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The
next year Lucy Rowland Hall, named for Rector's widow, was constructed
on the site of Music Hall, which was moved catty-corner to a new
location next to Bowman Gymnasium on Hanna Street. (There, provided
with a basement and a frame annex in the rear, the relocated building
continued to house the School of Music for nearly a half century
longer.) The construction of the new dormitory adjacent to Mansfield
and Rector Halls created a residential quadrangle which housed freshman
women as well as upperclass non-affiliated women.
Both
Lucy Rowland and Longden Halls were designed in his usual Beaux
Arts eclectic style by architect Robert F. Daggett. In 1927 Katherine
M. Mills became responsible for the oversight of these facilities
as director of residence balls. Longden Hall became the center of
the activities of Men's Hall Association, an organization of independent
men founded a few years before by a group of Florence Hall residents.
M.H.A. soon became a significant force on campus, hitherto dominated
by the Greek-letter social fraternities. For several decades the
independent organization competed actively in intramural athletics,
student politics, and social activities. No such alternative to
sorority affiliation seems to have existed at this time.
_________________________________
In 1927 the Music
School building was moved
diagonally across the street to the southwest
corner of Locust and Hanna Streets to make way
for the new Lucy Rowland Hall.
______________________________________
The
Murlin presidency, brief as it was, covered an eventful, transitional
period in DePauw's history. In 1928 the quiet but effective administrator,
after experiencing repeated bouts of illness and encountering some
opposition to his policies, reluctantly submitted his resignation
to the board of trustees. He later served for a time as pastor of
the American Church in Berlin and died in 1935. His widow bequeathed
his library to the university, together with a small endowment to
support the presidential office.
_____________________________________
President G. Bromley Oxnam, his wife Ruth Fisher
Oxnam,
and their three children, Ruth, Robert, and Philip are
on the
steps of the President's home at the foot of East
Seminary
Street.
___________________________________________
G. Bromley Oxnam, whom the trustees chose as Murlin's successor,
was a quite different sort of college president than any
of his predecessors. A graduate of the University of Southern California
and the Boston University School of Theology, he had served as pastor
of a large Los Angeles church before becoming professor of social
ethics at Boston University. A vigorous, charismatic person, with
strong convictions and a forceful speaking style, Oxnam was to achieve
a high level of national and international recognition and bring
DePauw an unprecedented amount of public attention during his presidential
term. After taking up residence in Greencastle he not only continued
his ardent advocacy of world peace and social reform but also proved
to be an activist administrator bent on remolding the university
in accordance with his own views.
___________________________________
Showdown first began in 1925 with a series of
skits
by women's groups under the auspices of the Women's
Self-Government Association. Sometimes men's groups
joined. Some Showdowns were so popular that they
played before sell-out crowds at the Voncastle movie
theater. President Murlin called his first one "a pale
reflection of cheap vaudeville" whose jazz would split
his head open. This picture is from the 1926 Showdown.
______________________________________
The
financial crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression created major
problems for the university. Endowment income was reduced severely
together with revenue from student fees as enrollment rapidly declined.
The student population fell to 1600 by 1932 and dropped to the 1200
level during the mid-1930s. Despite draconian measures undertaken
to balance the budget, including raising tuition fees and trimming
salaries, the university books once more recorded annual deficits.
Under the leadership of its president, Roy O. West, the board of
trustees restructured the university's investments in an attempt
to increase revenue. Real estate holdings that were producing poor
returns were liquidated in favor of high-grade bonds and similar
securities promising higher current income. By means of such measures
DePauw managed to weather the economic storms of the period.
Part of the university's financial difficulties stemmed from the
large indebtedness incurred in acquiring the two buildings formerly
occupied by the Locust Street and College Avenue Churches and in
constructing a new classroom building to replace the badly deteriorated
West College. In 1929 the two Methodist congregations, having agreed
to merge when the Conference boundaries separating them were redrawn,
erected a large new edifice in late Gothic Revival style on university-owned
land at the corner of Locust and Simpson Streets. Meanwhile the
Locust Street church, its steeple removed, was utilized briefly
for university theatrical performances before being refitted as
an armory for the use of the R.O.T.C.
The
College Avenue church, also minus its steeple, was stuccoed and
remodeled into Speech Hall, which survived for five decades as the
home of the Little Theatre and the speech and education departments.
The university had originally planned to erect a building in conjunction
with the new church which would house both the latter's educational
facilities and DePauw's departments of English Bible, philosophy,
and religious education and bear the name of its late president,
Hillary A. Gobin. When this project proved financially unfeasible,
the newly merged congregation agreed to name its new edifice the
Gobin Memorial Methodist Church in consideration of DePauw's help
in paying off the building debt. In turn DePauw was permitted use
of the sanctuary for chapel and similar services. While Gobin Church's
architectural style and yellow-brick exterior did not harmonize
closely with most of the academic buildings, the cathedral-like
structure was conveniently located and came to be regarded as virtually
an integral part of the
campus.
_______________________________
After 1927 the Locust Street Methodist Church
was used by the department of public speaking
to 1929 and then became the armory for the
ROTC until it was disbanded in 1934. It was
torn down that year.
__________________________________
______________________________
Meharry Hall in the 1920s with the
Bowman Memorial Organ given in 1913
by President Bowman's daughter, Sallie
Bowman Caldwell. At that time the entire
faculty would sit on the stage for each
university convocation. Also the traditions
had the freshman men compelled by their
fraternities to sit in the balcony.
__________________________________
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