedes Texas Taps. Unfortunately, the cheers are shouted quickly and hard to understand. They are:

Texas Fight! Texas Fight! Yea Texas Fight!

Rattle-de-thrat! Rattle-de-thrat! Rattle-de-thrat! Rattle-de-thrat! Longhorn! Cactus Thorn! Texas! Texas! Texas! Mooooooo, Texas!

*1948: A recording of the song made in New York City by a professional quartet and released as a three record set called “Songs of the University of Texas.”

Sources consulted: Longhorn Band Vertical File, UT Memorabilia Collection, and UT Presidents’ Office Papers at the Briscoe Center for American History (which preserves the UT archives), Alcalde alumni magazine, The Daily Texan, Austin American-Statesman, Bryan Eagle, and Texas A&M University Archives.

How to Rescue a Dean

Posted on September 24, 2023 by Jim Nicar

Dean Thomas Taylor (center), and the nine “Taylor’s Bandits” unmasked. Yes, each of those UT students is brandishing a six-shooter (with blanks!). Click on the image for a larger view.

Engineering Dean Thomas Taylor was in a considerable predicament.

It was a balmy spring Monday evening, April 1, 1912, when the University faculty gathered for their monthly dinner. A mostly-social event, it was scheduled at the University Club, located just west of campus on San Antonio Street. Though the meal was funded through club dues, the professors from each academic department took turns as hosts, and were responsible for the menu and post-dinner entertainment. This might include a musical performance or skit by the host faculty, a special lecture, or a debate. This particular evening, it was the law department’s turn, but the professors had devised something rather sinister: they planned convene a surprise kangaroo court and place the engineering dean on trial.

Above: A 1912 postcard of the University’s Old Main, where the Tower stands today.

The faculty organized an all-male University Club in December 1904, both as a social outlet and to network with college-educated men in Austin. They found a house on the corner of 17^th and Lavaca Streets, and chose Professor Will Battle – namesake for Battle Hall and the Battle Oaks – as the group’s first president. After just over a year, better quarters were found closer to campus at 23^rd and San Antonio Streets, with a third move several years later to a two-story house at 2304 San Antonio. (Today, the site is just behind the Castilian dorm, where the Pi Beta Phi sorority house now stands). Its proximity to the Forty Acres greatly increased membership and attendance.

The clubhouse included rooms for receptions, lounging and reading, playing billiards, and cards. A stocked kitchen was next to an over sized dining hall, and several rooms on the second floor were rented to new faculty members who were just getting settled in Austin. There were Christmas parties for members and their families that featured a visit by Santa Claus, receptions for visiting professors in town to give a campus lecture, post-debate dinners for the UT Debate Team and their opponents (which, on several occasions, came all the way from Oxford University), and costume balls for members and spouses (though history professor George Garrison and his wife never seemed to want to dress up).

Tuesdays were mostly reserved for the University Ladies Club, composed of wives of professors and women faculty and staff. Each spring, the women hosted a Bluebonnet Card Party, which often had 15 tables of bridge being played simultaneously, and with each table decorated with baskets full of hand-picked Texas bluebonnets.

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As the faculty arrived for their monthly dinner, that it was held on April 1 made it all the more special for the engineers. Starting in 1908, the day was reserved to pay tribute to Alexander Frederick Claire – or “Alec” for short – as the “patron saint” or mascot of Texas engineering students and alumni. In that year, students “borrowed” a wooden statue from a local beer garden, declared it to be the likeness of Alec, paraded the figure around the campus on the morning of April 1, swore allegiance to their mascot on “holy” calculus books, and promptly cut classes for the rest of the day. For the present Cockrell School of Engineering, the first day of April is still revered as Alec’s Day, and the statue is on display in the engineering library. (See: The Thrilling Adventures of Alec!)

Above left: UT engineering students stand with the original likeness of Alec. The current statue is on display in the engineering library.

At the same time, the law and engineering departments had been longtime, mostly-friendly rivals, and the 1912 law faculty saw the date as a ripe opportunity. They planned to have the red-haired Dean Taylor stand trial for some invented vagrancy, and once convicted, Taylor would be assessed a dinner for the law faculty at the dean’s expense.

As there were only five law professors, others were recruited to join in the fun. Medieval history instructor Augie Krey and history professor Charlie Ramsdell were named “sheriffs” and would arrest and secure Taylor, while Harry Benedict, Dean of what was then the College of Arts and Sciences, was given the title “Foreman of the Jury” and was to lead the audience to an inevitable guilty verdict.

Benedict held a PhD in astronomy from Harvard, but had earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering at Texas under Dean Taylor, and wasn’t about to be branded a traitor. Benedict quietly informed Taylor of the law faculty’s dastardly plans, and Taylor arranged for a group of nine trusted engineering students – later dubbed “Taylor’s Bandits” – to rescue him at the appropriate time.

As the dinner began, there was a feeling of pleasant anticipation among the law faculty. The engineering professors possessed a similar feeling, but for an entirely different reason.

Just as the main courses were finished and dessert was to be served, the kangaroo court was sprung and the sheriffs ordered to take Taylor into custody and seat him in a chair at the front of the room. Taylor, who’d recently become a car owner, was promptly accused of “auto-intoxication” and “insolent indifference to the whims, fancies, and wishes of the University Club.” The audience, with a collective tongue-in-cheek, recoiled in horror at learning of the charges.

Above: The Engineering Building (today’s Gebauer Building) was just east of Old Main.

At that point, the court’s proceedings were abruptly pre-empted. A signal by engineering professor Ed Bantel brought the nine masked bandits screaming into the room from the kitchen where they’d been hiding. All were armed with actual six-shooters – loaded with blanks! – and the “courtroom” was suddenly filled with shouting and shooting, gun smoke and mayhem. (In the 1910s, most UT students hailed from farms and ranches, some raised in log cabins, so that owning a six-shooter wasn’t uncommon.) Taylor was hustled out of the dining room, and while the “sheriffs” tried to retain their charge, they were no match for the determined bandits. Taylor was led out of the clubhouse and hurried off to the University campus for the protection of the Engineering Building (today’s Gebauer Building).

A few days later, Dean Taylor did indeed host a dinner at his expense, but it was for his faithful bandits.

Advice for UT Freshmen

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Jim Nicar

The next class of “greenhorns” – the Class of 2028 – is preparing to become part of the University of Texas. Since I’m asked about this on occasion, below is some friendly advice for UT freshmen. I hope some of it is helpful.

Imagine your upcoming college experience as something packed into a great, mysterious box – wrapped in burnt orange paper, of course! – ready to be opened and explored. Surprises, adventures, challenges, and good times are waiting inside. The wrapping peels off easy enough, but before you open the box, you notice a couple of phrases stenciled on the side. They’re found on lots of packages, offer both caution and counsel, and neatly summarize much of the well-meaning advice given to college freshmen:

A college education isn’t something that happens to you. It’s something that you make happen. Once the school year begins, no one will check on you each morning to be sure you’re on time for class or ask if you’ve finished your homework. You’ll need to find ways to energize and motivate yourself. In other words, batteries aren’t included. And while the courses you’ll take to complete a degree were designed by your professors, how much you learn from them – in fact, what you take away from your entire college experience – is entirely up to you. Think of the University of Texas as a large community loaded with world-class resources: professors, counselors, tutors, fellow students, libraries, laboratories, residence halls, student organizations, athletic facilities, museums, and theaters, all at your disposal to help build and shape your college education. But this won’t happen by itself; some assembly required!

This isn’t Temporary

When UT first opened its doors on September 15, 1883, chemistry professor John Mallet (photo at left) told the students, “You frequently hear the phrase used, coming to the university, not remembering that you are the university.” The same holds true today. For now, you’re technically an entering freshman and it’s common to say that you’re “coming to,” or “enrolling in” UT. But on the first day of the fall semester, when you’ve entered a classroom, found a seat, and the professor begins your first ever college class, at that moment you will, in part, be the University of Texas.

Welcome to the community! Though you may only be on campus for a few years, the experiences you have and the friends you make will forever be with you. This isn’t temporary. You will always be a part of the University, and it a part of you.

Be a Sponge

Classes, homework, and library books! Concerts, plays, and intramural sports! Research papers and lab reports! Weekend parties, Longhorn Runs, late night road trips to someplace fun! Football rallies and spring break tans! Study groups and final exams!

The UT campus could not be a dull place if it tried. Gathered here are more than 50,000 students from all parts of the globe, taught by a distinguished faculty whose research is literally creating the future, and assisted by a team of administrators, librarians, custodians, architects, curators, counselors, landscapers, chefs, and many, many others who make sure that everything is running smoothly. There are more than 1,000 student organizations, visits by famous authors, entrepreneurs, and world leaders, musical performances by accomplished virtuosos, Broadway shows in the Bass Concert Hall, and exciting athletic events year round. You didn’t come to Austin to hide in your room. Get out there, be a sponge, and soak it up!

There’ll never be enough time to experience everything. Seek out the student activities that interest you, visit the campus museums, attend concerts and special lectures, volunteer for a public service project, and purposely meet others who are different, whose culture or world views are unlike yours. You may never again live amid such extraordinary diversity. To explore it is an important part of your college education.

With that said –

Your Mileage May Vary

What and how much you do will be different from others. If you’re like most freshmen, you’re about to experience two important milestones: leaving home and living on your own for the first time, and adjusting to college life with new people and in new surroundings. Don’t think that you have to “keep up” with others around you, and don’t feel pressured to take part in activities that don’t interest you just to feel included. Certainly, you’ll want to try new things and expand your horizons, but this is your college experience, so make it your own. Take the time to find the pace that suits you. Keep in mind that sometimes less is more.

Go to Class

It sounds too easy, but this simple habit is, by far, the best way to thrive at UT. No, seriously. No . . . seriously. Just go to class. If you want to succeed at the University – as well as in life – you first have to show up!

On the first day of the semester, take a look around you. All of the other students enrolled in your class will be there. But after a week or two, especially for larger classes, you’ll notice that attendance has dropped off. That is, until the day of the first exam, when there’ll suddenly be a crowd of unfamiliar faces. A stranger might even be sitting in your usual seat! Who are all these people? Many are students who think they can cut class, just show up for the tests, and do well. My sincere advice is not to be one of them.

There are plenty of excuses for not going to class. Some seem legit, most are not: there’s a paper due and you want to spend more time on it, or you’d rather study for a big test you have later the same day. True, there’ll be times during the semester when one class needs more attention than the others, but make sure that you’re still attending all of them. If you miss one, it’ll take longer to catch up than if you were there. Besides, more professors are finding ways to reward those who come to lectures. Some let students know what’s best to study when preparing for tests. Others announce in advance there’ll be extra credit questions on exams, but the questions will be on topics only discussed in class. There may be days when you’re not all that motivated (remember, batteries not included), but if you go to class, you’ll find it’s easier to keep up with everything.

Professors are your Friends

Full stop. Raise your right hand and repeat: “I promise to meet all of my professors within the first two weeks of every semester.”

This is standard college advice, but many students never follow it. Some didn’t talk much with their high school teachers and have continued the habit. Others are a little intimidated. After all, professors are big-time experts in their fields and have other things to do. Would they want to bother with questions from a freshman? The answer is a definite “yes.”

All professors have office hours, designated times during the week when they’ll be in their offices to talk with students. But too often, usually for the reasons mentioned above, only a few appear at the door. “My office hours are a ghost town,” grumbles the lonely prof. Remember, a professor has made a career of research and teaching in a particular academic field, and has a genuine passion for their subject. A curious student, or one who just needs some help with homework and makes the effort to stop by, is welcome.

Introduce yourself to each of your professors within the first two weeks of the semester. Don’t have any questions about the class yet? No worries. Instead, find out more about your instructor. Where did they go to college? Why did they decide to be a professor, and how did they choose their field? What kind of research are they doing? You can also simply ask, “What’s the best way to study for your class?” Once you’ve broken the ice, conferring with your professor during the rest of the semester is easy.

Don’t forget, along with helping you with classes, professors can also be mentors, assist with student research opportunities, or be references for grad school or your first job after graduation.

Study like a Tortoise

Do you remember Aesop’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare? A smart-alecky hare teases a tortoise about his slow, deliberate plodding until the irritated tortoise finally challenges the hare to a race.

At the start, the overconfident hare easily jumps into the lead. Certain that he has the race won, he stops to rest under a tree. When he accidentally falls asleep, the tortoise pulls ahead, and despite a last minute sprint by the hare, the tortoise crosses the finish line first. The moral of the story: slow and steady wins the race.

On the first day of class, each of your professors will distribute a syllabus that includes a description of the course, what textbooks you’ll need, how grades will be determined, the professor’s office hours, and a list of dates for exams, due dates for research papers, or other projects.

This may take a little effort, but create a calendar, either on your computer or something to hang on a wall, and fill in all the tests and other important due dates. You’re looking for a “big picture” view of the semester. You might discover that you have two tests and a paper due in the same week (Ugh!!), but at least you know about it early and can plan ahead.

For each exam, mark the date two weeks before it as the day to start studying. No, this doesn’t mean endlessly poring over your textbook for hours every night. Just start with a half hour or so each day. Review a week’s worth of lecture notes (Don’t just look them over, learn them.) or reread a chapter in the book. Is it a math class? Review one section in the text and work a few problems. A history course? Write out short descriptions of a few people or ideas that are likely to be on the test. As the exam nears, when other students are just getting started and will have to stay up late to catch up, you’ll discover that you already know most of the material. More important, you’ve allowed time for the ideas to “sink in” and truly understand them.

Academic sprinting – trying to cram lots of information into your brain at the last minute – usually results in extra stress and promptly forgetting all that you learned five minutes after the test ended, which means you’ll have to relearn it before the final exam. There’s an old saying: By the yard, life is hard. By the inch, it’s a cinch! Study like a tortoise, slow, steady, and in small pieces, and you’ll be much better off in the academic race.

College is Hard

To have been admitted to the University of Texas, you must have done well in high school. Earning good grades – perhaps straight A’s – may have been relatively easy. But graduating from a research university with all A’s is more difficult and less common. College is intense and challenging, and it’s designed to be that way.

It’s not unusual for a freshman who excelled in high school to struggle in at least one course. It happens. The first test is returned with a grade of “C,” or worse. A poor mark can be unsettling. It can shake self-confidence. “This never happened before,” some students think to themselves, and are embarrassed to tell anyone, including their family. A few resolve to study twice as long for the next test, only to wind up with the same result. They begin to doubt themselves, never realizing that it’s not the time spent studying, but how they study that needs to be remedied.

A few weeks into the semester, if you feel lost in a course, can’t finish the homework, not sure how take lecture notes, or just didn’t do well on a test, don’t panic. What you’ll discover is that, in the long term, you actually learn more from setbacks, from surmounting obstacles, than from breezing through with successes. What’s important is to figure out what went wrong and work to make it right. A lecturer in the business school is quick to tell his students, “Don’t let failure define you. Let it refine you.”

If you find yourself struggling, don’t keep it to yourself, and don’t wait. Use the many resources on campus to assist you. (Some assembly required!) Talk to your professor, classmates, and academic advisor. The Sanger Learning Center offers programs on study strategies and one-on-one tutoring, while the University Writing Center can assist with any and all writing assignments. Check with the UT Counseling Center for help with stress or test anxiety.

Remember, everyone, and I do mean everyone, is overwhelmed by college at some point. Struggling to learn is a time-honored part of the experience. But don’t hold off until the end of the semester. If you need help, seek it early.

College Knowledge

Try to make friends as soon as you arrive on campus. Even if you think you’re shy, just remember that starting college is something new for all of your freshmen classmates, and everyone will be a little anxious.
Participate in the 360 Connections and join a Freshman Interest Group – a FIG – where about 20 students attend many of the same classes and meet once a week. You’ll see familiar faces right away.
Textbooks are expensive. While the local bookstores are convenient, check online retailers (Amazon, Textbook.com, etc) and shop around. Keep in mind that a few classes – Calculus I and II (M 408C and M 408D), for example – use the same textbook. It might be less expensive to buy a used copy than rent the same book for two semesters.
When you’re ready to register for courses, keep a map handy to see where your classes will meet. While 10 to 15 minutes are allowed for changing classes (depending on the day), you don’t want to have to sprint across the campus just to be on time.
Each building has a three-letter abbreviation, which is part of the campus lingo. The Physics-Math-Astronomy Building is known simply as “PMA.” Lots of freshmen confuse the W.C. Hogg Building (WCH) for Welch Hall (WEL), which are next to each other.
If you’re living on or near campus, you probably won’t need a car for your freshman year. Most of your time will be spent on campus anyway, and a car will just be an extra hassle. Besides, the University has an extensive shuttle bus system, and students ride for free on city buses. But if you need a vehicle, keep in mind –
There are never enough parking spaces for students. Or for faculty and staff. A campus parking permit is better known as a “hunting license.” It’s easier with a garage pass, but pricey.
Bicycles are a great way to get to and from campus, but are not as easy to ride during class changes. Remember, there’ll be tens of thousands of students and professors changing classes with you. Don’t forget to register and secure your bike. A U-lock with a flat key is best, though the UT Police Department recommends double locking your bike.
Sit in the front half of the classroom. You want see what’s being written on the chalkboard or projected on a screen. If it’s a science class, the prof might have a physics or chemistry demo. Some claim sitting up front scores points with the professor. Maybe. But if you just show up, take part, and visit during office hours, they’ll get to know you. It’s more important simply to sit where you have a good view.
Where to study? Your dorm room usually has too many distractions. Try a study lounge or a library. The Perry-Castaneda Library – the PCL – is popular, in part because you’re allowed to bring food with you. (Yes, students have pizza delivered to the PCL!) Another good place, especially for group study, is the first floor of the Flawn Academic Center, or the FAC. The most collegiate looking is either the Hall of Noble Words in the Tower or the Architecture Library on the second floor of Battle Hall (photo at right). It was originally UT’s first library building, opened in 1911. No food allowed, but great atmosphere.
Bring an umbrella! It does rain in Austin occasionally, and you’d be surprised how many students forget. They trudge across campus in a downpour without any cover and show up to class drenched and dripping. It’s not pretty.
Do your laundry on a weekday and avoid the weekend rush. (And don’t forget, hot water for whites, cold for colors!)

Break Out of the Burnt Orange Bubble

From classes to residence halls to student groups to football games, you’ll wind up spending much of your time on campus. But don’t forget to break out of the campus bubble now and then and explore the city of Austin. Visit the Texas Capitol, swim in Barton Springs, climb the steps to Mount Bonnell for an amazing view, or dress up for the giant Halloween party on Sixth Street. The Austin City Limits Music Fest and the South by Southwest Conference make international headlines for a reason. Be like the locals and go kayaking, paddle boarding, or sailing on area lakes, or running and biking on the trails. Or just enjoy some of the live music that’s everywhere: along Sixth Street, in cafes around town, and in some grocery stores. (Yep. In Austin, bands perform in grocery stores.) There’s something going on just about every weekend.

Better yet, just go away. If at all possible, participate in a study abroad program sponsored by UT’s International Office, if only for a summer. There are major-specific options where courses taken will count toward your degree, shorter summer programs led by UT faculty, and scholarships available to help with costs. If you haven’t traveled outside of the United States, to immerse yourself in a different culture, with its own language, food, and customs, where you are the visitor, is a great adventure and a guaranteed life-changing experience.

UT Phone Home

You’ll be busy, but remember to call, text, email, Facebook, Tweet, Tik Tok, Snapchat, Instagram, shout, or just wave in the general direction of home occasionally. Your family wants to hear from you.

Stop and Think

You’ve probably heard the adage: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. There’s a higher ed version: You can lead a student to college, but you can’t make them think!

In the 1950s, former UT President Harry Ransom described the campus as a “field of ideas,” and believed the pursuit of those ideas to be “one of the major undertakings of a university freshman. It is a highly personal undertaking, as unpredictable in its opportunities as it is in its rewards.”

Student life is hectic, but in between the barrage of classes, homework, and student activities, find some time to stop, think, and take stock. What are you learning this semester, and how does it fit into a overall view? How do your various courses – literature, science, business, history, engineering, culture – connect together? (They do.) “A student may choose his courses, pore over his texts, listen to his teachers, exchange opinions with his contemporaries,” wrote Ransom, “but still miss the main chance for developing ideas significant to him. If he is to complete the pursuit of ideas, he will get off by himself, shut up, and think. Too much higher education today neglects that lowly exercise.”

Why are You Here?

Why go to college? Easy. By far, the most popular answer is “to get a job.” And it’s true. A college degree opens doors to more higher earning opportunities. At least one study claims a college graduate earns, on average, $1 million more over a lifetime than someone without a degree. But while you’re thinking about a career, keep in mind that there’s more going on here.

If you go looking for the purposes of a college education, you generally find three distinct goals. The first is practical: to be more employable. Be aware, though, that some of what you’ll learn will eventually become outdated. A broader education that gives you the ability to grow and adapt to new things is best.

Your parents are a good example. They would likely have been your age in the 1990s or early 2000s. As they set out into the world – whether or not they went to college – they encountered new inventions such as email, the internet, e-commerce, smart phones, and social media, all of which radically altered the world and the workplace and created jobs that no one had yet imagined. After you graduate, the world will continue to change in surprising ways – artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) are the current hot topics. While you’ll have a major field of study, remember that a UT education shouldn’t limit you to a single profession. Let it prepare you to grow into professions not yet invented.

A second reason for going to college has been boldly displayed on the University’s Seal for over a century. The Latin motto Disciplina Praesidium Civitatis comes from an 1838 speech by Mirabeau Lamar, a president of the Republic of Texas. He declared that a “cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy.” Lamar echoed the thoughts of John Adams in the 1700s, “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.”

After graduation, you will be more than your chosen profession. You’ll also be a voter, a juror, perhaps a leader in your community. To know and understand the issues of the day, to be able to articulate opinions and make educated choices, to be a participating citizen, all of this is crucial to the future.

The third aim of college is more vague and difficult to measure, but your time on campus will allow you experiences that might otherwise be unavailable. Perhaps it’s gaining an international perspective through travel, a refined appreciation for music, art, film, or architecture, a deeper understanding of classical literature, or a better grasp at the importance and wonder of the latest scientific discoveries. College isn’t just about learning to make a living; it’s also about learning what makes life worth living.

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Don’t forget! There’s a great, mysterious box waiting with your name on it. Inside are surprises, adventures, challenges, and good times. Soon it will be time to open it. Before you do, pack some extra batteries. You’ll want all of the energy you can get!

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A reminder: The UT History Corner is not an official publication of the University of Texas. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author.

Myth-Conceptions: Some UT Campus Myths

Posted on May 2, 2022 by Jim Nicar

Have you heard? The main library at Indiana University is sinking into the ground at the rate of an inch a year. The fault lies with the building’s designer – a graduate from rival Purdue – as he didn’t take into account the extra weight of the books on the shelves. At Iowa State University, any student who carelessly steps on the bronze zodiac inlaid on the floor of the student union building is thereby “cursed” to flunk their next exam. Undergraduates at Princeton warily avoid exiting through the Fitz Randolph Gate at the campus entrance before they graduate. Otherwise, they may never complete their degrees. And at Columbia University in New York, the famous statue of Alma Mater has an owl hidden within the gatherings of her robes. Incoming freshman are told that the first person to find the owl will become the class valedictorian.

Above: The Alma Mater statue at Columbia University. Looking for the owl? Check the robes just behind the left leg.

These are all campus myths, of course. They’re as endemic to college life as all-night study sessions during final exams. The University of Texas has its own collection of myths and lore. Some have been rooted on the campus for decades, while others are relative newcomers to the Forty Acres. Below is a sampling.

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Myth: When viewed from an angle, the UT Tower looks like an owl because it was designed by a Rice University graduate.

This myth is as old as the Main Building. When the top of the Tower is seen diagonally, two of the faces of the clock appear to be a pair of owl’s eyes, while the pointed corner of the observation deck suggests a beak. This is intentional, as the story is told, because the Tower was designed by a graduate of Rice University, whose mascot is the owl. The same myth has been extended to Austin’s Frost Bank Building downtown. Apparently, Rice alumni are very busy.

Actually, the architect of UT’s Main Building and Tower was Paul Cret, who was born in Lyon, France in 1876 and graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then considered the finest place in the world to study architecture. When he was hired as consulting architect by the University in 1930, the 44-year old Cret had immigrated to the United States, was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and had his own private practice with offices in downtown Philadelphia.

In 1933, Cret completed a campus master plan that influenced the University’s architecture for decades. The South Mall and its “six pack” of buildings, the West Mall guarded by the Texas Union and Goldsmith Hall, the East Mall with the Schoch and Rappaport Buildings, Hogg Auditorium, Mary Gearing Hall, and Painter Hall are all among the products of Cret’s directions.

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Myth: The Perry-Castaneda Library was designed in the shape of Texas.

University librarians were fielding questions about the shape of the Perry-Castaneda Library well before it opened in 1977. The PCL – informally known as the “PiCkLe” – was planned by the San Antonio architecture firm Bartlett, Cocke and Associates, Inc. and proactively designed to ease the pedestrian traffic around it. Instead of a traditional square or rectangular footprint, corners were trimmed to allow for diagonal pathways in front and behind the building. Other parts were extended to make the best use of available area. The end result was actually meant to better resemble a pinwheel, not the Lone Star State. The Board of Regents approved the plans in March 1974, along with $17 million for construction. (For more about the PCL, see: Forty Years on Forty Acres.)

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Myth: The campus purposely has no North Mall as a Southern snub to the “Yankees.”

This is one of several North vs. South-themed myths which have pervaded the Forty Acres for decades. Another one claims that George Littlefield, the original owner of the Littlefield Home and a Confederate Major, donated the original land for the University campus but stipulated that no building be allowed to face north. None of this is accurate.

A North Mall was indeed planned for UT, a feature of Paul Cret’s 1933 campus design. Extending north from Mary Gearing Hall, where University Avenue can be found today, the mall was to have been the centerpiece of an intended Women’s Campus and bordered by women’s residence halls, Mary Gearing Hall (then used for the home economics department), and the Anna Hiss Women’s Gym. The mall was to have been longer than its counterpart to the south.

Above: An architectural rendering of the women’s campus north of the Tower, with the Alice Littlefield Dorm for freshmen women at far left and Anna Hiss women’s gym toward upper right. In the center, extending north from Mary Gearing Hall, was the proposed North Mall.

Funding issues delayed the mall during the Great Depression in the 1930s and again when World War II diverted the University’s priorities to the war effort. After the war, the needs of the campus had drastically changed. Returning veterans on the G.I. Bill flooded colleges across the nation; UT’s enrollment more than doubled in just three months, from 6,800 students in June 1946 to more than 17,100 the following September.

The land along University Avenue was needed for other purposes, including a Student Health Center at the corner of University Avenue and Dean Keeton Street (opened in 1950 and since replaced by the Biomedical Engineering Building) and a new facility for the College of Pharmacy, which was sharing an overcrowded Welch Hall with chemistry. With the additional traffic, University Avenue was needed for access and parking, and when the Blanton Residence Hall opened in 1955 on the west side of the street, a grand North Mall no longer seemed feasible.

Above: A 1958 view from the Tower Observation Deck. What was to have been the women’s campus now has a Student Health Center (top right) and a Pharmacy Building on the east side of University Avenue, and the Blanton residence hall to the west. The needed parking prohibited the development of a North Mall.

Why isn’t there a mall on the north side of the Main Building? The reason is a boring, practical one. The Main Building and Tower were completed in 1937 as the new central library, and while malls do extend directly from the building to the east, west, and south, one side needed to be left available for deliveries and emergency vehicles.

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Myth: The Board of Regents refused to name the East Mall Fountain, “Peace Fountain.”

As the story goes, when the East Mall and its fountain were completed in 1969, UT students, many of them engaged in anti-Vietnam War protests, asked the Board of Regents to label the new water feature “Peace Fountain.” Allegedly, the regents sarcastically responded by naming it “Pease Fountain” after Elisha Pease, the 1850s Texas Governor who strongly advocated for the founding of the University of Texas. There is some truth here, but only with the first half of the tale.

Completed in May 1969, the East Mall Fountain was an instant hit on the campus, and briefly became something of a mini-Barton Springs. Bathers, waders, and floaters were common in the shallow pools, while others sat along the upper level with legs dangling over the cascade, or lounged and sunned on the grassy expanse of the East Mall. In true Austin style, skinny dippers were occasionally spotted in the fountain late at night.

At 2 p.m. on the sunny afternoon of August 3, 1969, several hundred “hippies, would-be hippies, and clean-cut American kids” gathered at the fountain. Organized by the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, a brief ceremony dubbed the structure “Peace Fountain” before the group took full advantage of the cooling waters on a hot summer day. The event was reported in both The Daily Texan and The Austin American.

Less than two weeks later, on August 14, the Board of Regents voted to ban all wading and swimming in any of UT’s fountains. There were numerous complaints of trash, including beer bottles, left in an around the East Mall Fountain. The glass covers of the underwater lights had been removed and broken, with the electrical wires torn out, which created a hazardous situation. There were also genuine concerns over someone falling from the fountain’s upper level.

Though wading was prohibited, the unofficial name “Peace Fountain” remained, and the new campus landmark often became a focal point for anti-war activities. When the LBJ Presidential Library was dedicated in May 1971, and with Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon at the ceremony, members of Veterans Against the Vietnam War tossed their military medals and ribbons into the fountain as a protest.

There was never a student request to rename the East Mall Fountain, but “Peace Fountain” was the preferred campus moniker for almost a decade. The Texan regularly used it as late as 1978.

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Myth: The window pattern on Burdine Hall resembles a punch-out computer card because the building was supposed to house the computer sciences department.

Certainly, the window pattern on Burdine is unusual, and this kind of thing is ripe for a campus myth, but it’s not true. Burdine Hall was opened in May 1970 for the departments of Government and Sociology. It’s named for John Alton Burdine, a longtime government professor who also served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (which has since been separated into several colleges and schools).

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Myth: Destined to be cut down for a construction project, the Battle Oaks were saved by Professor William Battle when he sat in one of the trees with a shotgun and defied the administration.

Not a chance. In fact, using a shotgun at all would be very much out of character for the bookish Dr. Battle.

A native of North Carolina, Battle was a newly-minted Harvard Ph.D. when he joined the UT faculty in 1893. A professor of Greek and classical studies, he quickly rose through the academic ranks, served as Dean of the University (today called the Provost), and was appointed President ad interim. Along the way, Battle founded the University Co-op through a $2,300 personal loan (his annual salary was $2,500), compiled the first campus directory, and designed the University Seal.

Perhaps Battle’s greatest contribution to UT was his tenure as chair of the Faculty Building Committee, which oversaw the development of the campus. Battle headed the committee for nearly three decades, from 1920 to 1948, and he took great care to ensure that campus designs and buildings were both appropriate to their setting in Texas and reflected the high aspirations of the University.

Above left: A 1932 photo of Dr. William Battle with a bundle of drawings for the future plans for the campus.

In the early 1920s, plans emerged to build a Biological Labs facility at the southeast corner of Guadalupe and 24^th Streets, which would have required the removal of the University’s oldest live oak trees. Students and alumni raised concerns, while a faculty group presented Battle with a formal petition. Battle agreed that the trees should remain, took the matter up with the Board of Regents and convinced them to move the building farther east, where it stands today. The oaks were later named for their champion.

Above: The Biological Labs building under construction. It opened in 1924.

A potential source of this myth can be found in the UT archives. Among those who advocated for preserving the trees was former law professor (and future Board of Regents chair) Robert Batts. In a letter to Battle, Batts passionately wrote that he would “come down to Austin with a shotgun, if necessary” to save the oaks.

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Myth: The George Washington statue is on the South Mall because Washington appeared on the Seal of the Confederacy.

A decade ago, there were six additional statues along the South Mall as part of the Littlefield Gateway, and four of them were of persons with direct ties to the Confederacy. It’s understandable that a visitor back then might think the likeness of Washington was connected to the same undertaking. It was centrally positioned, surrounded by the other statues, and was sculpted by the same artist. A closer inspection of the dates and inscriptions, though, shows the Washington statue was a separate project with a very different intent.

The statue of George Washington was the dream of Austin resident Frances Campbell Maxey, an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.) and the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, the first historic preservation group in the nation, where Maxey served as the Association’s Texas representative for 36 years. The main visitor gate to Mount Vernon, opened in 1899 as the “Texas Gate,” was built because of Maxey’s fundraising efforts in the Lone Star State.

Maxey read a 1924 newspaper report that claimed Texas was the only state in the Union without a likeness of George Washington. The issue remained with her for years until the D.A.R. began discussions on how to best observe Washington’s 200^th birthday in 1932. At Maxey’s suggestion, the D.A.R. asked the University if it might donate a sculpture of Washington for the campus. The UT Board of Regents “heartily” approved of the idea at its September 1930 meeting.

The intent was to have a statue installed by the Washington bicentennial in February 1932, but the Great Depression made fundraising difficult, as well as the Second World War that followed. (The same affected construction of the North Mall as discussed above.) Not until the 1950s was fundraising completed and artist Pompeo Coppini, who’d sculpted the Littlefield Fountain and other South Mall statues, secured for the project. The statue was dedicated in 1955.

While a likeness of Washington did appear on the Confederate seal, it wasn’t the motivation behind the statue on the Forty Acres. (For more about the Washington statue, see: How George Washington came to the University of Texas.)

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Myth: Bevo was named because of the Aggies.

Some myths are stubborn. This legend was debunked more 20 years ago but continues to be told, especially by football fans in College Station.

For decades, the claim was that Texas A&M was directly responsible for naming the University’s longhorn mascot “Bevo.” The steer was a gift from UT alumni, presented to students at halftime of the 1916 Texas vs. A&M football game in Austin. The Longhorns went on to win 21 – 7, but several months later, in February 1917, a group of Aggie pranksters snuck into town late at night and branded the steer 13 – 0, the score of the 1915 game in College Station when A&M prevailed. Thus far, this is accurate.

Aggie fans, though, went on to assert that, in order to save face, UT students altered the brand. The “13” was changed into a “B,” the dash into an “E,” a “V” inserted before the “0,” and thus was born the name “Bevo.” This is a myth.

First, there is ample printed evidence soon after the football game that the steer was already known as “Bevo,” both in the Alcalde alumni magazine and in newspapers around the state. One of the articles was dated December 12, 1916 – less than two weeks after the game – and published in the Bryan-College Station Weekly Eagle (left), the hometown newspaper for Texas A&M! This was two months before the steer was branded.

Second, there’s no record that the brand was ever changed. No photo of the mascot with “Bevo” on his side, no mention in any newspaper or any other published source. Some might argue, “well, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” but history requires evidence. Using the same line of thought, we could also claim that Bevo was abducted by space aliens; the lack of supporting proof doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!

Besides, there are several accounts that describe the UT mascot as sporting his original brand. Perhaps the most important is from the Longhorn Magazine, published by UT students. It ran an article about the January 1920 football banquet – in honor of the 1919 team – where the steer, too wild to bring to football games and too expensive to maintain, wound up being the main course for dinner. A delegation from A&M was invited to attend and the history of the mascot was told. The magazine specifically mentioned the original, unaltered brand: “The half of the hide bearing the mystic figures 13 to 0 was presented to A and M with appropriate ceremonies.”

The steer was called “Bevo” months before he was branded and the brand was never changed. (For the story oft he first Bevo mascot, go here.)

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Tower Light, Tower Bright

Posted on July 5, 2020 by Jim Nicar

How the Orange Tower Tradition Began

It was a night like no other. On Tuesday, October 19, 1937, as the sun dropped behind the western hills, the azure sky darkened to dusk, and a full moon peeked above the eastern horizon, floodlights illuminated the University of Texas Tower for the first time. Austin was changed forever.

Frank White and Bob Wilkinson, reporters for The Daily Texan student newspaper, stood on the Main Mall in front of the Tower, looked up and took in the scene, but struggled to express what they saw. They eventually agreed upon the phrase “majestic splendor” for the following morning’s issue, but were open to suggestions. “If you can think of any better description for the bath of orange and white light that flooded the Library Building Tower last night for the first time, you should be writing this story. Seriously, the splendor was majestic; so majestic, in fact, that students seeing it with us were entranced with its colorful beauty, and found no words to describe it.”

The splendor was just beginning. For the University, the Tower was an instant icon, purposely designed to be the seminal landmark of the campus. As architect Paul Cret explained: “In a large group of buildings, be it a city, a world fair, or a university, there is always a certain part of the whole which provides the image carried in our memory when we think of the place.” The Tower was meant to be that image.

For the citizens of Austin, the Tower was a radical addition to the city’s skyline. It was the first building to rise higher than the venerated dome of the Texas Capitol, which generated more than the usual share of controversy.

The Tower was also built 20 years earlier than planned. It arrived in 1937, at a time when modern, lofty buildings had just come of age in American cities, along with a popular new development: the use of floodlights. Sometimes described as “painting with light,” architects in the 1920s and ‘30s widely experimented with external lighting on the walls of high-rises, often with dramatic colors and dazzling effects. This, in turn, influenced what was a pivotal decision to install floodlights on the Tower.

The Tower lights, especially the use of orange and white, brought with them a great surprise. The sight of the University’s colors, displayed on such a grand scale against the backdrop of a Texas night, transformed the Tower into something more than a landmark. The lights added a new and unexpected dimension to the building, both in its nighttime appearance and in the swell of public affection at the sight of it. Had construction of the Tower waited until the 1950s as intended, it would have been built when new stylistic trends in architecture minimized the use of external lighting. The Tower might not have been floodlit at all, and the University could have missed out on one of its best-loved traditions.

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In the mid-1930s, construction of the UT Tower was front page news. The Austin American-Statesman described it as “luxurious and palatial,” while the Texan waxed poetic: “Like the shining spire of some fabled city, the new Library Tower will rise in the air to keep company with the birds and airplanes.” Austin was getting a new tallest building, though not everyone was happy about it.

Make no mistake. The Texas Capitol was first in the hearts of Austin citizens. Finished in 1888, the building’s 302-foot dome was taller than the National Capitol in Washington, DC, and affirmed Austin’s role as the seat of Texas government, something the locals didn’t take for granted.

On March 8, 1930, after a decade of mixed success in campus planning, the University hired Paul Cret (image at left) as its consulting architect. A 53-year old native of France, he was a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux Arts (“School of Fine Arts”) in Paris, at the time considered the finest architecture academy in the world. Cret had immigrated to the U.S., opened a private practice in Philadelphia, and was a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

Cret was tasked with providing UT with a campus master plan for future development, as well as finding a solution to the University’s acute library space problem. The existing library – today’s Battle Hall – had been judged inadequate for some time. There were several proposals, among them was a new library placed either north or south of the old Main Building, or a sizable addition to the existing library. All of the plans were either too expensive or inadequate.

5.1926 proposed addition to Battle Hall library.

Above: 1926 proposed addition to the UT library. Greene, LaRoche, and Dahl of Dallas. Today’s Battle Hall is on the left, while the extension would have been to the north.

By April 3^rd, less than a month into his University employment, Cret sent the Board of Regents a “Report on the Library,” and argued that the best location was on top of the hill in the middle of the Forty Acres, the site then occupied by Old Main. He explained that the library would need to be centrally located and easily accessible. Because of the space requirements for book stacks and reading rooms, it would also be the largest and most monumental structure on the campus, which required a prominent setting. To Cret, the proper location of the new library was vital, as it was quickly becoming the focus of his campus master plan.

Above: The 1933 campus master plan for the University of Texas. The Tower is the focus, from which malls extend in the four cardinal directions. (The North Mall wasn’t implemented.) UT Buildings Collection, Alexander Architectural Archives, UT Austin.

While University authorities knew that the eventual removal of Old Main was likely, they weren’t prepared for it just yet. After all, the ivy-draped, Victorian-Gothic Old Main was the first building on the campus. It had great historical and sentimental value, especially with the alumni.

To solve the library space problem, keep the desired site, reduce costs, and not offend the alumni, Cret proposed building the library in two phases. The back, lower portion of the library would be constructed first. Officially designated the “Library Annex,” it included a main desk and reading rooms, along with several floors of book stacks. (Today, the area is used by the Life Sciences Library.) The north wing of Old Main would be razed, but it housed an auditorium that had been declared unsafe by the Austin Fire Marshal in 1916 and was unused. The annex would be connected to the rest of Old Main by a hallway.

After a period of time – Cret suggested 20 years, or sometime in the 1950s – when the campus had grown used to the annex and more funds were available, Old Main could be retired. The south façade and stack tower would be finished to complete the new Main Building, which would then assume the role as UT’s central library.

As discussion continued about a proposed tower at UT, the Austin City Council moved to protect the view and importance of the Capitol. The concern was understandable. Through the 1920s, fellow Texas cities of Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio had all added near 400-foot tall skyscrapers to their skylines. Some feared that a similar development in Austin could shroud the all-important Capitol dome.

On April 23, 1931, Austin passed its first zoning plan, which limited the height of new downtown buildings to 150 feet. (It was later amended to 200 feet.) Exceptions could be granted. Two days later, on April 25^th, the Board of Regents approved Cret’s two-part construction plan. Funding was granted in 1932, and the Library Annex completed the following year.

Above: Construction of the Library Annex, which included a reference desk and and two large reading rooms: The Hall of Texas and The Hall of Noble Words. The central tower of Old Main is on the right. (For more construction images, see: How to Build a Tower.) UT Buildings Collection, Alexander Architectural Archives, UT Austin.

Phase one was to quietly sit behind Old Main for the next two decades, but pressure was mounting to find a way to complete the building early. Despite the economic challenges of the Great Depression, the 1930s were boon years for the University. The discovery of oil on UT-owned West Texas land had caused the Permanent University Fund to balloon with newly-acquired oil royalties, while a special constitutional amendment allowed the University to borrow directly against the PUF and launch a multi-million dollar building program. The Texas Union, Gregory and Anna Hiss Gymnasiums, Hogg Memorial Auditorium, along with new facilities for chemistry (Welch Hall), business (Waggener), architecture (Goldsmith), geology (W. C. Hogg), physics (Painter), and home economics (Mary Gearing) were all included. All of this activity generated an abundance of construction jobs, which helped to spare Austin from the brunt of the Depression.

Wanting to continue the trend, the University hoped to go ahead and finish the library. It applied for and was granted a loan from the Progress Works Administration, one of the many New Deal programs created by President Franklin Roosevelt. The Austin City Council approved a height exemption for the 307-foot Tower, the only building to receive such an allowance for the next 30 years. Steam shovels began construction on phase two of the library in January 1935, and the completed Main Building was dedicated on February 27, 1937.

“Austin’s bid for metropolitan fame is progressing,” announced the Statesman. The University’s new Tower was not only five feet taller than the Capitol, the UT site was on a hill farther up the Colorado River valley and higher than the Capitol grounds. All told, the Tower enjoyed a 48-foot advantage in elevation.

Most of Austin’s citizens approved of the new Tower, but not everyone. Famed author and folklorist J. Frank Dobie was pointed: “For a university that owns 2,000,000 acres of land . . . it’s ridiculous. It’s like a toothpick in a pie.”

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Above: Old Main floodlit on Thanksgiving Eve, 1923.

Initially, there were no plans to illuminate the Tower. After all, it wasn’t supposed to be built for another 20 years. Floodlights, though, had already been on campus for some time. In 1916, as part of a great homecoming celebration for Thanksgiving weekend, temporary lights were installed in front of the old Main Building. The south façade was brilliantly lit, and Old Main’s Gothic-arched windows and steep rooftops could be seen for miles. It was a first for Austin. The lighting effect was so popular, it became a biennial tradition.

Not to be outdone, the Texas Legislature appropriated funds to illuminate the Capitol dome. (Image at left.) In February 1925, more than 90 General Electric floodlight projectors, most of them placed on the roofs of the Capitol’s east and west wings, were aimed at the outside of the dome, while 20 amber-colored lights were placed inside to shine through the windows. Another three amber lights were located in the “tholos,” the glass-enclosed, lighthouse-like room just above the dome. The arrangement was similar to what was then being used at the National Capitol.

The efforts to floodlight the Texas Capitol and, to a lesser extent, Old Main, were part of a much larger, national discourse between lighting engineers and architects on the use of external lighting for buildings. With origins dating back to the late 19^th century – the 1889 World Exhibition in Paris featured the Eiffel Tower as a “light tower,” while the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago was famous for its vivid “White City” – the increasing use of electric lights had reinvented the nocturnal urban landscape. As skyscrapers grew ever taller in the 1910s, experiments in external lighting soon followed. By the 1920s and ‘30s, aided by a substantial drop in the price of electricity, thousands of buildings in the United States were illuminated.

Above: The 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The use of electric lights to outline the buildings and illuminate fountains had a profound influence on urban planning and the nighttime environment of cities.

Some architects considered floodlights a new building material, and proactively designed their projects to be seen after sunset. “Night illumination attracts attention like a spotlight on a stage,” claimed skyscraper architect Harvey Corbett. “The possibilities of night illumination have barely been touched,” added Raymond Hood. “There is still to be studied the whole realm of color, both in the light itself and in the quality and color of the reflecting surfaces, pattern studies in light, shade and color, and last of all, movement.” The use of floodlights seemed to accessorize what might otherwise have been dark and ominous structures. It gave them bright and cheerful nighttime garments, which transformed the American city. “There is a new Manhattan skyline – a new city of light and color rising above an old one,” reported the New York Times in 1925, which described downtown as “a huge city of illuminated castles in the air.”

Above right: An idyllic image of a 1920s skyscraper with floodlights on the upper levels, described as a “jewel in a setting.”

The lights included colors and special effects. Red, amber, green and blue filters were the standard selection, though colors could be mixed to create different hues. On some buildings, repeating dimmers allowed colors to brighten and darken and blend in an endless variety.

Naturally, General Electric, Westinghouse, and other electric companies encouraged the use of illumination, especially after the onset of the Great Depression, when the sales of electrical appliances had declined. The companies published a series of booklets that not only provided detailed engineering specifications on how to install floodlights, but included essays by noted architects on aesthetics and design. At one point, GE launch an ad campaign that claimed building illumination was a means to counter the gloom of the Great Depression.

Above: In the 1920s abd ’30s, General Electric, Westinghouse, and other electric companies produced booklets with lighting specifications and essays by prominent architects.

Above: In the 1920s, other Texas cities added illuminated high-rises to their skylines, all about 400 feet tall. From left, Dallas’ Magnolia Building with its iconic red Pegasus, Houston’s Gulf Building, and San Antonio’s Tower Life Building.

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In June 1934, the Board of Regents met in the President’s Office – then in Sutton Hall – to review the final plans for phase two of the Main Building, which included the south façade and Tower. Paul Cret traveled from Philadelphia to personally present the sketches and drawings, and to answer the regents’ many questions. After a lengthy discussion, the designs were enthusiastically approved. Contracts were awarded in November, and construction began the following January.

Among the plans was a recommendation by the Faculty Building Committee. Influenced by national architectural trends, knowing the impact the Main Building would have on the Austin skyline as a counterpart to the State Capitol, and in deference to the much-loved tradition of illuminating Old Main, floodlights were proposed and approved for the Tower. The decision received scant attention for more than a year, until well after construction was underway. The Texan mentioned: “An indirect lighting system accomplished through the use of flood lights at strategic points along the ascension of the tower will render it visible at night for many miles around Austin.”

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The person assigned to oversee the floodlight project was 34-year old Carl Eckhardt, Jr. (Image at right.) Twice a UT graduate, he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1925 and a master’s in 1930. Eckhardt joined the engineering faculty as an instructor in 1926, was promoted to adjunct professor when he completed his master’s degree, and was made a full professor in 1936. An avid collector of the writings of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Byron, Browning, Thomas Paine, and others, he made it a habit to end each of his engineering classes with a tidbit of prose or poetry as a thought for the day. “In my opinion,” Eckhardt explained, “an engineer should be as cultured as anyone else, even more so.”

Along with his faculty responsibilities, Eckhardt took on several demanding roles on the Forty Acres. He was appointed Superintendent of Power Plants in 1930, and then was promoted to Superintendent of Utilities in 1936, just as he was named a full professor. In 1950, he helped to organize the physical plant department and served as its inaugural director for two decades. Eckhardt was, quite literally, in charge of the campus. His hours were legendary. Eckhardt usually arrived for work at 7 a.m., and, but for two half hour breaks for lunch and dinner, usually stayed until 10 p.m.

16.Spring Commencement Maces. For anyone who has spent some time on the Forty Acres, it’s difficult not to encounter one of Eckhardt’s many contributions to the University. Starting in 1956, he originated most of the ceremonial maces used for commencement. (Image at left.) Some made from pieces of Old Main, each one is full of imagery pertaining to the schools and colleges, University leadership, and alumni.

In 1958, as part of UT’s 75^th anniversary celebration, Eckhardt oversaw the reconstruction of the Santa Rita oil pump on the south side of campus. Until recently, an audio recording at the pump relayed the story of the oil well and its effect on the University. Eckhardt was the voice of the narration.

He planted trees across campus, including many of the cypress along Waller Creek, advocated for an annual Service Awards program to recognize the efforts of UT’s non-teaching personnel, and self-published six booklets on University history, on topics that ranged from portraits of UT’s first 20 presidents, a volume about the University’s early years, and a booklet that explains the symbolism of each of the commencement maces. (The works are in the library, and can still be found in local used book stores.) In 1980, a then-retired Professor Eckhardt was awarded UT’s Presidential Citation. The University’s Heating and Power Complex is named for him.

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To start, Eckhardt’s crew reviewed all of the literature they could find on external illumination, including the booklets published by the electric companies, and especially those by General Electric. The University would use GE’s “Novalux” light projectors (image below right), similar to what had been employed at the Texas Capitol.

Along with white lights, the available colors were red, green, blue, and the popular amber. Initially, Eckhardt considered amber to highlight the upper portion of the Tower, (image at left) particularly around the Doric columns that enclosed the Tower’s belfry. Amber, though, is a yellow-orange hue. One look, and Eckhardt immediately realized that amber was too close to orange not to go ahead and use the University’s colors. Orange wasn’t a standard choice, however, and GE first proposed alternating red and amber lights to acquire an orange tint. But this meant extra lights would need to be installed, and, besides, the shade of orange wouldn’t be consistent along the surface of the building. Instead, Eckhardt ordered custom orange covers for the floodlights.

The floodlights arrived May 1937, the last significant piece of the Main Building, and were installed and individually positioned through the summer. While the building had already been dedicated on February 27^th, the University wasn’t to officially occupy the space until the fall.

In all, 292 floodlights, half orange and half white, were placed on the four recesses, or “setbacks” of the Tower. The largest were the 96 1,000-watt lights at the Tower base, another 64 250-watt lights placed on the observation deck, 48 500-watt projectors to illuminate the belfry, and 84 100-watt bulbs around the parapet at the top. There were two circuits at each setback: one for all-orange lights, the other for all-white. Switches on the ground floor of the Main Building permitted the choice of color for each level.

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The evening forecast for Tuesday, October 19, 1937 was postcard worthy: clear, cool, star-filled skies with a full moon. Everything was ready. At dusk, just before 6 p.m., the Tower was officially illuminated for the first time.

Eckhardt’s crew didn’t go for a simple, all-white or all-orange Tower. For this first attempt, they opted for something more subtle and elegant, and practical at the same time. Perhaps inspired by the images of multi-colored buildings in the floodlighting booklets, the crew wanted to try out more of the available palette, which, in this case, included a shade of light orange by combining orange and white lights together.

On the night a floodlit Tower made its debut, the lower portion remained white, while the area just above the observation deck – which included the clock faces – was bright orange. Above that, the belfry displayed a light orange tone, while bright white shown from the crown. (Image above left.) Today, the colors might be likened to an orange creamsicle.

The lights drew raves on and off campus. The following morning, Texan reporters Frank White and Bob Wilkinson called it “majestic splendor.” Their fellow students, “seeing it with us were entranced with its colorful beauty, and found no words to describe it.” The Statesman’s gossip columnist “Peeping Peggy” Harding gushed, “that the University colors of orange and white could blend so perfectly as they did that first night in the lights on the tower was a surprise to me; but the shading from bright orange at the base of the clock to white at the peak was a splendid sight. I think that experiment after experiment may be tried but none will be as effective as it was the first night.”

The experiments to which Harding referred were a seemingly endless variety of Tower lighting schemes that began October 19^th and continued for nearly a year. In her column, she praised “Carl Eckhardt, supervising engineer of the beautiful doings taking place on the tower of the administration-library building on the campus. The effects gained with the various combinations that have been shown are wonderful, and at night as the hills lift their purple crown over the city, heads turn in the direction of the university to see the beauty there.”

Which design (or designs) University officials favored remained a mystery. “Tonight you may see an entirely different lighting arrangement,” stated the Texan, “depending upon the mood of the experimental crew. Acceptance of the lights is pending University approval, and what you see for the next few nights is definitely not definite.”

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For UT football fans, the 1937 season was a long one. First-year head coach Dana Bible (image at left), recruited from the University of Nebraska to serve as both athletic director and coach, said that he would need five years to turn around what was then a lackluster football program. By the end of the season, it looked as if he might need all of it, and then some.

Texas opened with a win. Under cloudy skies and in front of a sparse 12,000 fans in Texas Memorial Stadium, the Longhorns scored a dozen points in the final quarter to beat Texas Tech 25–12. The undefeated streak, though, was short one. A trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana the following week resulted in a 0-9 drubbing from LSU, and the third game of the season ended in a 7-7 tie with rival Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl. Texas then posted three consecutive losses to Arkansas, Rice, and Southern Methodist.

Above: 1937 Texas (in white jersey and helmets – with no face guards!) vs. Baylor.

The great bright spot of the season came Saturday afternoon, November 6, in Waco, when a late field goal launched the Longhorns over the 4^th-ranked Baylor Bears 9-6. Celebrations in Austin continued well into the night, especially on campus, where the weekly All-University Dance was held in the Texas Union Ballroom. Just a few steps from the Union, up the West Mall, the Tower base glowed white with the top portion bright orange. Like a giant victory flame in the middle of the Forty Acres, it reflected the jubilant mood of the University.

This has often been recorded as the start of the orange Tower tradition. While it’s true that the Tower was floodlit orange on the night of a Longhorn win, the former didn’t yet depend on the latter. Floodlights had been used for less than three weeks. No guidelines had been set, even the idea to use the orange lights in such a way hadn’t yet occurred to the lighting crew. The Tower was already set-up and scheduled to shine as it did, regardless of the final score in Waco. As Eckhardt later explained, “At the time we attached no importance to it. Like so many things that have become traditions, it only became important later.”

Above right: From 1938, one of the earliest color photographs of the Tower and Texas Union on the West Mall.

The campus was jazzed all week after the Baylor game. Was it a fluke, or had the Longhorns turned a corner? With Texas Christian University coming to Austin the next weekend, a Friday night football rally was scheduled on the newly-paved Main Mall, which hadn’t yet been landscaped with hedges and oak trees. On the morning of the rally, the Texan reported, “Even the University administration has gotten into the spirit of things. Bright orange lights, at special expense, will be diffused around the Tower tonight.”

Just after 7 p.m. Friday evening, a torchlight parade led by the Longhorn Band set out from the front of the Scottish Rite Dorm, marched down Guadalupe, turned east on 21^st Street, and then up the South Mall to the Tower, which was floodlit in the same way it appeared the previous Saturday, with the top portion orange. (Image upper left.)

Above: A crowd gathers on the Main Mall for the Beat TCU football rally. The familiar hedges and oak tress haven’t yet been planted. Below, Bevo III at the rally.

More than 2,000 fans, Coach Bible, the football team, Austin Mayor Tom Miller, and Bevo III (image at right) made it the largest and loudest rally of the season. Unfortunately, Texas went scoreless on Saturday while TCU prevailed 0-14. The next week in College Station, Texas A&M beat the Longhorns 0-7, and the soon-to-be-forgotten 1937 season ended at 2-6-1.

Still, the win over Baylor and the TCU rally planted an idea with Eckhardt: what if the orange floodlights, instead of being used every night as part of a standard lighting scheme, were instead reserved for special occasions?

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The Tower light show continued into 1938 and was gaining a fan base both inside and out of the Austin city limits. “When lighted at night, the Tower can be seen in Round Rock, Manor, and other surrounding towns,” reported the Statesman. “Persons at San Marcos say it can be seen from the hills around San Marcos.” The best view was from the south, when entering Austin along present-day South Congress Avenue. “From the crest of the hill (today’s South Congress at Ben White Boulevard), the lighted Tower behind the lighted dome of the Texas Capitol offers a breath-taking sight.”

University officials boasted that, just by changing a single bulb, there were an estimated 60,000 possible lighting schemes. Among them, as the Texan described, “Some nights the main body of the Tower is white with a faint orange tinge. Solid white light plays on the clocks and deep orange lights on the area above.” (Image above right.)

At other times, the lower part of the Tower was left dark, with only the upper portion lit up in some combination of oranges and white. From a distance, the effect made it seem as if the illuminated clock and belfry were disconnected from the rest of the Main Building, suspended over the campus. More than a few students voiced their support for the idea. Journalism major and track team sprinter Hiram Reeves said, “I don’t like the whole Tower flooded with light. The two sections at the top are enough. The first one should be orange and the next white.” Anida Derst chimed in, “Isn’t it beautiful? I think only the top should be lighted. I like orange and then white.” Mary Lou Humlong (image upper left) agreed with order of colors, but wanted to go bigger: “I would like to see them flood the complete lower part of the Tower with orange, and use white only at the very top.” The use of white lights on the upper portion also highlighted the extensive gold leaf that was originally placed around the clock and the belfry. (See: The Tower Gold Rush.)

At one point, the lighting crew attempted a striped Tower, with a center white stripe and orange along the sides. Students, though, claimed it reminded them of a barber pole, and joked that the University was advertising itself as a barber college. The stripes didn’t work all that well anyway, as the lights diffused and blended with height, which blurred the vertical lines. Alternating each of the four sides of the Tower in orange and white was also tried.

Above: Some of the early Tower lighting experiments. From left: the “creamsicle” Tower seen on the first night, the top-lit only Tower, a vertically striped Tower, and a horizontally striped Tower with alternating orange and white levels..

As winter warmed into spring, and on into summer, the Tower lights continued to entertain, but were more often seen in four basic configurations: all-white, with an orange base and white top (as Mary Lou Humlong preferred), with a white base and orange top, and all-orange. While light orange was popular and still made an occasional appearance, the use of both orange and white lights on the same setback made that section a little brighter than the rest and created an uneven composition.

Above: The four basic lighting patterns that began to appear in the summer of 1938.

At the same time, the crew determined that lighting the upper portion of the Tower more than one color was difficult to see from greater distances. For example, the four levels of the Tower could be lit – and was, as one of the experiments – alternately white and orange from bottom to top, with an orange crown. (Image at left.) On campus and nearby, the design was easy enough to see, but from two miles away and farther, the details were harder to discern. Eckhardt determined it was best to light the entire upper portion of the Tower a single color.

As the fall semester opened, an all-white Tower was more often seen. Eckhardt began to use the orange lights sparingly, as reported by the Statesman, “confined to those times when the campus is visited by out-of-town and out-of-state groups, or when the university sponsors some annual event.” This included the June 1938 commencement ceremonies, held for the first time on the Main Mall, when the top portion of the Tower glowed orange to honor the graduates.

While the lighting experiments had slowed, there was still no set policy on the use of the Tower floodlights. Why so long to make a decision? At the time, the University was without a formal president. The much-loved Harry Benedict, who‘d served as UT’s chief executive for a decade, died unexpectedly in May 1937. The Board of Regents appointed John Calhoun, a math professor and the University’s comptroller, as president ad interim. Calhoun was a longtime and influential member of the Faculty Building Committee and had suggested the inscription that was carved on the front of the Main Building (See: The Inscription), but opted to leave the final decision on the Tower lighting to his successor.

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Above: Coach Bible at a Longhorn football practice.

If the 1937 football season was bad, 1938 was worse.

At the start, the Longhorns suffered a frustrating, one-point, 18-19 defeat at the University of Kansas. LSU came to Austin the following week. The Tigers picked up where they left off the previous year, and handed Texas a second, 0-20 drubbing. Oklahoma was next on the schedule.

On Tuesday morning, October 4^th, a few days before the showdown with the Sooners, the Statesman printed its popular and chatty “Town Talk” column by Editor-in-chief Charles Green.

“They’ve been having such a good time out at the University of Texas with the tower on the administration building that it seems a shame to say anything” wrote Green. “But why not have a little meaning in the change of the lights of the building – at least during football season? How would it be to flash on the orange lights and white lights when Texas had been victorious so that everyone would see and know and each night see and know again? And, on the other hand, when Texas goes down in defeat, light the tower in the calm white light? So that football players, as well as others, would see it every night and remember just what it meant.”

“Well, it’s just an idea,” Green continued. Maybe it’d be an inspiration. But any way you take it, that tower agleam with light is something to look at.”

The Texan responded. “One of the good ideas “Town Talk” in a downtown paper developed the other day was a new lighting system for the Tower. The plan called for lighting the Library shaft with the orange and white lights the following week if Texas won the football game and using solid white ones if we lost. The lighting effect would remind players as well as other students of the game the previous week and might help get them in the mood to keep the lights from being all white.”

While the time periods were different – Green proposed using orange lights only for the night of the football game, while the Texan had orange lights on the Tower for a week – the basic idea was the same. It fit perfectly with Eckhardt’s notions for making the orange lights special, and he welcomed the suggestion.

The “victory lights,” though, would have to wait a while. Texas was blanked by Oklahoma 0-13, and the Longhorns followed it up with losses to Arkansas, Rice, SMU, Baylor, and eventual national champion TCU. Only one game remained. The lone chance to redeem the season was the Thanksgiving Day bout with Texas A&M in Austin.

As had been the custom when the game was played at UT, alumni turned it into an unofficial homecoming and invaded Austin in droves. This was also the first home game versus the Aggies when the Main Building and Tower were fully operational. In the spirit of the prior tradition of floodlighting Old Main, Eckhardt ordered a distinctive all-orange Tower for the alumni the nights before and of Thanksgiving. (Image upper left.)

Wednesday night’s Thanksgiving Eve began with a football rally of 4,000 in front of Gregory Gym, followed by a second, bonfire rally on present-day Clark Field, and then a march en masse to Sixth Street downtown. Thanksgiving Day was a holiday for most, but much of UT held an open house in the morning to accommodate the surge of visitors. The president’s and deans’ offices, library in the Main Building, Tower observation deck, and campus museums were all available until 1 p.m. The Texas Union, then headquarters for the alumni association, was open all day. Kick-off for the game was at 2:30 p.m., and the University-wide Thanksgiving Dance was set for Gregory Gym that night.

More than 35,000 fans packed the stadium as an inspired Longhorn defense kept the game scoreless for three quarters. Early in the fourth, halfback Nelson Puett made a dramatic dive over the goal line to give Texas a touchdown, and while UT hadn’t converted an extra point all season, Wally Lawson found his mark to give the Longhorns a 7-0 lead. The win seemed assured until, with less than 20 seconds left, a botched Longhorn play meant to run out the clock resulted in a fumble that was recovered by the Aggies in the end zone for a score. Texas, however, managed to block the extra point as time – and the season – ran out, leaving the final tally 7-6. Jubilant fans rushed the field.

Above: The Longhorn’s winning touchdown to beat the Aggies.

As had happened the year before with the upset over Baylor, campus reveling continued well into the night, though this time centered at the Thanksgiving Dance in Gregory Gym. An all-orange Tower presided over the Forty Acres, and while it would have been orange regardless of the score, by now, too many people connected the floodlights with the football win. What Green had suggested in the Statesman, combined with Eckhardt’s own thoughts on the use of the orange lights, as well as the lighting crew’s year-long experiment on how best to light the Tower, had all matured into a new University tradition.

And this time, the UT football program had truly turned a corner. The following 1939 season would be a winning one. Newly-appointed President Homer Rainey formally approved the idea of victory lights (with an all-orange Tower reserved for wins against A&M), and left the use of orange lights for other occasions at Eckhardt’s discretion.

Which made Eckhardt a very popular person.

Above: From the 1941 Cactus. In a recap of each game of the 1940 season, an image of a white or orange-topped Tower signified wins and losses.

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“Dear Professor Eckhardt, Would you please light the Tower orange for . . .”

Over the next several years, the Tower victory lights for football, spring commencement, and a few other dates became a well-established tradition, and seemed to have everyone’s attention. “If anything is wrong after some football game or some other event,” Eckhardt explained, “I get as many as two or three hundred calls at home.” There was, though, still no formal schedule for the lights, and Eckhardt constantly fielded requests, or, as he described it, “a great host of individuals who possessed a wide variety of reasons for wanting to call attention to a function in which they were participating.” Among the functions were alumni meetings and retirement parties, academic conferences hosted in Austin, fraternity formals, milestone birthdays, and championships won in sports other than football. Occasionally, Eckhardt acquiesced (always, of course, if the request was made by the president), but most were politely refused. Orange lights on the Tower were supposed to be rare and distinctive.

In 1941, soon after the U.S. entered the Second World War, Austin was deemed too close to the Gulf coast and within range of enemy bombers. An air raid siren was installed on the top of the Tower, and the city formally placed on a nighttime blackout. From January 25, 1942 to November 1, 1943 – about 19 months – both the Capitol dome and Tower were dark, though the Tower was allowed to shine for spring commencements and a Thanksgiving Day victory over Texas A&M.

Image at right: Cover of the September 1943 Texas Ranger student magazine. A UT freshman during wartime is portrayed as a paratrooper, landing on the Forty Acres next to a dark Tower under blackout.

When the blackout was lifted, student Mary Brickerhoff (image below left) cheered via the Texan. “The Tower isn’t a building. You thought it was? That’s natural, but the building part is only an optical illusion . . . The Tower is Texas, symbolically speaking, and it is at its most impressive and its most Texan when it is lighted up at night.”

“That tall column of stone,” Brickerhoff continued, “silhouetted against a blue-black night sky and looking as though it were lighted from inside transparent walls instead of from the outside, has been affecting many very different people in the same way for a long time. In our mind’s eye – or in what we have left of it after four years of study – we can see the Tower from a dormitory window on a night of our first year here. It was several blocks away then, and it looked big and impressive. But it wasn’t unfamiliar. Something about it said, “Don’t be scared. You’ll have both fun and trouble in this place, and when it’s all over you won’t want to go back and change anything. And the Forty Acres will mean more to you than anywhere you’ve ever been.”

Brickerhoff expressed what many of her fellow students felt – and what future generations of UT students would feel – about the Tower, especially freshmen, who were both on their own for the first time and adjusting to college life. During the day, the Tower could be seen (and heard) from almost any spot on campus, but at night, standing proudly under a starry sky or buffeted by a Texas thunderstorm, the illuminated Tower was an image of stability and purpose in an otherwise hectic college student’s life. Had the decision been made not to use floodlights, to leave the building dark after sunset, the Tower would still have been the iconic campus landmark, but wouldn’t have engendered the same kind of passion Mary Brickerhoff described.

Above: A 1940 postcard image of the UT Tower at night.

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After years of endless special requests, Eckhardt at last decided that a formal lighting schedule was needed. Late in 1946, with the president’s approval, a seven-member committee discussed the issue at length, and announced their guidelines in October 1947.

44.UT Tower.Top Orange The victory lights – with the top portion of the Tower orange – were to be lit on nights when the football team won, or when the men’s baseball, basketball, track, swimming, golf, and tennis teams secured a Southwest Conference championship. The lights would also be used for spring commencement and various holidays: Easter, Christmas, Texas Independence Day (March 2), San Jacinto Day (April 21), Victory in Europe Day (May 8), Victory in Japan Day (August 14), and Armistice Day (November 11). As the Second World War had ended only recently, and the University campus was crowded with veterans who’d enrolled through the G.I. Bill (See: Life in Cliff Courts), the last three holidays were still widely observed.

An all-orange Tower was to be a rare sight indeed, seen only on Thanksgiving nights when the Longhorns defeated the Aggies. A great many students, though, were out-of-town for the holidays and missed out on the view. After a decade of complaints, the policy was amended in 1957 to include both Thanksgiving night and the following Sunday evening to greet returning students.

45.1952 Flashcard Section.Daytime and Orange Tower.

Above: The 1952 flashcard section flipped from a daytime to a nighttime orange-topped Tower, with the moon in the upper left corner. Courtesy Bob and Lou Harris.

As the years passed, the lighting schedule continued to evolve. The World War II-related holidays were eventually replaced with Memorial and Veterans’ Days. It was also quite obvious to everyone that the victory lights were reserved only for men’s sports. In 1952, Jaclyn Keasler, president of UT’s Cap and Gown, a senior women’s organization, wrote to Eckhardt about the possibility of using the lights for Swing Out. An annual spring event since 1922, part of the program involved transferring a long bluebonnet chain from the shoulders of the graduating seniors to the juniors, symbolic of passing the campus leadership roles and traditions on to the succeeding class. Eckhardt was receptive to the idea and brought it to the committee, which agreed. On May 1, 1953, the top of the Tower finally glowed orange for a women-only activity. Almost 20 years later, with the passage of Title IX in 1971 and the creation of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) in 1972, the University began to sponsor competitive women’s sports. By 1976, the victory lights were shining for their achievements as well.

46.1923.Swing Out and Bluebonnet Chain.

Above: 1923 Swing Out and Bluebonnet Chain ceremony on what today is the South Mall.

On Thanksgiving night 1962, Longhorn fans were in for a surprise. The football team had not only defeated Texas A&M, but had completed its first no-loss record in over 40 years. If not for a mid-season, 14-14 tie game with Rice when Texas was ranked number one, UT would have earned the national championship. In honor of the team’s success, and in the spirit of the lighting experiments of the 1930s, Eckhardt ordered an all-orange Tower and had his crew spell out “UT” in the windows, the first time the windows were a part of the display.

The next year, the football team finished the 1963 season undefeated and ranked first, then soundly defeated number 2-ranked Navy in the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day to clinch the University’s first national football championship. To celebrate, the Tower was orange for three nights, from January 1 – 3, 1964, with a “1” lit in the windows on each side. To prepare, Eckhardt’s crew spent two days sealing more than 100 windows with sheets of black plastic, and then left reminders in the appropriate offices to leave their lights on for the night. Today, a specially designed pull-down shade makes the process quicker and easier.

On February 27, 2012, the Tower turned 75 years old. Students distributed birthday cake on the West Mall, the Alexander Architectural Archives, housed on the ground floor of Battle Hall, sponsored an open house with some of Paul Cret’s Tower sketches and drawings on display, and a historical tour of the Main Building was conducted in the early evening. Thanks to special approval by UT President Bill Powers, the Tower glowed orange that night with a “75” in the windows – the first time the Tower was lit orange to celebrate itself!

Above: The 2019 Spring Commencement was the 25th year fireworks were launched from the Tower. The pandemic interrupted the 2020 ceremony, though the Tower still sported a “20” in its windows. Photos by Marsha Miller.

By the 21^st century, the Tower lights were thoroughly enmeshed in the University’s culture. Today, the Tower shines orange to recognize academic pursuits, including Honor’s Day, as well as faculty, staff, and alumni awards. The Tower lights not only mark the achievements of UT’s athletic teams, but national titles earned by the sports clubs under the Division of Recreational Sports. At times, the Tower is darkened in memoriam for members of the University community who have passed.

Best known, perhaps, is the use of the Tower for Spring Commencement, the signature event of the academic year. Held on the Main Mall since 1938, it was a somewhat staid ceremony with average attendance. In 1995, UT President Bob Berdahl asked that commencement be reinvented with more pomp and excitement. Special lighting effects were added to illuminate the Tower the designated color of each school and college, and the graduation year was lit in the windows. The most significant change was the addition of fireworks at the end of the ceremony. In just a few years, Spring Commencement was attracting overflow crowds of more than 20,000 persons.

The Tower lights, added almost as an afterthought to a building that was constructed 20 years early, has matured well beyond its “majestic splendor” and become a vital part of the University’s identity.

Sources: William J. Battle Papers, Carl Eckhardt Papers, and the UT President’s Office Papers in the University Archives, preserved at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History; Robert Leon White Papers in the Alexander Architectural Archives; UT Board of Regents minutes; Architecture of the Night by Dietrich Neuman; various booklets on floodlighting published by General Electric and Westinghouse in the 1920s and ’30s. The Daily Texan and Austin American-Statesman newspapers; Texas Ranger and Alcalde magazines.
Special thanks to the Austin History Center for helping to determine the height and site elevations of the Texas Capitol and UT Tower.

The Old Main Cornerstone

Posted on November 17, 2019 by Jim Nicar

Above: The cornerstone of the Old Main sits in the front loggia of the current Main Building. The stone was supposed to be placed on November 16, 1882, but a rainy cold front postponed the ceremony to the 17^th. Austin stonemason Ben Muschamp, who’d carved the letters in the cornerstone, didn’t have time to create a new one with the corrected date.

It was a wretched morning. A cold front the day before had brought with it a frigid gale and steady rain, which forced a postponement of the ceremonies. Conditions hadn’t improved much overnight. For the moment, the rain had stopped, but a brisk wind enforced the damp chill of the autumn air, and the cursed clouds threatened to douse the city again. It was hardly the kind of day anyone had imagined to celebrate the beginnings of a new university.

On Friday, November 17, 1882, in defiance of the raw elements, a crowd of several thousand turned out in Austin to watch the laying of the cornerstone for the University of Texas. Just before noon, a parade assembled at the head of Congress Avenue, in front of the Capitol grounds. The place was nearly vacant. The old capitol had burned nearly a year ago, and construction of a grand new building hadn’t yet begun.

Leading off the parade was the popular George Herzog Marching Band. With their crisp, red and gold uniforms and brass horns, the group splashed through the muddy streets playing “souls stirring and foot stomping music.” Behind them, a long procession of horse-drawn carriages carried the governor, the University regents, the Mayor of Austin, and other state and city dignitaries. Following on foot were many of the city’s civic groups, dressed in uniform or their finest attire. Members of the Knights of Honor were joined by the United Order of Workmen and the Knights of Pythias. The polished wagons of the Austin Fire Department came next, along with the Germania Association and the Austin Greys.

At the west entrance to the campus along Guadalupe Street, the procession was met by Austin schoolchildren, who joined the group as it climbed the hill. The assemblage gathered near the top, where the foundation had been laid for the west wing of the University’s first building.

Above: The cornerstone ceremony for the old Main Building. The stone is held by a hand crane just right of top center. In front was supposed to be seating on long planks supported by wooden barrels, but most elected to stand and huddle together in the cold. Click on an image for a larger view.

A crude, wooden platform was hastily erected at the construction site, upon which were seats for the distinguished guests. For the audience, benches had been improvised with long planks supported by wooden barrels. Most of the spectators, though, in order to keep warm (and avoid splinters), elected to stand, and huddled together against the cold.

Dr. Ashbel Smith, the 75-year old chairman of the Board of Regents, spoke at length. “We have come together to do a great work,” boasted Smith. “The corner stone of the University of Texas . . . far surpasses in solemn importance and in weighty, widely diffusive and long reaching consequences, any corner stone of any building hitherto laid, or likely hereafter to be laid, in the broad territory of the future millions of Texas.” A feisty orator, Smith was neither modest nor short of words. His speech lasted well over an hour, and he predicted a wonderful future for the new university.

Following Dr. Smith’s address, a few “official” items were placed in a small lead box that would be sealed inside the cornerstone: copies of Texas newspapers, a list of the Board of Regents, and a proclamation written by Governor Oran Roberts. But there was room for more, and the public was invited to contribute.

The crowd was ready, and the box was filled with an odd assortment of items. Business cards, police badges, a Bible, rosters and constitutions of local organizations, a piece of sheet music from a member of the George Herzog Band, locks of hair from several Austin debutantes, a cigar, and coins of all types were donated. Former Texas Governor Frank Lubbock contributed a lucky charm – a brass button – that he’d carried for over 40 years to ward off rheumatism, presumably to keep the University agile as it aged. Lastly, of all things, was a picture of Queen Victoria, clipped from a Harper’s magazine and mailed to the regents by “an unfortunate man in jail.” Once filled, the lead box was closed and set, and the hollow cornerstone lowered over it by a hand crane.

~~~~~~~~~~

Above: Some of the onlookers gather to watch the removal of the of the Old Main cornerstone in 1934, some sitting on the balconies of Battle Hall. In front, UT President Harry Benedict is fourth from right in the white hat. The camera on the tripod at front right took the image below.

Above: The Old Main cornerstone is removed from its perch on the southeastern corner of the building, then taken to the president’s office to be opened.

Just over half a century later, on the sweltering summer afternoon of Saturday, July 21, 1934, UT President Harry Benedict, Board of Regents Chair Beauford Jester, and about 100 others gathered near the same spot to witness the cornerstone’s removal. Old Main was about to be razed to make room for the current Main Building and Tower.

Unlike the highly organized 1882 ceremony, the 1934 event was very informal. There were no planned speeches, though among the spectators was 64-year old Arthur Stiles, the only person present to have seen the cornerstone set in place. He recounted the colorful parade that braved a true Texas Norther and the “rotund bearded figures” who spoke glowing terms of the University’s future. As the cornerstone was removed from its resting place, a lone trumpeter at the top of the building’s central tower sounded “Taps,” which officially closed Old Main. The lead box was recovered from inside the stone and taken to the president’s office, where the contents were examined, recorded, and then replaced.

Above: The cornerstone as it appeared in Old Main. The carved letters were filled with paint to make them easier to read. One side listed members of the Board of Regents, the other displayed the names of the building’s architect and construction contractor.

Above: A crowd in the president’s office, then on the first floor of Sutton Hall, to see the contents of the Old Main cornerstone. The open lead box is on the right side of the desk. Click on an image for a larger view.

When the present Main Building was dedicated on February 27, 1937, the box was placed inside the new cornerstone, complete with a lucky charm to fend off rheumatism.

Among the contents of the 1882 Old Main cornerstone:

The Austin Daily Statesman, Friday, November 17, 1882
The Galveston Daily News, Thursday, November 16, 1882
Dallas Daily Herald, Friday, November 10, 1882
Fort Worth Daily Gazette, Friday, November 10, 1882
The Daily Post (Houston), Thursday, November 16, 1882
“Governor’s Message” – Proclamation or Governor Oran Roberts,
to convene a special session of the Texas Legislature,
Executive Office, Austin, Texas, March 1, 1882
One picture card advertisement: George A. Brush, Austin, Texas, Dealer in Stoves, etc
One package of cigarette papers, belonging to N.P. Houx
A poem called “The Book of Life,” by Lee C. Hasby, Houston, Texas, November 14, 1882
“Constitutions of Grand and Subordinate Lodges of the Knights of Pythias of Texas,” adopted, Galveston, April, 1882.
Handwritten copy of the Roster of Mount Bonnell Lodge, No. 34, Knights of Pythias, April, 1882
“The Constitution and By-Laws of the Kindred Association of Texas,” 1882
A handwritten copy of the Board of Regents of The University of Texas, November, 1882
Printed Booklet: “Plan of Organization and Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Public Free Schools of the City of Austin for 1882-1883.”
A copy of “Form of State or Provincial Constitution Recommended for the Association of a State or Province,” and handwritten on the cover, “Return to James Down, Secretary and Treasurer, Austin Y.M.C.A.”
A handwritten letter to Alexander P. Wooldridge, Secretary to the Board of Regents. Dated November 16, 1882, the letter was from F.W. Hanks, then an inmate at the Travis County Jail. Enclosed in the letter was a picture of Queen Victoria, clipped from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.
Muster Roll, Company “A” 2^nd Regiment, Texas Volunteer Guards
Muster Roll of Terry’s Texas Rangers
Printed Booklet: “Reminiscences of Persons, Events, Records and Documents of Texian Times” by Mrs. W. A. C. Wilson, Austin, 1882
Drawing of the “New Capitol of the State of Texas,” by S. B. Hill, 818 Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas
An envelope containing the names of the artisans and mechanics employed in the construction of the University’s Main Building, a drawing of the completed building, and a photograph of its architect, F. E. Ruffini.
Advertising pamphlet for “Bandy and Parker, Manufacturers and Dealers in Saddles and Harnesses,” East Pecan Street, Austin, Texas
A piece of an envelope with the return addresses printed: J. W. Graham, Druggist, 918 Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas”
The business card of “J.A. Southern, Austin, Texas, Hack No. 12” (a horse-drawn taxi)
Locks of hair from: Miss Stella Wooten, Miss Etta Wooten, Miss Maud Wooten, Miss Tommie Wooten, Miss Tully Folts, Miss Mary Goldwyn, Miss Will Elle Hardeman.
A copy of the music to “Allegheny,” by I. J. Heffley with the words “Herzog Band” written on top in pencil.
A one hundred dollar Confederate bill
A sergeant’s badge from the Austin Police Department
A copy of “The Holy Bible,” printed in New York, 1882
One U.S. Silver Dollar, 1881
One Peso, Republica de Chile, 1876
A round whistle
A cigar
Three pecans
One brass button (a lucky charm donated by Governor Frank Lubbock)
8 street car tokens for the “Austin City Railroad Co.”
A 50 Centavos coin, Republica Mexicana, 1879
2 U.S. quarters, dated 1853 and 1877
A U.S. nickel, dated 1876
A U.S. two-cents coin, dated 1865
7 U.S. pennies, dated from 1857 – 1882
One dozen marbles

Sources: Photos of the cornerstone removal are found in the Alexander Architecture Archives of the University of Texas at Austin, Main Building and Library Extension files, Box D171.

The Misadventures of Bevo’s Head

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Jim Nicar

For the burnt-orangest of Longhorn fans, the story of the first Bevo mascot is as familiar as the scent of fresh breakfast tacos on game day morning, and the sight of an orange tower that night.

In 1916, UT alumnus Stephen Pinckney, with some help from fellow alumni, purchased a West Texas longhorn steer and had him shipped to Austin on a train in time for the Thanksgiving Day football bout between the University and the A&M College of Texas. The steer, chosen because of his orange-shaded hide, was presented to the students at halftime (photo above) and then taken to a South Austin stockyard for care and safekeeping. Texas went on to win the game 21 – 7.

The steer was named “Bevo.” It was likely a play on the word “beeve,” which is both the plural of beef and a slang term for a cow or steer, followed by an “o,” though it was also the name of a non-alcoholic beer introduced by the Anheuser-Busch Company at the same time. (Think of it as “Beeve-o” or “Beef-o.”)

An on-campus debate ensued over what to do with the steer. Some wanted to brand Bevo with a “T” on one side and the winning “21 – 7” score on the reverse. Others thought that was animal cruelty and advocated for putting the steer out to pasture. The discussion was settled months later on February 12, 1917, when a group of Texas Aggies broke in to the stockyard and branded Bevo with the numbers “13 – 0,” the score of the 1915 football game A&M had won the previous year. With rumors swirling that the Aggies planned to return and kidnap the steer outright, Bevo was hurriedly moved to the Tom Iglehart Ranch west of Austin.

Six weeks later, in early April, the United States entered the First World War, and thoughts of mascots quickly took a back seat to the war effort until the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.

When peacetime again returned to the campus, University officials considered the Bevo situation, and declared the steer was simply too wild to attend football games. Besides, many UT students had lost interest in Bevo; he had, after all, only made a single public appearance two years previously, and those who remembered him thought the mascot had been “ruined” by the 13 – 0 brand still on his side. Besides, the students already had a huggable, pettable live mascot in the form of Pig Bellmont. As it was costing 60 cents a day to keep an unsuitable Bevo on a ranch, the athletics department decided to make the animal the barbecued main course of the January 1920 football banquet for the 1919 Longhorn team.

Both Pickney and Iglehart attended the event, along with a delegation from A&M. “The branding iron was buried and the resumption of athletic relations, after an unhappy period . . . duly celebrated,” announced the Longhorn magazine, a monthly published by UT students. “The half of the hide bearing the mystic figures 13 to 0 was presented to A and M with appropriate ceremonies.” Bevo’s head and horns were mounted by a taxidermist in New Braunfels, and it and the other half of the hide were to be kept on the Forty Acres.

So, whatever happened to Bevo’s head?

~~~~~~~~~~

Above: The Victorian-Gothic Old Main Building.

A visitor to the University of Texas campus in the 1920s would have discovered a jumble of buildings whose disparate styles sent a mixed message for what was supposed to be a “university of the first class.” At the top of the hill stood the Victorian Gothic old Main Building, stately and elegant, its pointed windows and rooftops softened by the deep-green ivy that draped its walls. Nearby, the library and education building (today’s Battle and Sutton Halls), along with the Biological Laboratories and Garrison Hall, boasted Mediterranean facades with red-tile roofs, a style the Board of Regents thought was both appropriate for the bright Texas sun and honored the Spanish heritage of the state. Decorations on these buildings ranged from ancient classical symbols to contemporary images, and brought an air of sophistication to the Forty Acres.

And then there were the shacks.

Starting in 1911, with the University expanding faster than its funding allowed, and without monies for conventional classroom buildings, UT President Sidney Mezes had cheap, temporary facilities constructed. They were made from pinewood, without proper foundations, and outfitted with potbelly stoves for heat. Mezes ordered the “shacks” – as they were informally known – to be left unpainted in the hope that their appearance would be so embarrassing, the state would quickly replace the shacks with adequate buildings. It didn’t work.

Entire academic departments were housed in the shacks, which were summarily labeled with letters of the alphabet. Professor Spurgeon Bell, the founder and first dean of UT’s business school, taught his initial accounting classes in “G” Hall (photo at left). On chilly winter days, in order to warm the classrooms before students arrived, Bell’s daily routine began by stoking the coals in the stove left by the custodian the night before, and then hauling in firewood from a stack behind the building. The visible contrast of unpainted shacks standing next to the library or Old Main was striking, and was certainly not the impression UT administrators hoped to convey for an aspiring first class university.

In 1918, during the First World War, a row of additional shacks was built along the eastern edge of the Forty Acres next to Speedway Street. They were first used as barracks for the Student Army Training Corps as part of the University’s war effort (see “To Serve the Nation”), but were re-purposed as classrooms and offices after the war.

The shack at the south end of the row, perched on the corner of 21^st and Speedway (where the business school is headquartered today), was “Z” Hall, home to UT’s Department of Men’s Athletics.

Above: A row of pinewood shacks on the east side of campus, where Waggener Hall and the business school are today. Speedway Street runs behind the buildings. Closest, at bottom right, is part of “Z” Hall, used by the athletics department.

The front door was on the west side, and upon entering, a visitor first encountered a long corridor filled with displays of banners and trophies, as well as footballs, baseballs, basketballs, and track relay batons from important contests. Here, too, were rows of team photos and framed portraits of those who had earned varsity letters (“T” Men), with a special section for athletes who’d lettered in three or more sports.

Above left: One of the trophy displays in “Z” Hall.

Past the coaches’ offices, whose walls were crowded with still more team photos, action shots, and Texas pennants, a suite of rooms in the rear of the building was reserved for Athletic Director Theo Bellmont. Along with space for an executive assistant and Bellmont’s own office, an adjoining conference room was used for Athletic Council meetings. Here, mounted on one of the conference room walls, was the head and hide of the first Bevo.

By the mid-1920s, Bevo was largely forgotten by the University community. Few, if any, of the students were on campus when the steer made his 1916 debut or knew of his integral contribution to the football banquet a few years later. Bevo, though, wasn’t simply gathering dust. In “Z” Hall, a place overflowing with awards and mementos, the steer’s four-foot two-inch horns were put to good use. From each horn, a prized football was hung. One was the ball used at the 1923 Texas vs. A&M game, still splattered with mud from Kyle Field in College Station, when the Longhorns won 6 – 0 to cap an 8 – 0 – 1 season. The other football was saved from the A&M game of the following year, on Thanksgiving Day 1924, when the new Texas Memorial Stadium was formally dedicated. The Longhorns earned a 7 – 0 victory over the rival Aggies.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Texas spirit, which by many had been acclaimed a thing of the past,” announced the Cactus yearbook, “was officially revived this year by an exceedingly capable yell leader.”

In the fall of 1928, Lynwood Boyett (photo at left) was full of new ideas. Elected head yell leader in the campus-wide elections, Boyett worked hard to improve the measure of Longhorn spirit around the Forty Acres and at football games. He tapped in to the energy of the freshmen class and created a special “Rooter Section” in the stadium just for the greenhorns. So that the section would be unmistakable, Boyett asked the frosh to wear uniforms of long-sleeve orange shirts and bright white suspenders, with the traditional freshman class green caps. The University Co-op agreed to sell the rooter uniform at cost, and by the first game of the season, hundreds of first-year students had registered for the rooter section and purchased their uniforms. Along with leading the rest of the stadium in the Rattle-de-Thrat and Lollapaloose yells, Boyett had the freshmen perform “card stunts,” better-known today as a flash card section.

Above: The freshmen rooter section performs a “card stunt.”

Boyett also hoped to add some pizazz to the football rallies, which were then held at the campus Open Air Theater, an amphitheater just north of the old Law School. (Today, it’s the hill just north of the Graduate School of Business building that leads up to Garrison Hall.) He bolstered the line-up with more speakers and performers, and worked to increase attendance not only of the students, but of local alumni and Austin citizens.

Before he was elected head yell leader, Boyett had served two years as an assistant yell leader. He’d dropped by “Z” Hall to see the Athletic Director Bellmont many times, attended meetings in the Athletic Council conference room, and learned the history of the steer hanging on the wall. As head yell leader, Boyett wanted Bevo to be a part of the football rallies by mounting him on the wall at the back of the stage. Having the original longhorn mascot on the backdrop, where everyone could see him, would certainly add to the atmosphere of the event, and it would elevate Bevo out of obscurity to a more “mainstream” University tradition. Boyett approached Bellmont about the idea.

Bellmont was hesitant at first. Moving the steer head could damage it, or, away from the protective confines of Bellmont’s office, something worse might happen. He eventually agreed to allow it for the rally set for Friday, October 19^th at 7:15 p.m., the night before Texas opened Southwest Conference play against the Arkansas Razorbacks.

Above right: Yell leaders address the crowd at the football rally before the UT vs. Arkansas game.

The rally was a great, standing-room-only success. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) news reel crew recorded it and Saturday’s game, and highlights of both were later shown in movie houses nationwide. (Unfortunately, the film hasn’t survived.) Texas defeated Arkansas 20 – 7. Two weeks later, Boyett again received permission to borrow Bevo for the “Smash S.M.U.” rally slated for Friday, November 2^nd.

It was the largest rally of the fall and featured baseball coach Billy Disch, who made his first speaking appearance of the season. “If you will just do your share tomorrow,” Disch told the cheering students, “the team will go forward to victory. The very atmosphere seems to spell it. You are going to help put the boys over the top!” A quartette from the UT Glee Club performed, Longhorn team captain Rufus King gave a pep talk, and the assembly practiced their yells for Saturday’s game against Southern Methodist. All the while, Bevo looked out to the crowd from his mount on the stage backdrop.

Above: The Glee Club quartet performs at the “Smash SMU” football rally, with Bevo mounted on the stage backdrop.

When the rally was finished and the lights turned off, Boyett and a student helper – identified only as “Freshman Harkrider” – were to carry Bevo to the law school library in the Law Building, just a few steps behind the stage. The athletics offices were already closed and locked, and the library staff volunteered to keep the steer safe until the next morning, when he could be returned to his usual haunt in the conference room. The Daily Texan, though, needed a quick interview to complete a story on the rally before the newspaper’s deadline. Instead, Boyett and Harkrider, with Bevo in tow, headed north to the Texan’s offices, finished the interview in a few minutes, and then left for the Law Building shortly after 9 p.m..

Half way to their destination, Boyett and Harkrider were ambushed in the dark by five men. Bevo was wrestled away. The abductors made their escape in a car that Boyett could tell “had a rumble seat” and went the wrong way on the single-lane campus drive. It exited the Forty Acres near the present day Littlefield Fountain and sped off into the night.

Boyett and Harkrider ran back to the Texan to report what had just happened, phoned the Austin police, and then went downtown to inquire at the hotels. No one had seen Bevo. It was a clean getaway. To add to the misery, the Longhorns lost to S.M.U. 2 – 6 on Saturday.

For the next two weeks, rumors swirled about the location of Bevo. A witness in Waco claimed to have seen an overcrowded car heading north to Dallas the Sunday after the game. Someone in the rumble seat had an orange Texas blanket covering “something suspicious.” An S.M.U. fraternity was allegedly openly boasting it had the kidnapped Bevo. The abductors were rumored to have been five freshmen – possibly fraternity pledges – who were ordered to drive to Austin and steal the steer. The S.M.U. student newspaper, The Daily Campus, printed a pair of articles: one claimed that engineering students were behind the Bevo heist, the second reported the steer had been seen at S.M.U.’s football rally before its game against A&M. All the while, Dallas area alumni were quietly making inquiries and reported what they learned back to the athletics department.

On Friday, November 16^th, as the football team and yell leaders arrived in Fort Worth for Saturday’s game against Texas Christian University, word reached Boyett that Bevo was being held in a rooming house near the S.M.U. campus. A quick excursion to Dallas proved to be fruitful, as a rescue party composed of the yell leaders and a few local alumni safely recovered the steer without incident.

Bevo was triumphantly shown at a pre-game gathering of Longhorn fans on Saturday, and Texas won out over T.C.U. 6 – 0. After his brief “tour” of North Texas, Bevo at last returned to the serenity of the Athletic Council conference room, permanently retired from football rallies.

~~~~~~~~~~

Above: An almost-completed Gregory Gymnasium in 1930.

At 11 a.m. on Friday, April 11, 1930, the Longhorn Band met in front of the old Main Building, then proceeded to march down what today is the South Mall, turned left on to 21^st Street, and continued to the corner of Speedway. Several thousand students, faculty, and staff followed along, as UT President Harry Benedict had declared classes cancelled for the rest of the day. The occasion was the official dedication and open house of Gregory Gymnasium.

The gym was the first of phase of the “Union Project,” an ambitious and unprecedented $600,000 fundraising campaign by the Texas Exes to build Gregory and Anna Hiss Gyms, the Texas Union, and Hogg Auditorium. The project was launched in 1928, but the stock market crash the following year and ensuing Great Depression made the going difficult. Some alumni were only able to contribute a single dollar, as that was all they could afford, while others wrote that they’d skipped meals in order to save enough for pledge payments.

Gregory Gym was intended to be both an athletic facility and auditorium, and it initially served UT and the citizens of Austin. In its first decade, jazz greats including Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller performed for all-University dances (photo at left), but so, too, did the Austin symphony and opera. The gym was home to the men’s swimming and diving, and basketball teams, and was headquarters for UT’s intercollegiate athletics, recreational sports, and physical education. The coaches and staff in “Z” Hall were happy to vacate the old shack and move across the street.

In the main foyer, glass cases were filled with trophies and photos, and Bevo, removed from his confines in the conference room, was reverently hung above the center doorway, where everyone could look up and see him as they passed through the foyer and entered the gym. There he remained for over a decade.

“Again calamity and shame have befallen on Bevo I,” announced the Texan on Wednesday, November 24, 1943, just a day before the Thanksgiving football game with Texas A&M. The University community discovered at the stadium and near the Tower “there was evidence that someone had been quite busy with generous amounts of whitewash.” The anonymous painter had left messages on how badly Texas would lose to the Aggies in College Station on Thursday.

Worse, though, was the outright destruction found in Gregory Gym. The horns of Bevo’s mounted head had been physically torn off, leaving only ragged edges. Whitewash can be cleaned; this was permanent damage to something irreplaceable.

“We do not know who is responsible for either prank; they left no clues,” wrote Texan associate editor Marifrances Wilson (photo at left). “Those who played these tricks were moved by a theory which is now out-of-date on this campus. They thought that by doing these things they could make the University of Texas students mad – fighting mad. They thought that they could dig up out of the dirt some of the old worn-out traditions – the same old UT – A&M hatred, reprisal vandalism, fights at the game, and so forth.”

At the time, the people of Texas, along with the rest of the nation, were thoroughly enmeshed in the effort to win the Second World War; a cross-state rivalry took a back seat. The football game was to be broadcast on short-wave radio to U.S. Armed Forces everywhere. “There isn’t time this year to hold old grudges,” Wilson continued, “it just isn’t worthwhile when we remember that all over the world, on fields other than Kyle, Aggies and Longhorns are fighting together.”

Texas won the game 27 – 13, and what was left of Bevo’s head was removed and rumored to have been placed in the storage area underneath the front stairs of Gregory Gym. Both the head, and the hide, have long since disappeared.