Regular readers will surely recall that from time to time I will whine about how people take the same pictures over and over again. Through ten decades there’s been an uninterrupted stream of images of students and their relatives posing in front of Lovett Hall, etc. Only rarely does someone do something interesting like turn around and take a picture of the loading dock, which is exactly what I’d like to see. When that does happen (see for example David Davidson ’57, Maxwell Reade ’40, and Neil Brennan) I use every bit of it, like a hunter who uses every piece of the buffalo.
Another example is the entry to Fondren. There are a few pictures in the Woodson of the outside of the front door and multiple images of the main circulation area taken at pretty regular intervals over the years. I believe a while back we decided that this one must have been taken in the mid-70s:
What’s been completely missing, though, is the piece in between, what I guess you’d call the foyer, where the front desk is today. The only pictures of it I’ve ever seen were the ones I took myself. Then last week I was trying to find some construction shots of the back wing of the library and this slipped out from between two larger prints:
It’s undated but based on the material it was with I believe it was early in the building’s life, maybe let’s call it circa 1950. It looks rather barren, no?
Bonus: In a real upset it wasn’t an Italian cypress that fell over today.
Extra Bonus: Willy got re-laquered and I had a chance to renew my acquaintance with the guys who did the work, the same lovely guys who did it seven years ago. As I’ve said before, if you stay around here long enough you’ll see everything twice.
