Century at Stanford

100 YEARS AGO (1902)
A cast of 110 students and faculty staged an elaborate production of Sophocles’ Antigone in the original Greek to capacity audiences at Assembly Hall. Initiated by three professors in the Greek department, the nearly three-hour drama included a large chorus and orchestra performing Mendelssohn’s 1841 incidental music for Antigone. The production toured Los Angeles, Pasadena, Santa Barbara and Berkeley, earning critical acclaim and stimulating interest in classical studies at many California high schools.

Workmen finished carving a 12-foot-high frieze around the top of the 100-foot-high sandstone Memorial Arch, built in 1899 over the Outer Quad’s main entry. Based on an outline of The Progress of Civilization in America by renowned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the carving took three years to complete. One fanciful panel depicted Leland and Jane Stanford, on horseback, charting a course for the Central Pacific Railroad over the Sierra. The entire arch was damaged beyond repair in the 1906 earthquake.

75 YEARS AGO (1927)
The track team, led by coach Robert Lyman “Dink” Templeton, ’21, JD ’24, finished its season with a perfect record, defeating USC in the last event of the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate meet in Los Angeles.

A cartoon titled “How to Get to the Quad Alive” in the Stanford Illustrated Review pictured students dodging speeding automobiles as they tried to get to class. It also depicted students pole-vaulting into the Quad, traversing a high-wire and climbing a bridge over the ubiquitous cars. The University started banning cars from roads around the Quad after World War II.

50 YEARS AGO (1952)
Fullback Bob Mathias, ’53, became the first person to compete in both the Rose Bowl and the Olympic Games in the same year. At the Helsinki Olympics, he repeated his 1948 gold-medal victory in the decathlon, becoming the first to win that competition twice.

Together, Guthrie House and Phi Sig fraternity won the Junior Water Carnival sweepstakes trophy for their replica of a Mississippi River showboat. More than 1,000 spectators lined the shores of Lagunita to view “The History of Water Transportation.”

25 YEARS AGO (1977)
History professor David M. Potter was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861, an examination of factors leading to the Civil War.

In May, a nonviolent antiapartheid sit-in resulted in the largest-ever number of arrests on campus—294 persons, of whom 270 were students—after 16 hours at Old Union. Protesters condemned U.S. corporate investments in South Africa and the refusal of the Stanford Board of Trustees to urge Ford Motor Co. to close its South Africa operations. Most of the students were charged with misdemeanors; some were also charged with resisting arrest. No campus judicial charges were filed.

Karen Bartholomew, ’71, writes this column on behalf of the Stanford Historical Society.