Part 2

The postoffice began taking on dignity in 1879 when it moved into its new building on government square, now the city hall. The first section of the present building was put up in 1906; the last, which made it the impressive edifice it is today, only a year or two ago.

No. 15—Old Oliver theater

Some day when you emerge from the Varsity, 13th and P, and look up at the weather your eyes may come to rest on “The Oliver” in old fashioned lettering on the battlements of the ancient building, and for a moment you may idly wonder about the playhouse’s past. It does in truth have considerable past, reckoned in terms of famous actors who trod its boards, of orators who thundered in debate over silver and gold standards, suffrage for women and other problems of the past.

The theater, first known as The Lansing, opened in 1891 with Ed Church in charge, and with Lillian Lewis and her company gracing the stage in “L’Article 47” with the sinister subhead “The trail of the serpent is overall.” Yet Gen. Victor Vifquain, rhapsodizing in the opening night souvenir booklet, said: “The Lansing will become an athaeneum where a husband can take his wife and daughter, the brother and sister without fear of bringing a blush upon the cheeks of those whose modesty is of priceless value to them and to the community of which they are the ornaments and the pride.” Anyway, it was a good old chest-expanding sentence.

A Journal man who has attended shows at this theater off and on for 50 years gives us the following list of famous players he recalls having seen at the Lansing (later Oliver): John Drew, Ethel Barrymore, Edwin Booth, Laurence Barrett, Joe Jefferson, Emma Eames, Sol Smith Russell, Blanche Bates, Billie Burke, George M. Cohan, Weber & Fields, Willie Collier, Otis Skinner, Maxine Elliott, Robert Mantell, Elsie DeWolfe, Nat Goodwin, Dustin Farnam, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Trixie Fraganza, DeWolfe Hopper, Virginia Harned, Elsie Janis, Margaret Illington, Mary Mannering, Julia Marlowe, E. H. Sothern, Lillian Nordica, Alice Nielsen, Chauncey Olcott, May Robson, Eleanor Robson, Stuart Robson, Madame Modjeska.

Vividly connected with the history of the theater, as it is with Lincoln itself, is the name of Frank C. Zehrung, to whom death came recently. For almost 70 years a citizen of Lincoln, he was for perhaps half that time manager of the Oliver.

No. 16—Dr. Harry Everett’s home

Before winter puts out a white hand to stay us (which we trust won’t be soon, altho there are hints of early frost), it would be pleasant to make a tour of Lincoln gardens. However, we wouldn’t want to flatten our sight-seeing noses against front windows, and the gardens which can be seen entire from the street are few. In a simpler day, we Americans put our iron deer and dogs, petunias and hollyhocks in a big front yard and then naively sat on our big front porches to see passersby and have passersby see our elegant homes and lawns. Now that we have grown more subtle and English and hide gardens in the back and put inscrutable faces on our houses, seeing gardens on a tour isn’t so easy. But the gardens are there and one can get pleasing glimpses.

Imagine a Lincoln in which all the houses perched desolately on barren lots. Not a tree, not a curving path, not a flower. Then you will indeed appreciate those patient and imaginative garden lovers who with a few rocks, seeds, hoes and hoses turn desert lots into oases. There are pretty little gardens around modest houses, large beautiful gardens around mansions, altogether making Lincoln a charming lady of gardens.

Peer with us thru Dr. Harry Everett’s gates at 2433 Woodscrest for a glimpse of his delightful ivory complexioned house with its maroon awnings and blue windows, and his formal garden. Dr. Everett is an iris specialist and is or has been president of the national iris society.

So charming is this quiet scene, with the September sun falling in bars across the lawn, the soldierly evergreens silently on guard, that even the sudden appearance of five beautiful senoritas on the five balconies would be an intrusion not to be desired.

No. 17—L. C. Chapin Home

Doubtless you know the delightful and intimate sound of rain which only a staunch immediate attic roof keeps off your face. Walking into the Chapin home at 3805 Calvert one has a similar pleasurable sensation. It is a beautiful house, and of course actually very protective, yet one has the feeling of being near the earth—still in the garden. This possibly comes from walking into it levelly from broad low flagstones. Inside one looks out thru great wide-eyed windows so flawless that he seems not to be separated from the rock garden and its mountain stream or the green plush lawn which falls away into the wood.

We grew up near the woods, but “the wood” seems more suitable for this fairy house (glorified French peasant). And the nicest thing about these trees which circle the Chapins’ two and a half acres is that they are original ones and came along free with Nebraska. Luckily the recent dry years—do you remember them—did not affect the small forest, in which hundreds of birds sing.

Inside, as the earth slowly turns, the Chapins can watch the seasons as on a stage, or as a great framed picture turning slowly from green to russet and brown, from brown to white. On the sloping green outside a silver gazing globe pictures the lawn in miniature.

One could exclaim over many things—the garden to the north, where a thousand gladioli grow—the balcony from which one half expects a pretty peasant girl or a blessed damozel to lean.

No. 18—Student Union

What, in the words of the atrocious daily puzzle of that name, is wrong with this picture? Very easy indeed. No angels in flat heels and sweaters are ascending and descending the stairs. Actually, they have begun the continuous zigzag on the Student Union steps for the season. They may be going to or coming from a spot of lunch in the Corn Crib, a friendly coke, bridge or pingpong, time out on the marshmallow upholstery of the lounge, or a late afternoon hour dance.

And cease your sighs and murmurs that when you and I were young we had lessons to get and nobody put us up a Student Union building. For one thing, the tots may have mastered all lessons up to and including next Tuesday morning. For another, the building is theirs, or will be in 80,000 easy payments. At six dollars a year, 10,000 university educations laid end to end ought to about close the Student Union books.

Incidentally, it’s well worth two and a half cents a day to city campus students, especially the ones who have made no entangling alliances with fraternity or sorority, and they’re in the great majority—probably 75 percent. Here’s a place to do almost anything you can think of—or they can think of, which is more comprehensive.

In the basement are offices of student publications, Awgwan, Cornhusker and Daily Nebraskan and a ping-pong room. Office of building manager, grill room, cafeteria, lounges and book nook are on first. On second floor are offices of alumni association, university foundation and University speakers bureau, ballroom, dining rooms, game room and faculty lounge. Dining rooms and student organization rooms occupy the third floor. Mortar Board and Innocents have fourth-floor dormer rooms.

No. 19—Memorial Stadium

To get the desired three by four inch view of Nebraska’s stadium a photographer might walk around it seven times and his pursuit would still be in vain, for it ovals away from him endlessly. One could get a pointblank shot at it from the air, but empty seats, even people enmasse, bundled in blankets, aren’t as attractive as arched windows, which lend beauty to the mammoth structure. In the foreground of this picture is the military department’s reviewing stand, which furnished not only requisite proportions but perspective suitable to the times, war now having put college athletics in the background with no gentle hand.

The stadium, which holds 30,000 without the bleachers, is a memorial to U. of N. men who have died in the nation’s wars. The half million dollar cost was defrayed by students, faculty, alumni and friends. Many a tonsil shredding joust has taken place within the stadium’s great arms. The following from the helpful typewriter of Walter Dobbins gives details:

“The first game played on stadium sod was with the Oklahoma Sooners, Oct. 13, 1923, just a week before dedication of the bowl. With its building Nebraska became a ‘big time’ football school. Games were scheduled with top flight teams from north, south, east and west. The largest crowd ever packed into the home field witnessed Nebraska’s 7 to 0 victory over Indiana Oct. 20, 1937.

“Some of Nebraska’s gridiron triumphs have been recorded at the stadium, including the amazing 14 to 7 victory over Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen in 1923; the 17 to 0 win over Rockne’s eleven in 1924 and the last of the 11 game series with the Fighting Irish. New York U.’s national title hopes were blasted on the same field in 1926 and 1927. Greatest of all victories, however, are later ones—the 14 to 9 defeat of Minnesota in 1937 and the 6-9 win over the Gophers in 1939.”

No. 20—University Hall

This decapitated building may look ready for the scrap heap, but sentimental Nebraskans would indignantly refuse to have it scrapped, for it is the remains of the original campus building. Once it housed the university entire, even offering sleeping room on the two upper stories for men students.

First recollection invoked is of “Miss Bishop,” Bess Streeter Aldrich’s filmed story of primitive university life, which had its premiere in Lincoln. Another is Oscar Wilde’s visit to the university in the eighties. There, garbed in his eccentric finery, he walked unhappy as a strange cat, distressed by the uncouthness of Nebraska and its university and especially by the ugly castiron stove which heated the premises. After expressing this distress, along with his regular lecture, Wilde, in knee breeches, buckled slippers and velvet coat, shuddered his way back to the Arlington hotel, 841 Q, and was soon lost to this region forever. Nobody was depressed over his disapproval and irrepressible Journal reporters put him and the castiron stove into facetious rhyme.

The cornerstone for U hall was laid Sept. 23, 1869, with ceremonies—Masonic ceremonies, in fact. An Omaha brass band led a procession and a thousand people banqueted—which must have more than depopulated residential Lincoln—then danced until 4 in the morning.

Lumber for the building was shipped from Chicago to Nebraska City and thence came slowly over the hills in wagons. Brick was burned in a kiln on Little Salt creek. On Jan. 6, 1871, the doors swung open and in walked ninety young men and women. Rumors that the building was unsafe continued off and on for fifty years. Every now and then some propping was done. Finally the two top floors and belltower were taken off, but classes are still held on the remaining first floor.

No. 21—Don Love Memorial Library

The beautiful new library, now North Thirteenth’s visual shortstop, will make 1871-1942 students brothers to the pioneer who slept, ate, cooked, played and quarreled in one room. The new edifice has a student lounge, auditorium, social studies reading room, general and humanities reading room and browsing room. Those who did their lounging, their browsing, their studying of the humanities and their date making all in one big room under an uncompromising row of green shaded lights will feel outmoded indeed.

But casting envy aside, this generous gift, one of several from the late Don Love, is a welcome addition to the campus and the city. True, it turns its back on the city as it communes perpetually with its sisters of The Quadrangle—teachers’ college, social sciences and Andrews hall—but it is a slender ribbed, sightly and aristocratic back. Earlier buildings were sardine-packed on a small campus. Later edifices, given space on the avenue, took on social graces. To the north of the quadrangle, Memorial mall forms the center of another group of aristocrats—Morrill hall, Bessey hall, Memorial stadium and the Coliseum.

The new library is not yet completed. We had wondered if, when the day of occupancy came, the former library would go the way of the old cannon which once stood guard beside it. This cannon, brought to the campus from the fortress of Havana at the end of the Spanish-American war, was dedicated with ceremony as a memorial to Nebraska students who had fought for Cuban freedom. The cannon had stood in Seville in the time of Charles III of Spain.

A few weeks ago the cannon was ignominiously trucked off for scrap, without ceremony or apology. But the library is to remain and will now house the university’s extension department.

No. 22—Grant Memorial Hall

That rugged old warrior, Grant Memorial Hall (campus, 12th and S) now resounds to commands no more stirring than a set-up singsong to which co-eds stretch muscles and limber joints in accordance with university physical education requirements. It was built, however, for sterner purposes. Once the shuffle and click of guns could be heard within its soldierly exterior as Lt. John Pershing sang out brisk orders to his cadets. The hall was erected in honor of Nebraska’s Civil war veterans in 1887, when those veterans were comparatively young men. Pershing was commandant from 1891 to 1895. The military department is now housed in Nebraska hall, a block to the north.

During the university’s middle years convocations were held in Grant Memorial. The pipe organ in the west half of the second story came from the Mississippi exposition held in Omaha in 1898. It was a gift from alumni who purchased it for $2,500. For years Carrie Belle Raymond, for whom one of the girls’ residence halls is named, played the organ for convocation. Thousands of graduates recall her always smiling face as she sat high above them, fingers hovering over the organ keys.

In Grant Memorial also are housed the U. of N. radio studio and the department of architecture.

No. 23—The Temple

With the exception of the school of music, which began as a private institution, The Temple, at 12th and R, is the only university building which does not stand on the campus. The reason for this seeming ostracism of the Temple—indeed, actual ostracism at the time it was built, is that it was a gift from John D. Rockefeller, jr. The time was 1906, when muckraking and Rockefeller reviling were at their height. Rockefeller had been a student at Brown university when E. Benjamin Andrews, in 1906 chancellor at Nebraska, was its president.

The name of Rockefeller and the smell of oil were offensive to those who had to do with accepting and placing buildings, but the gift was not quite to be refused. The Temple was delicately dropped outside the gates. However, the Temple has been a useful and busy edifice these 35 years, and but for reporters with fingers always crooked hungrily over typewriter keys old ghosts would not have been disturbed. The Y. M. C. A. has used the Temple for headquarters and other innocent activities have been housed therein.

Principally, however, the building is known as the theater of the University Players, Lincoln’s theatrical stock company, personnel of which consists of instructors and advanced students of dramatic art. Six plays are presented each university year. Here Fred Ballard’s “Believe Me Xantippe” had its premiere—Mr. Ballard being a university student some 35 years ago. His more recent “Ladies of the Jury” also appeared here, but not the premiere. A number of the players have become known elsewhere—Zolly Lerner, Augusta French, Jack Rank and others. The name of Miss H. Alice Howell, for years director of The Players, is inevitably connected with this organization.

No. 24—Art Gallery, Morrill Hall

Morrill hall, 14th and U, is a spot on the campus where everyone is very welcome. In most of the campus buildings, while by no means barred, one is likely to be run down by a horde of young things charging to a class. As they outstrip one on the stairs he is left acutely aware of his brittle old bones and the fact that from college days he can recall offhand only two French verbs and one theorem.

In this hall—named for Charles H. Morrill, Nebraskan who did a great deal for the university—you may saunter and look, and look and saunter. The art galleries are in the two top rooms, the museum on the two below. Dwight Kirsch of the university art department caught this particular slant of sun into the upper art gallery.

Like the native Chicagoan who never heard of Hull House, we know too little about what we have at our own doors. The Nebraska art association has built up a fine collection of paintings. Each year it holds an exhibit, and the fact that it buys one or more pictures every year brings in a collection worth inspecting. The late Mr. and Mrs. F. M. Hall of Lincoln bequeathed their collection to the university, also a fund for further purchases.

Among the valuable paintings by modern artists owned by the art association are the late Grant Wood’s “Arnold Comes of Age,” one of Thomas Hart Benton’s vigorous paintings, “Lonesome Road” and John Steuart Curry’s “Roadmender’s Camp.”

No. 25—Morrill Hall Entrance

Most impressive, perhaps, of the many interesting rooms in the Morrill museum—two lower floors of Morrill hall—is Elephant hall. In this quiet room time yawns, and down her great throat one sees the endless vista of the years. Here animals of all eras, usually clad only in their bones, confront one. If you are sensitive to the ghostly whispers of the past you might well bring a companion. To span millions of years alone in an afternoon is too much; the winds between as the centuries whirl are too vigorous.

Last Saturday we gazed, alone we believed, at a beautiful pair of albino coyotes (Wheeler county, Nebraska, 1940) with touching blue eyes; at a Peruvian mummy (pre-Inca)—a baby with its little skull resting on moth eaten arms; at the skeleton of a dawn horse, no higher than your knee, dug up in Sioux county, and were kneeling intent before a reconstructed dodo when we turned suddenly and encountered the saturnine eye of the ever present guard.

Rightly, the museum takes no chances. Elephant hall contains one of the best collections of modern and fossil elephants in the world, and in addition real or reconstructed animals of many ages. Backgrounds for these reassembled bones of animals which sniffed the earth when it was new were painted in delicate tints by Elizabeth Dolan. The late Gutzon Borglum, stepping into Elephant hall in a woolly camelskin coat, stopped in his tracks among the ancient bones and murmured paradoxically and appreciatively, “A new world.”

One of the activities of the museum has been research on the antiquity of man in North America. Many discoveries have been made in Nebraska, and one of the few existing collections of Yuma-Folsom artifacts is to be found here.

No. 26—Carrie Belle Raymond hall

The pattern has changed since grandmother attended the University of Nebraska in 1871. Today’s co-eds glide thru their four years of college with a minimum of discomfort. Grandmother undoubtedly led a more vigorous life, tho it cost her less (but again, money was money then). Lincoln’s few citizens were urged to be kind to open up their homes to farmers’ daughters bent on education. Or she could stay at “ladies hall,” which our sleuthing has led us to believe stood at 14th and U, for 50 cents a week if she toted in her own bedstead. Wherever she stayed, chances are she often had to crack ice on the water pitcher winter mornings. And crossing the pasture toward University hall in temperate seasons she ran the risk of falling over someone’s tethered-out cow.

In the evening grandmother lighted her kerosene lamp in a chilly room and sat down to her lonely studies—perhaps with her chilblained feet asoak. She was more or less isolated, as phones were still missing from the Lincoln scene. If it had been arranged in advance, she might meet other young men and women for a candy pull or sleigh ride.

Now, in Carrie Belle Raymond, Julia L. Love and Northeast halls—on No. 16th—the way of the co-ed is smooth. She may roam at large over an area predigested as to temperature, blossoming with deep chairs, radios, cardtables, piano, shampoo rooms, dancing halls and tennis courts. Fifteen sororities in the region of the campus furnish approximately the same sort of living for grandmother’s granddaughter. Others take their living places where they find them. But even at the worst those living places are much superior to what was the common lot in 1871.

No. 27—Old W. J. Bryan home, 1625 D

To old timers, the Bryan home is not the nurses’ residence at Bryan Memorial hospital, but the house at 1625 D. It was while an occupant of this house that fame suddenly embraced William Jennings Bryan. From it he went to two national conventions, returning from each with the democratic presidential nomination. On his return he addressed his people. A sea of faces strained upward on D from 16th to 17th as the sound of his mellifluous voice flowed out from the balcony on which he was standing.

Here his two younger children were born. From it, in a one horse surrey, William Jennings Bryan, in broad black hat, with his wife and children, sallied forth each Sunday afternoon for a drive. In the backyard the children—Ruth, later U. S. congresswoman and minister to Denmark, William jr. and Grace dug an elaborate cave which was the envy, and the daytime abode, of neighbor children.

As late as 1935—when the above picture was taken, the house was much as it had been built originally. Now the square tower is gone the way of the porch and balcony. The edifice is corseted tight as an armadillo in white asbestos shale. We offer the original so that, driving past, you may attempt to trace it in the modern version. At least it is an interesting example of a 50 year old house rejuvenated.

Seven years ago the department of the interior suggested the old Bryan home as a historical American building, worthy of careful preservation. There was some talk of making a national shrine of the home in which the Great Commoner had experienced his greatest triumphs. But the movement drooped, and the old dwelling is now tamely serving as a four family apartment house.

No. 28—Cadman Home south of State Hospital

Standing lonely on its hill this old house, doubtless one of the oldest in the region, is the only visible evidence of one of Lancaster county’s early and to be noticed citizens, John F. Cadman. As time has shorn him of earthly glory, so has it shorn the house of pretentious tower and galleries which graced it in its original elegance as manor house of Silver Lake farm. In those days it was embellished with laid-out garden and tree plots, even a fountain.