Friday, April 16, 1965
University Daily Kansan
Page 11
Fraser's Fall Will Close an Era
By Robert Henry
Fraser Hall, with certain doom staring her in the face, stands proud and tall in her last semester on the KU campus.
The twin-towered, 92 year-old symbol of Mt. Oread has heard the death knell, but she sedately awaits he destruction this summer.
In February, Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe issued the inevitable fatal sentence to the Jayhawk sentinel which overlooks the Kaw and Wakarasa River valleys. After examining the building with State Architect James C. Canole, Chancellor Wescoe announced that Fraser would be closed at the end of the spring semester and razed as soon as possible.
FRASER'S DESTruction has been hurried by a pair of recently erected neighbors. Canole said the construction of Blake Hall and the addition to Watson Library shook and weakened the foundations of Fraser, making use of it unsafe after the close of the current semester.
Canole also said the construction of new Fraser Hall to the east of the present structure might cause the old building to fall. Both the old and new buildings would rest on the same eight-foot layer of limestone. The construction vibration in setting the foundation for the new building would be transmitted to old Fraser, and perhaps cause its collapse.
"Only the artisanship of the men who built it and the supportive maintenance of the succeeding years have enabled it to survive as long as it has," Chancellor Wescoe said, following his announcement of the fate of the venerable building.
SINCE DEC. 2, 1872, Fraser Hall has served KU as one of her most important academic structures.
Fraser, the result of the efforts of KU's second chancellor, John Fraser, was for a time the largest academic structure in the United
States. It was the product of a joint financial effort between the Kansas Legislature and the citizens of Lawrence.
Almost immediately after arriving at KU, Fraser went to work to secure a new building to replace North College Hall as the main University building.
Fraser toured academic buildings in the east and came back to Lawrence with the idea. While the architect worked on plans for the huge structure, Fraser sold Lawrence citizens on helping finance the building. They responded by passing a $90,500 bond issue. The state legislature contributed a $50,000 appropriation, and the construction got underway in 1870.
When construction had progressed enough so that part of the building could be used, Chancellor Fraser announced to his faculty and students on Dec. 2, 1872, "Our new building is ready, so we will now go over and take possession." Trooping behind the chancellor on the march from North College Hall (located where Gertrude Sellards Pearson Hall now stands) were 273 students, the total KU enrollment at that time.
Although not completed on the inside, the new occupants found themselves in the greatest academic building in the United States.
Inside its native Kansas limestone walls were three complete floors, and within the now famous towers were three more floors. The building had 54 rooms, was 246 feet long, and had a width of 98 feet at the center and 62 feet at the wings.
Fraser Hall was something of a scientific marvel in the late 19th century. There were time signals in each room which were set off by a master clock. Rooms were illuminated by gas jets until replaced by electric fixtures in 1893. The building was heated by steam heat. In the science laboratories, pipes for the conduction of oxygen
and hydrogen from gas reservoirs were concealed in the walls.
Fraser's twin flags, the blue KU banner on the north and the Stars and Stripes on the south tower, today serve as symbols for KU, but they haven't always been there.
IT WAS NOT until World War I that it became the practice to fly the American Flag, and in 1939 the KU flag became part of the Fraser silhouette.
Although Fraser has been an academic giant on Mt. Oread, she has also served as a playground for pranksters during her near century of life. Chancellor F. H. Snow once found his buggy on top of the south tower as the result of student horseplay.
Fraser Theater, for years the scene of chapel exercises, once had all 700 seats unscrewed from the floor and removed by students who opposed the exercises. In 1927 chapel was abolished and the theater given over the the dramatics department.
IF FRASER COULD talk we could tell the history of the growth of a mighty state institution which has mushroomed from one building on the present campus, Fraser Hall, to a giant educational complex in 1965. She could tell of the famous people who have trod its halls and spoken from its platform—people such as Woodrow Wilson, Rutherford B. Hayes, Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, Henry Ward Beecher and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Fraser could tell of the scholars who have spoken there over the past 18 years as she served as the main home of the Humanities Lecture Series. She could tell of the students who have used her halls of learning as stepping stones to the future.
But Fraser can't be heard, only felt in the hearts of those who knew her and who sadden to hear of her forthcoming destruction.
[ ]