Newcomb Makes it to Broadway (Video)
- - [David Banush] Okay, I think we'll go ahead and get started.
- Good evening, all.
- I'm David Banush, Dean of Libraries, and I welcome you to Tulane University,
- to Jones Hall, to special collections here in the Howard Tilton Memorial Library.
- I'm very pleased to introduce
- the university archivist, Ann Case, who is the mastermind behind this
- exhibit this evening and the program is accompanying its opening.
- But I'd also like to acknowledge and thank Donna Capelle Cook,
- who is our director of technical services here at Howard Tilton Memorial Library
- and is also the co-chair of our anniversary committee.
- We have a number of anniversaries that we are celebrating this year.
- One is the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city of New Orleans.
- One is the 80th anniversary of the founding
- of the Howard Tilton Memorial Library.
- This, for those who don't know, is the original
- Howard Tilton Memorial Library, though it is now known as Jones Hall.
- And in 1968, the current Howard Tilton Memorial Library,
- across the street or across the way, opened
- and we are celebrating the anniversary of that building.
- So as part of this, we've had an ongoing series of events, including exhibits
- and other programs.
- And this is the latest in our adventures in celebrating anniversaries.
- So without further ado, I'll turn it over to Ann
- and she will give you some background and introduce our speaker for this evening.
- Thank you.
- - [Ann Case] So I thought I would just take a few minutes to tell you
- what led me to put together this exhibition at this particular time.
- A few years ago, I found this amazing set of images
- that look like something you might see in one of those
- old Time-Life books.
- There were young soldiers standing in front of wooden,
- tall, wooden barracks, and they were wearing long trench coats
- and their feet were sunk about two inches in mud.
- And I thought, oh, that looks like something you'd see in Europe, in Poland
- or something like that.
- And then I looked in the background and I recognized
- Tulane buildings and said
- "Wait, these pictures were shot on Tulane's campus.
- How, how can this be?"
- So I started doing a little investigating
- and learned that this was Camp Martin Student Army Training Corps.
- And I just had no idea that there had been
- this whole military cantonment built on campus in 1918.
- And then I realized that that was exactly the same time that Newcomb
- College moved to the Uptown campus from the Garden District.
- And I thought, "Huh, you've got all these Army boys
- "right on this side of Freret St.
- "and you've got all these college women on this side of Freret St.
- There might be some very interesting stories there."
- And then I learned that Spanish
- influenza hit New Orleans at exactly the same time.
- And it quarantined all of these people right in the same place at the same time.
- And I thought
- "There may maybe some really interesting stories there".
- So I thought that I would look into it and see what I could put together.
- So that is what I thought I would put together an exhibit,
- investigate what life was like on campus and in 1918-1919 academic year.
- But before I introduce our speaker,
- I would like to quickly thank my colleagues for their assistance
- in putting together this exhibit: Dean Banush, Donna Capelle Cook,
- Katherine Morzac, Anthony DelRosario,
- Bernadette Birzer, Lori Schexnayder.
- The helping hands from facility services who help the hang our service flag,
- which you'll see in the gallery.
- Rick and Mike as well as our conservator, Sabrina Johnson
- and the consultant, Jessica Hack,
- who made sure that it was in condition for hanging in the first place.
- And to Jillian Cuellar and all of my colleagues in Special Collections
- who patiently left me alone for the last few days
- so I could get an exhibit finished on time.
- So--and onto Beth Willinger, who I'm very happy to introduce.
- Beth is retired from Tulane University after more than 25 years
- as the executive director and research
- professor at the Newcomb Center for Research on Women.
- As a sociologist and feminist scholar, she has published and lectured widely
- on the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the women of New Orleans,
- gender inequality in the state, and the social history of Southern women.
- She is coeditor with Susan Tucker of Newcomb College 1886 through 2006.
- She received Ph.D. from Tulane University, served as Interim Dean of Newcomb College,
- was the founding director of Tulane's Women's Studies Program
- and is the recipient of the Newcomb Mortarboard Award for Outstanding Teacher,
- the 2007 Newcomb Distinguished Fellow Award and was named
- Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities 2003 Humanist of the Year.
- Beth.
- [audience applause]
- -[Beth Willinger] I am delighted to be here this evening
- to talk about Newcomb College's moved to the Broadway campus.
- I would like to thank Ann particularly for inviting me to do so
- but I'd also like to take this opportunity
- to thank all of you who are in the
- Louisiana Research Collection staff and the University Archives
- for your help over many, many years.
- As Ann mentioned, I was trained as a sociologist, so
- I didn't have the benefit of learning research skills as a graduate student.
- And so many times the staff of the collection
- was particularly helpful
- in getting me through some of those kind of awkward moments.
- So I've used a number of your collections and always
- find it wonderful to just sit and read. So thank you for that.
- And where we begin with Newc--
- I say here Newcomb makes it to Broadway
- and I kind of use this analogy of a play because
- Newcomb's arrival on Broadway, just getting there, had all the drama,
- the uncertainties of finance, the writing and rewriting of the script,
- the design and redesigning of the set, the backstage maneuvering
- and the years of planning, the most complex Broadway play.
- The major players in this play were the students.
- 428 were in residence in-- in the 1918-19 academic year.
- 68 seniors, 75 juniors, 73 sophomores,
- and the largest freshman class ever to enroll, 191 students.
- 21 special students comprised the group.
- As before, the great many, 264, came from New Orleans.
- So Newcomb, like Tulane, was always
- almost, at the beginning, a very local, we say commuter school.
- Another 127 were from other towns and cities in Louisiana.
- 40 were from Mississippi and 21 from Alabama.
- All in all, 22 states were represented in the student body.
- So tuition was set at, guess $125. That was equivalent to about $2,000 today.
- An additional $250 was required for room and board.
- That's equal to about 4,000.
- So we could say that probably for about $6,000 a woman could go to Newcomb.
- However, that was difficult
- and a great many Newcomb students were always on scholarship.
- Scholarships were very important, even into Newcomb alums that were still alive
- and we did oral histories with, would talk about how important
- having a scholarship was to their ability to come to Newcomb.
- So that has always been very, very important.
- Now producing this play was Brandt Van Blarcom,
- and I always find his name funny, Dixon, who is at the present
- with Ellsworth Woodward, Pierce Butler, Ann Northrup, Clara Baer,
- Evelyn and John Ordway, Gertrude Robert Smith
- were several of his script writers.
- Those were some of the most popular faculty,
- and the ones who had been at Newcomb for--almost from the very beginning.
- So that play was actually set in motion when Mrs. Newcomb died,
- and she left her considerable fortune
- as was intended to the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College.
- As expected, we knew this, that her fortune in
- that is interesting that The New York Times says that
- her fortune at that point where it's about a million and a half, but actually
- it was more like two and a half million actually closer to 2.6 million,
- which today is about 77 million, a little bit more than 77 million.
- So her daughter--her, her
- intention was always to have Newcomb College as a living memorial
- to her daughter Sophie, who died of diphtheria at the age of 15.
- Mrs. Newcomb originally gave a gift of $100,000
- in 1860 or 1886, pardon me.
- And then the first academic year was 1887.
- But I'm sure most of you already know this.
- Brandt Dixon was always president.
- He didn't want to be to begin with, but they talked him into it.
- He said $100,000 was insufficient to begin a college
- they promised him that more money would be forthcoming.
- Just please come.
- Okay,so the first campus then was in a house,
- which was very typical for women's colleges,
- in a residential home on DeLord Street.
- And that's now Howard about Camp and Lee Circle,
- and they bought another house next door.
- So it was about two houses that didn't last long for any number of reasons.
- And so then in 1891 they actually moved to the Washington Avenue campus.
- Now on the Washington Avenue campus, there is still today,
- at least that I know of and we have plaques on them,
- five residences, five homes that had been used as either
- classrooms or residence for students at the time.
- The main buildings have been torn down.
- They had been sold to the Baptist Seminary and were torn down after that.
- But Newcomb's success then in growing a population for students prepared
- for collegiate work, which was really quite advanced to begin with.
- And as you probably know, Dixon had to start a high school in order
- to prepare more of the women students for actually college work.
- And he always insisted on Newcomb being a very--as fine
- a college of the first rank, he'd always say
- as any of the colleges for women in the north.
- So the beauty of the campus
- was really something that everyone was taking with,
- it really had a very sentimental--there was a very sentimental attachment
- to the Washington Avenue campus and the beauty of this surrounding area
- led them to think that at first that they wanted to buy more land in that area.
- And there was a square across Washington where to just
- expand the college in that direction.
- However, what Dixon says is that the neighbors
- got wind of this and kind of had some forethought and the property prices
- kept going up and up and up so that financially it became out of reach
- for them to think about staying on the Washington Avenue campus as it was.
- So the additional problem then was Mrs. Newcomb's will
- and her relatives engaged in a very long, lengthy, difficult legal battle over
- who should actually be the inheritant, have the inheritance of her will.
- And it wasn't pleasant.
- It was actually quite ugly.
- And--but one of the interesting things is that we know more about
- Mrs. Newcomb because of these court cases than we would otherwise have known.
- I'm sure that she turned over in her grave many, many times, thinking about
- all the people who were now learning about her most deep, her deepest secrets
- and what she was a very, very private woman.
- So this would have been just terrible for her to think that all these people
- were learning all these nasty things about her life
- or unpleasant things about her life.
- So it was finally decided, the legal case was finally decided
- in favor of the college in 1909.
- And--but it was really touch and go for quite a while.
- So Brandt Dixon without the board's knowledge,
- and this is always interesting because
- Newcomb, of course, was under the board of administrators so--but
- Dixon without their knowledge actually
- put in an option to buy land on Napoleon Avenue just south of Broad Street.
- And at the time there was nothing there whatsoever.
- He convinced the board then to buy that-- to purchase that land in 1906.
- However, the board had an entirely different idea
- about where Newcomb should be located, and they purchased the land in 1908
- which was two blocks of Newcomb up-- called Audubon Place, now Newcomb Place.
- It was two blocks of Audubon Place in two squares
- bounded by Zimple, Broadway, Plum, and Audubon,
- and that was to be the future site of Newcomb College.
- It was purchased for $400,000.
- Right, so--so the intention
- then to build Newcomb on Broadway-- on Napoleon was dropped.
- And there were several reasons.
- One that the board was insistent that a closer union between Newcomb
- and Tulane would be cost effective if there was--could
- be more sharing of laboratory facilities, library facilities,
- the possibility of faculty being able to teach in both colleges.
- And then at the time the Napoleon Avenue
- location it was not served by public transportation.
- It really was even more isolated
- and out of the way than the Uptown campus so this was decided.
- Now, remember, if you will, there was 1908.
- Okay, 1908
- but--they--not everyone was, you know, in favor--
- hello -[walking by] Hi.
- favor of this campus location, and particularly the Newcomb alums
- because they felt they would once again be really subserved by Tulane. Right.
- So they were very concerned about Newcomb
- retaining its integrity and its independence.
- So they worried about that.
- And it comes across to--quite a bit.
- So they were saying that one of the things that they were wanting
- particularly was that the buildings
- be very separate and distinct from those of Tulane
- and that a complete plan be drawn up with the whole campus,
- not a building here, a building there, but a total complete picture of the campus.
- So in 1909, the, the Newcomb alums formed in a committee and really pressured
- the Board of Administrators to move in the direction
- of getting an architect and designing the campus buildings.
- So this was the competition that went out 1911 to architects
- across the country through architectural journals.
- They were not interested in people who did not have architecture
- experience they were really looking for,
- you know, very full--fully developed architectural firms to take over.
- So they had initially 56 architects, which I think was huge, that submitted
- preliminary drawings and then 27 were whittled down and from the 27 were 8.
- And then finally James Gable--Gamble, pardon me, Rogers of New York
- was hired to design 12 buildings for Newcomb College.
- However, bids made on the buildings in 1912,
- were deemed to be way out of proportion to the Newcomb fund
- and the board decided not to build the buildings at that time.
- New--Dixon got together with Rogers
- they tried to trim down the buildings, cut some of the costs.
- They submitted the plans again in 1914.
- Again, the board rejected those as being too expensive
- and especially then when the war was beginning, they felt that it was not
- a particularly auspicious time to beginning--to be building a new campus.
- So that again was delayed.
- But the Newcomb alums prevailed and in 1916
- they really did force the board to move
- on the building of Newcomb college.
- They did a wonderful report, very detailed, comparing Newcomb
- with other women's colleges, those particularly in the Northeast.
- The ones you would think of historically as being very, very strong
- and found that Newcomb actually had the largest endowment
- of any of them this includes Harvard, Barnard, Goucher,
- the--Mount Holyoke, Vassar, et cetera, Smith--
- had the largest endowment however, it lacked the facilities and equipment
- and the resources for students.
- And so they said for these reasons, then that was why Newcomb's
- tuition in part was so low, that in order to raise tuition, in order
- to have a first rank facility, they had to build new buildings.
- So this, I think, argument somewhat helped.
- So they pressured the board, and the board then decided to fund three buildings.
- Not eleven, three: the administration building,
- the art building, of course we all know the art program was very strong,
- and the Josephine Louise dormitory to house 200 students.
- It was only possible for about 100 students to live on the
- Washington Avenue campus in the various houses that they had around.
- So is--in celebration then on February 24th, 1917
- following a parade of about 150 cars, there was a huge thing
- and Ann has some of the information on that parade which was evidently, quite
- an astounding event.
- As--even as parades go in New Orleans.
- And they travel from Washington Avenue to Broadway and the piles
- then were dropped, or however you drop piles, were that the new buildings
- and that the person doing that was Perrine Carson Dixon
- who was president Dixon's granddaughter, 12 year old granddaughter.
- So she was the one who was charged with dropping or beginning the piling.
- So,
- so with, you know,
- we talk about the alums wanting the distinct campus
- and distinct from Tulane, a separate and distinct--so
- what we see then in Tulane's campus is this gray, buff kind of massive stone
- of the Tulane campus and as Ann pointed out
- you can see this, that's the Loyola over there.
- So it's kind of an interesting thing.
- Now Gibson hall was built in 1894.
- So at this point it already had served, you know, quite a few years
- but we can see the architectural, the Romanist style, you know, very
- heavy brick, the gray box.
- And so this was what kind of set them apart.
- So the Newcomb alums, them wanting a distinct location were on the other side
- that was being met on the other side of Freret.
- And in fact even--I think much later
- alums would talk about how Freret was really the dividing line.
- That they didn't cross Freret.
- That there was very little back and forth between
- and--Tulane campus and the Newcomb campus.
- And you can see then where Newcomb is located as opposed to Tulane
- and it doesn't seem so far, but there was quite
- a psychological distance between them.
- And what we see in this slide with the administration building in the center,
- and here in the center, is this symmetry that Rogers designed.
- Notice how all the buildings were to face a quad.
- This was supposed to be another dormitory.
- This, of course, turned out the gymnasium.
- And we had the chapel
- and the science building and how--this was home academy, pardon me.
- And the chapel, the library.
- Library was there.
- And it was very, very symmetrical.
- Now, Karen Kingsley then talks about this,
- and Karen has a--we have an excellent article in here
- that Karen goes into quite detail about the architecture of the buildings.
- But we can really see how the open quads were in many ways
- defined as airy as being a feminine nature.
- And then it was very patterned and, and, and really quite lovely to look at.
- And there were supposed to be gardens surrounding this.
- The curved pathway that was supposed to be welcoming to everyone.
- And as Karen says, then we have the she calls it the colonial revival, actually
- with a light columns and the balustrade that goes around
- the light windows, the white surrounding the window,
- all of which give it a much more feminine feel.
- So while Newcomb's buildings then were constructed of the red brick
- and very, in many ways, plain
- if you will in some ways but also patterned with--
- but in very stark contrast
- to that heavy gray, buff stone of the Tulane campus.
- And so in many ways then, the Newcomb alums won that one aspect
- even though they got their--only their three buildings.
- In what we can see here was that there was quite a--
- how would it be said-- you have to say quite a disappointment
- because what everyone talked about with the old campus was its beauty.
- And so here everyone arrived to this new campus.
- And finally on September 27th, Newcomb made it to Broadway.
- And when the dormitory opened for students September 17th, 1918
- and on September 26th the classes began.
- So we see then the Newcomb buildings and Newcomb Hall
- and this is the--this one actually shows a little bit better sense of it
- and this is the art building
- and the dormitory permeated-- this is the dormitory.
- I think this show is really better--what Karen's talking about with the, the,
- the porticos, the columns,
- the more feminine approach to it.
- And one of the things that I've always found interesting
- was the real address for Newcomb is 1225 Broadway.
- And it is then that portico that's supposed to be, you know, a
- rounded portico with a closed roof and overhead.
- Although everyone always really looks at Newcomb Hall from the Newcomb Place side.
- So it's, it's very kind of interesting in that respect
- from that quad rather than the quad from Broadway.
- So now that--from the very beginning, then what we find is
- with the board's decision to build only three buildings
- that Newcomb was under built from the very, very beginning.
- That in there was--everybody trying to be a little bit kind
- about that, but the, the music building--
- they were held in three different rooms--houses, houses on the campus
- and those were--just a minute and I'll tell you which one.
- They were 37, 57, and 61 Audubon place.
- So already we're finding that the campus is under built.
- They have to use other buildings for the music program.
- The infirmary was at 1101 and 1137 Broadway.
- That's kind of where the chapel is, you know.
- And Dixon lived at 43 Newcomb place,
- which was where we know that--even most of us remember the Newcomb dean's house.
- So, so from the beginning then
- there was a sense that it was not quite up to what it should be.
- And these of course, are the Newcomb students at the School of Music,
- and it shows the house, and it's not here anymore in person,
- but anyway it's an interesting the house,
- and I thought that was kind of interesting of design also.
- But there was a--as I'm saying,
- an immense histology leaving the old Newcomb.
- The graduating class described itself
- as the war class because they started when the war, World War I broke out
- and they lamented that it almost converts us to fatalism
- to observe that old Newcomb's last class 1918
- has exactly the same numerals as her first, 1891.
- The fact that we are the last class to graduate from these grounds
- has add, added tenfold to our devotion.
- Dixon wrote "There was an air of funeral gloom over
- "many of the exercises and old Newcomb that spring.
- It seems the dominant feeling that we were being expelled, driven from home."
- Students particularly were concerned
- that the spirit of old Newcomb would not continue into the new
- and those of you who know Newcomb alums know that everybody's always talking
- about the Newcomb spirit, right?
- So the Newcomb spirit was fearful that it would not continue
- from the old to the new.
- And there was a poem in The Arcade, which we'll talk about,
- which was a call and a response poem between new Newcomb and the old Newcomb.
- It has new Newcomb stating
- "There is nothing, I think, you can give me.
- "I stand in my splendid new pride.
- "While you in your age and your weakness seem
- puny in size and small by my side,"
- to which old Newcomb replied
- "But without me, your strength would be nothing.
- "For you in the pride of your youth cannot live without that which I give you.
- And I speak not in envy, but truth."
- Okay, so it was not, as we see, all is expected at the new campus.
- For one thing, as Ann has pointed out in her exhibit, soon
- after the classes began on September 26th, the college was closed on October 10.
- This is something probably like Katrina, right?
- You just get here and you leave
- and a rigid quarantine was put in place.
- All the resident students, all the students living in
- Newcomb were not permitted to go home.
- They had to remain on campus.
- Okay, so the top floor of Newcomb Hall was used as infirm--as an infirmary
- as well as the other two houses that were, were used as infirmaries.
- It was almost 100 students,
- Newcomb students, who contracted the flu at that time.
- Now, classes did not resume, now remember this October 10,
- until November 16th.
- That was five days after the armistice were signed.
- Okay so here is this, more than a month of missed classes
- and what did they do, right?
- What went into effect is Saturday classes were already in effect.
- They always had Saturday classes, but--and
- it was actually a Saturday, November 16th when they started back.
- But for the holiday, they had only Christmas Day
- and New Year day, New Years day off.
- And that's how they made up the time they missed.
- So a real play actually was created at this--up at the new campus with the--
- by the sophmore class titled The Spirit of Newcomb.
- It had three students commenting on the new campus.
- "If you only knew how everything is, and stiff, and bare." says the art student.
- "Worst of all bare.
- This year the art department is doing nothing but gardening.
- So there will be something to, to paint next year besides red brick."
- [audience laughter]
- Dixon himself wrote, "Without--one, without vision,
- "could observe only the present facts.
- "A bare, muddy waist with scanty grass,
- "a few destroyed trees and three very large red brick buildings,
- naked and forlorn, forlorn," we certainly know that.
- So the--as we said, the Tulane board
- insisted on keeping the Newcomb fund in 2.25 million.
- Dixon and the Newcomb alums had wanted to reduce it to 2 million.
- That they were basically meeting their operating cost
- with the interest from the endowed fund.
- And even in these early years, the board of administrators
- tried to take Newcomb's funds for various causes throughout the years.
- And Newcomb, especially under Dixon, held on to it very, very tightly.
- But in addition then to these new moves and we said that the campus
- was really under built, one of the things that also happened was in the old campus,
- the sororities had rooms in the basement and at the new campus,
- they were unable to do so because there wasn't sufficient room.
- In the basement of Newcomb was the assembly hall and the chapel.
- So there also was a move by the faculty
- who were not very pleased with fraternities and sororities to begin with.
- So they voted that for the first year on the campus
- that there would be no sororities rooms available
- and they did not agree with the fact that sororities should be off campus.
- Now, as we know, that is what has happened over time.
- But that was not at that moment in any way the wishes of the faculty.
- So Tulane, the Board of Administrators,
- voted to give to the student at their residence,
- at the southwest corner of the campus.
- And we can kind of see that in one of those film.
- And as--to the students as a clubhouse stating
- the need for something of this sort has been
- particularly acute since the occupation of the new campus.
- So each class was given one room
- and they were allowed to decorate it however, they chose to do so.
- The senior class had a furnishing--a furnished--a furniture shower
- where people were supposed to get the furniture to house in their room.
- And what they said to seniors can be seen, I love this particularly,
- seniors can be seen on ladders plastering up the cracks in the ceiling.
- Now, I think that's an image we don't expect to it--to, to,
- to have of women in 1918, or in 2018 actually.
- I've seen our students up on ladders making cracks in ceilings of the buildings
- But the students then tried in many ways to create a new spirit on campus.
- They continued camp--cap and gown day which was begun in 1910
- where the seniors give to the juniors a cap and gown.
- The sophomore class began a new tradition of requiring freshmen
- to wear a little green cap which Ann has also in the exhibit.
- It's kind of a felt beanie cap
- and that was the wearing of the green
- which clearly was symbolic also of Newcomb being on the--close
- to the Tulane campus with the green of Tulane.
- And with--after the resumption of classes,
- the Newcomb Music School --oh, I forgot to show those--
- Newcomb music school began its weekly recitals.
- But here we have Zip, Bev, Ruth, and Jan posing at the JL sundial
- and we have some of the first residents of the Josephine Louise dormitory.
- And I, I like this photo also because it's not the box--the
- individual boxes of what we usually see kind of in the yearbook.
- But clearly every woman submitted the photo
- she wanted to submit of what she thought to look like.
- So we see very individual photos here of the women in JL.
- And one of the things
- that changed too, that we see is in The Newcomb Arcade.
- The Newcomb Arcade was the literary magazine
- that was written by the Newcomb students and the alums.
- And what we see in this first one here
- is this was the old administration building, Newcomb Hall on the Washington
- Avenue campus and then that we see is June 1918.
- And then in November of 1918 we see the cover of the new photo,
- the new arcade which was designed by Fowler. What was her first name?
- And so the--we
- see the changing from that, the whole kind of total building to what I perceived
- this as the open door so opening still for so much more to come in.
- So we have that changes and then we have the first music recital.
- It was held in--I thought was interesting--in Dixon Hall.
- I'm not sure which of the buildings, the music buildings,
- whether we said of the three houses was actually--they called Dixon Hall
- but it was not the Dixon Hall we know today.
- That was not built until 1929.
- So there was some time in the coming.
- Students held a tag day to benefit the, the Newcomb relief unit
- and they gave--they really spent quite a bit of money
- or gathered quite a bit of money to send the relief unit overseas,
- which is--Ann also shows that and--in the exhibit
- that the unit went to France in January of 1919
- in some--here too we, we see our familiar names
- Caroline Richardson, if you know Caroline Richardson Hall.
- And she then was a dean at Newcomb and Anna Many
- and that is the Anna Many lounge in Caroline Richardson Hall.
- So these are familiar names even to us today.
- And then the students held
- the first Arbor Day on February 28, 2019.
- Now the trees at the open--at the old campus,
- Dixon thought were really responsible for much of the Newcomb spirit
- and so in--early in 1909 he had the-- Mr. Muller, who was the gardener,
- begin taking seedlings to grow.
- And so when they got to the new campus
- and February 2019 they planted the first oak trees on campus
- each--the president of each class was-- adopted a tree
- for the class and then planted it to be in--and
- they were to be cared for those particular trees.
- So that was as they said that the recognition
- of the old Newcomb spirit and moving to the new campus.
- Now, quite surprisingly and I was quite surprised
- as student interactions went, there appeared
- to be very little interaction between Newcomb and Tulane students
- on the campus that year, despite the proximity.
- One thing is that two male students were enrolled in practical music.
- The men taking courses in the music
- were some of the first cross, cross enrollment that existed.
- Many people think the first enroll--cross enrollment was actually Newcomb taking
- courses over at Tulane.
- But in fact, it was really the Tulane students coming to Newcomb.
- The second was that Dixon wrote that one of the many struggles of that
- first year was the close proximity of Camp Martin,
- who soldiers boys seemed to feel that Newcomb territory should be invaded.
- It was necessary to persuade the officers quite regularly
- that the seed of war was across the Atlantic.
- So capping off this most unusual and difficult year
- was the announcement by Brandt Dixon
- at a reception that he and his wife always hosted
- annually for faculty, alums, and seniors,
- that he was retiring at the end of the year.
- So that closed a chapter,
- probably the first act of Newcomb's long history up to that point.
- But the seniors--and I have to close with some of what the seniors wrote.
- "We are not very sad at leaving Newcomb, but we are not leaving behind
- "any memories of favorite spots or cherished customs,
- "some of us who loved water, may miss the pond
- that is the campus." Probably not that different than today.
- "A few who like animals may, in the future,
- "sigh for the numerous iron dogs who haunt the campus
- and seek food in the various wastebaskets."
- Another senior wrote: "This is the most disheartening
- "senior year any class has ever spent.
- "Yet some spark was in the senior class and it insisted on flaming up.
- "Perhaps the dreary conditions fanned it.
- "Only the barrenness of the campus could have called forth Arbor Day,
- "the blank brick walls of the main building were the inspiration for Ivy Day.
- "The need of a more cooperative spirit brought up college dances.
- "It will be well for other classes to do well at Newcomb.
- We gave the first seed."
- And does anyone have any questions?
- -[Ann Case] Well, thank you very much.
- -Oh yeah, thank you. But this was great fun.
- [Audience Applause]
- -[audience member] So would the Newcomb become part of Tulane?
- -I'm sorry?
- -[audience member] Did Newcomb become-- I'm--forgive me, I'm not from the area.
- Did Newcomb end up becoming part of Tulane or--?
- -Yes, [cross talk] and basically in 2007, and it wasn't very
- it was another one of those unpleasant situations.
- [laughter]
- Once again and, and it was the
- following--they used Katrina as the main reason.
- And but there had been plans to
- merge the undergraduate colleges for a long time.
- It was just trying to find a way in to be able to do that.
- So now there is a Newcomb-Tulane College where freshmen enter
- into the liberal arts programs, through Newcomb-Tulane College,
- they stay there until they--they're either going to the School of Liberal Arts or
- the business school or they decide a major and then they go to the,
- the college of their major, whatever that would be.
- But yeah, so Mrs--the whole thing is--oh, this is interesting, right?
- Someone doesn't really know that whole ugly story.
- Mrs. Newman--Mrs. Newcomb gave her money to the Board of Administrators.
- That was one of her big problems.
- So the Board of Administrators had control of her money,
- and it was not under the control of Newcomb College per say.
- So that, that--in
- that, that's what it came down to with the 2007 decision
- is that the Board of Administrators--she had given to the Board of Administrators
- the right to do what they felt was best with her funds.
- So they did.
- [inaudible] last word.
- -[audience member] That's probably not a new problem.
- The under grad that I went to in West Texas, had a huge endowment
- from a really wonderful couple, the Carr family.
- And they specifically said the name of the university
- has to be the name of the town, San Angelo, and then it has to go
- towards medicine, science, and it has to stay local.
- And so it's very interesting because local universities in Texas that
- tried to acquire this small university that had [inaudible] Newcomb.
- I mean two and a half million dollars at that time must have been--I
- don't know what's that equivalent, but I imagine at least 200 million.
- -It was considerably more than Paul Tulane gave.
- -[audience member] Yes. -That's what everybody says.
- It was more than Paul gave.
- [laughter]
- -[Ann Case] There is another class coming in here at seven,
- but we have a reception out in the hall. Everyone's welcome.
- And the exhibit is just across the way as well.
- So thank you, everybody, for coming.
- And thank you Beth.
- That was great.