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ge 2 Summer Session Kansan Friday. July 19, 1957
Blake Hall: Ugly White Elephant
The ugliest building on the campus is back in the limelight.
Blake Hall, with its Queen Anne front and Queen Mary back and the single, staring eye at its apex, has finally become the white elephant which so many have said it is.
Apparent low bids for remodeling the hall have been turned down by the state architect because they considerably exceed the $352,000 available. The problem now—which Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy will face on his return from Europe—is whether to try to get more money to meet the remodeling bids or whether to raze the building and start all over again.
Such may be the end of poor old Blake, laughed at and sneered at since the first blueprint was finished and since the last bit of Berea sandstone was slapped on its facade.
Original plans for Blake, drawn up in 1893, called for a building closely resembling the present-day Green Hall. Lucien Ira Blake, professor of physics at KU from 1887 to 1906, and Wells, a young architect from Wichita, drew up plans for a "physics building" at KU and submitted them to the state architect.
Nobody is sure what happened after that, but it is certain that Blake Hall bears no resemblance to the original plans or to Green Hall.
An article in the University Daily Kansan of Jan. 24, 1919, which gave no source of information, stated that "professional jealousy led the state architect to draw up plans as differently from those of Wells as possible. For this reason the unusual architecture of Blake Hall."
Another version of what happened to the original blueprint was reported in a master's degree thesis by J. Howard Compton, now assistant to the state architect. Compton wrote that the state architect, Seymour Davis, kept the floor plan of the original design, but remodeled the outside to conform to the design of a French chateau that professor Blake admired.
In March, 1893, the state legislature appropriated $50,000 for the building, designed in a style known as French Chateau, or Chateau Renaissance. Despite the controversial blueprint, the building was completed in March, 1895, at a cost of $58,000.
The walls of the building (named Blake Hall in 1898 in honor of professor Blake) were of native limestone and brick, and faced on the front and sides with Berea sandstone from near Cleveland. Since Lawrence did not extend so far south as it does today, and since there was no south approach
to the campus, the builders virtually ignored the rear view of the hall. No iron was used in the building below the roof because it would interfere with the needled galvanometer that was to be used in electricity experiments. All plumbing was of copper, brass, or lead for the same reason.
To continue the poor old Blake hex, the experiments went haywire despite the precautions. Iron nails and sash weights used below the roof had been overlooked. Some time later, a moveable coil galvanometer, not affected by iron, was installed, so all the trouble and expense of the sans-iron construction went for nothing.
When the building was completed, the University Review, a campus publication, stated that "nobody likes it." "The sandstone front of the building looks like a speckled chicken," the Review commented. "The iron in the stones shows more plainly than the stone itself. If there be no lotions that will remove these blemishes, let a screen be put before the building. The Regents should think twice before accepting unconditionally the sorry looking structure with its chubby, freckled face, its one eye with a cross above it, and its monstrous hat."
To add to the hard times of Blake, the clock ("the eye"), operated by a master timepiece oh the first floor, was seldom in working order. The excuse for students who were late to class was "The clock in Blake has stopped again." Repairs were costing the department of physics some $150 annually.
And then, with advancements in modern physics and increased numbers of students, Blake became too small. Only 50 students were in the physics department in 1895. By 1949 the department was serving 1,100 students and had a staff of 27.Eighteen instructors were sharing one office. Finally, the physics department left Blake for the new science building, Malott Hall.
Present remodeling plans for Blake call for a complete gutting of the interior and the installation of a fourth floor. If this is done, the roof of the building must be removed so that a steel framework can be installed.
The tremendous cost per square foot of the proposed remodeling has hanged the life of Blake in balance. The University needs the space now, and will need it even more in a couple of years.
If beauty were the only determinent, the building would probably be razed in a hurry, and a new, more graceful structure erected in its place. It would be easier on the eyes.
Tito Begins To Put Pressure On Russia For Promised Aid
—Dale Morsch
By CHARLES M. McCANN
(United Press Staff Correspondent)
President Tito of Yugoslavia is making a 250 million dollar test of Soviet Russia's expressed desire for better relations.
Especially since the recent purge in the Kremlin leadership, Russian Communist Leader Nikita S. Khrushchev has said he wants to establish solid friendship with Tito.
At the same time, he has sharply criticized some aspects of Yugoslav policy.
Now, evidently, Tito has decided to find out exactly where Khrushchev stands.
It had been made known that he is sending a delegation of economic experts to Moscow to ask the Soviet government to make good on two aid commitments on which it reneged.
One was for a credit of 175 million dollars for the construction of an aluminum and electric power project. The other was for a 75 million dollar contribution toward the building of a fertilizer factory and an electric power plant in another part of Yugoslavia.
Tito Plans Large Projects
The Soviet government went back on them when Tito criticized the brutal Russian army suppression on the Hungarian revolt.
These commitments were made last August, when the Soviet leaders were making a big bid for Tito's friendship.
Tito has made it plain that he intends to preserve the independent Communist status that Yugoslavia attained when he broke with the late Jesfé Stalin in 1948 because he was tired of Russian domination.
The Leaders Can Not Be Pleased The Soviet leaders can not be
pleased with the attitude of either Tito or of Chinese Communist chiefs Mao Tse-Tung and Chou En-Lai. These three make no bones about criticising Soviet tactics when the occasion arises.
For instance, during his tour of Czechoslovakia which ended Tuesday Khrushchev spoke almost angrily against Tito's system of putting industrial enterprises under the management of councils of the workers who operate them. Some versions of Khrushchev's statement said that he called the system "stupid."
Khrushchev can not resist the impulse at times, particularly when he is taking part in a Vodka party, to criticize Tito.
But the same day, Khrushchev intimated he might either visit Tito soon or ask Tito to visit him in Moscow. He said the men ousted in the Kremlin purge opposed friendship with Tito. Turning to a group of Yugoslav correspondents, he added: "Don't write this, because I shall tell comrade Tito myself at the first opportunity."
The fact is that the Soviet leaders need the friendship of both Tito and the Chinese Red leaders.
Khrushchev Mav Visit Tito
Tito's price for cooperation apparently is 250 million dollars.
TV Notes
NEW YORK—(UP)—That singer whose couples introduce each week's episode of "The Adventures of Robin Hood" is Paul Hansard. He'll get a break in one of the shows for next season by playing a troubador at the court.
ABC will inaugurate a half-hour dramatic series called "Theater Time" July 25; Thursdays at 9 p.m. Film star Anita Louise will serve as hostess.
General Motors has bought two hours on NBC time, 9 to 11 p.m., Sunday. Nov. 17 for a musical variety show to celebrate its 50th anniversary year. Talent and other details remain to be set.
"The Spike Jones Show" has beer, renewed by the sponsor to run through the summer on CBS Tuesdays at 10:30 p.m.
"Person to Person" ended its season on CBS with the June 28 show. It will return for its fifth season on Sept. 13.
Walter Cronkite has been assigned by CBS as narrator for the ambitious documentary series, "The Twentieth Century." which takes the air Oct. 20.
"Seven Lively Arts," new CBS project for next season, will give employment to seven directors, including such outstanding ones as Franklin Schaffner, George Roy Hill and Sidney Lumet.
Ed Sullivan is the newly elected president of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Natalie, a thoroughly mixed-up girl of fourteen—and who can blame her—was born in Poland. Her father long unheard from on some eastern front, she was forced to emigrate with her mother and grandmother to Budapest and live in near-starvation. She was raised a stranger to almost all the people in a boarding house filled with expatriate Russian and Polish aristocracy, Hungarian ex-officers, Jewish refugees, German businesswomen, and women of easy virtue.
. . . Books . .
Alexandra Orme, a very displaced and very charming Polish refugee, currently settled in Wisconsin, tries her multilingual talent at English with her second novel, Natalie (Simon and Schuster.) It is an episodic tale of a girl's growing-up in wartime Hungary.
Miss Orme, happily, never feels it necessary to expound at length on her theme. She presents her wealth of characters in taut, incisive little vignettes, and allows Natalie to wander from one to the other in apparently aimless fashion. Tender, harshly humorous, wistful, shocking and always faintly detached, Natalie is a fine study in consistent under-play.
Actually, the Regina Pension is much more than a haven for refugees from all parts of Europe. As the roomers lost gradually all they have but their memories of the past, the Regina becomes more and more the embodiment of that past. It is this that Natalie, by nature bound to nothing but herself, must constantly fight in order to retain her identity.
Advice for beginning journalists:
"Get a good foundation in grammar and spelling if you want to go far in journalism. Get it, preferably, while you are still in school. Don't wait to acquire it the hard way—after you go out on your first job." This excellent advice is from Grammar for Journalists, by E. L. Callihan, professor and chairman of the Southern Methodist University department of journalism (Ronald Press).
Professor Callihan found that candidates for his journalism courses came unprepared in the fundamentals of writing—especially grammar and spelling—which they should have acquired in elementary and high school. He queried newspaper editors and learned that journalism graduates were still unprepared in these basic skills when they reporter for their first jobs. They had come to work with dull tools which had to be sharpened before they could get on with their careers.
The professor set to work compiling a book that could be used to remedy the shortcomings of students and of correspondents already in the field. He has brought out a first-rate book that treats lucidly and authoritatively all the elements of writing(the sentence, parts of speech, spelling usage, punctuation, etc. There are plenty of examples and tests based on material from newspapers, magazines and radioTV writing. It is both a text and reference book that any writing person could read or dip into with profit...
Take Me To Your President, by Leonard Wibberley (Putnam) is the sort of spoof-with-a-moral that readers have learned to expect from Wibberley, the Englishman-turned-Californian who wrote The Mouse That Roared.
In this case, his central character is Jerry Blackwood, a British war veteran with a passionate conviction that "half an hour's plain talk, man to man, with the big shots" is all that he'd need to insure world peace.
He got his chance when he blum- dered into space on a runaway rock- et, and was identified when he came down as a "man from Mars." (He didn't feel it necessary to explain that the Mars he was from was a rural village in Yorkshire.)
Wibberley spices this pleasant
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
(Published Tuesdays and Fridays)
Ed. Phone 251 Bus. Phone 376
Editors ... Dale Morsch
John Eaton
Business Mgrs. ... Colby Rehmer
Bill Irvine
Reporters ... Martha Crosier
John Husar
Janet Juneau
Manager .. James E. Dykes
fantasy with trenchant side glances at such matters as the public gullibility and the political cynicism that impelled the Big Three to take Jerry at face value, even though two of them knew him to be a phony and the third suspected it.
This is the sort of book traditionally described as "good summer reading," with an added freight of food for thought.
IT'S HERE
A "New Look" in Milk Cartons
WHITE
- RED
BLUE
... Why Sure From
LAWRENCE SANITARY MILK
And Ice Cream Co.
"Lawrence Sanitary On Dairy Products Is Like Sterling on Silver"
GET IT AT YOUR FAVORITE FOOD STORE