By Kevin Grace

Last week we wrote about the wonderful donation of an exterior wall plaque from the Conservatory of Music when it was located in the old Shillito mansion on Highland and Oak Streets.  No sooner than that blog post run that we received a package from another person with a connection to the school.

Florence Lemke of Tucson passed along some memorabilia that had belonged to her late aunt, Rita Moore.  Moore was a Conservatory student in the early 1920s and had a classmate by the name of Minnie Leah Nobles.  Mrs. Lemke sent us the 1921 Senior Annual, which her aunt had obtained from Nobles, along with a class photo.  In the picture, Nobles is the tallest woman in the back row and Moore is in the back row as well, third from the right.  It’s a wonderful image not only in how it depicts coed fashion at the time, but in its look at the Conservatory entrance as well.

Cover of the 1921 CCM Yearbook

Bookplate signed by Noble

We have several Conservatory of Music and College of Music yearbooks from the World War I era up until 1962, scattered in years and many the worse for wear, but this copy is in very good shape.  They are part of our holdings of such items from formerly independent Cincinnati colleges before they became part of UC, such as the Ohio Mechanics Institute/College of Applied Science which was absorbed into the College of Engineering.  To learn more about our rich documentation of CCM or other colleges, just give us a call at 513.556.1959, send us a note at archives@ucmail.uc.edu, or find us on the web at http://www.libraries.uc.edu/arb.html.