{"id":9679,"date":"2011-08-10T14:13:23","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T18:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=9679"},"modified":"2011-08-10T14:13:23","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T18:13:23","slug":"an-alma-mater-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2011\/08\/an-alma-mater-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"An Alma Mater Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kevin Grace<\/em><\/p>\n

\"University<\/a>Over the years, I\u2019ve gathered a fair amount of UC ephemera from garage sales, flea markets, estate sales, and Ebay, and eventually I\u2019ll end up giving it to the University Archives.\u00a0 In the meantime, it\u2019s always a nice little surprise when I dig around in my basement boxes and find these odds and ends.\u00a0 The postcard shown here is of the original University Building, constructed on Charles McMicken\u2019s property in 1875.\u00a0 That property had been bequeathed to the City of Cincinnati in McMicken\u2019s will when he died in 1858, and after litigation and the Civil War, the city was ready to create a university.\u00a0 UC initially held classes in the old Woodward High School building in Over-the-Rhine.\u00a0 With the erection of a permanent building, the university moved to the hillside below present day Clifton Avenue as it winds its way downtown.<\/p>\n

This structure served as the home of UC until 1895 when a new campus was created in a corner of Burnet Woods, the location of the university as we now know it.\u00a0 The University Building was too small and inadequate for a growing student body, and a fire had damaged part of it. However, it was not abandoned.\u00a0 Over the following decades, it was used variously to house UC\u2019s College of Law, its medical school, and as a temporary home for the Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.), an ancestor of the Reserve Officers\u2019 Training Corps (R.O.T.C.).\u00a0 It is even said that at one time when the University Building was used by the College of Medicine, there were complaints from the passengers on the Bellevue Incline, which passed nearby, that anatomy students would lean out the windows to wave at them, the arms and legs of cadavers in hand.<\/p>\n

Eventually, however, the building deteriorated to the point that razing it was the only reasonable thing to do.\u00a0 This postcard image shows the University Building in its final hours.\u00a0 The day after this picture was taken, in the middle of hours of rain, the first home of the University of Cincinnati was torn down.\u00a0 But, in a way it still lives.\u00a0 Before demolition, a UC alum with fond memories of his alma mater requested of a friend that some bricks be sent to him.\u00a0 When he received them, Joseph Strauss placed them in a pylon of a bridge he was building.\u00a0 So, there is a little bit of UC\u2019s heart in San Francisco\u2019s Golden Gate Bridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kevin Grace Over the years, I\u2019ve gathered a fair amount of UC ephemera from garage sales, flea markets, estate sales, and Ebay, and eventually I\u2019ll end up giving it to the University Archives.\u00a0 In the meantime, it\u2019s always a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[53,52,66],"class_list":["post-9679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-uclibraries","tag-cincinnati-history","tag-uc-history","tag-university-archives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}