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UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES 
 
 University of California Berkeley 
 
1869-1917 
 The Center of University Life for Fifty Years. 
 
 North Hall Farewell 
 
 ALUMNI, FACULTY, MEMBERS^ GRADUATING CLASS, AND FRIENDS 
 
 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA WILL PARTICIPATE IN 
 
 A CEREMONIAL FAREWELL TO THE HISTORIC 
 
 BUILDING FOLLOWING THE 
 
 Commencement Luncheon 
 
 THE LUNCHEON WILL BE HELD IN THE FACULTY GLADE 
 
 IN STRAWBERRY CANYON AT 12:30 P.M., 
 
 ON COMMENCEMENT DAY 
 
 Wednesday, May 16, 1917 
 
 The usual speakers' programme will be omitted. After the 
 annual business meeting of the California Alumni Association 
 the assemblage will form in procession, and led by the band, 
 will march through the Campus to North Hall Steps, where 
 the farewell ceremonies will be conducted. The wreckers will 
 begin the destruction and the pilgrimage will proceed to 
 Wheeler Hall where a reception and reunion will take place. 
 
 Annual Meeting of Alumni Association 
 
 which will take place at the luncheon will consist of the 
 election of officers and a review of the annual reports. 
 
 The enclosed luncheon ticket should be returned at once, 
 accompanied by check covering same, at price of 75 cents a plate. 
 
 Special reunions will ~be held by the Classes of 1877, 1879, 1892, 
 1897, 1901, 1907, 1912, 
 
MAY 14, 1931 
 
 1UA I 1*, ItftiJ. 
 
 SLY PR( 
 
 V. C. North 
 Hall Corner 
 Stone Rites 
 Recall Past 
 
 'Old Grads' Present 
 Relics of 1873 Are 
 Brought to Life 
 
 as 
 
 BERKELEY, May 14. The past 
 has come to lire at the University 
 of California. 
 
 Events of the Eastbay of 58 
 years ago were revealed with 
 examination of time-dimmed news- 
 papers and records unearthed yes- 
 terday in the cornerstone of old 
 North hall, campus building re- 
 cently wrecked. 
 
 Opening of the cornerstone was 
 an informal, merry affeir attend- 
 ed -by many oi tne oldest "grads" 
 of the university, some of the 
 youngest alumni, and President 
 Robert Gordon Sproul and other 
 university officials. It was a feat- 
 ure of the program of the sixty- 
 eight commencement day of the 
 state institution. 
 
 Several hundred "old grads" and 
 other guests held their breath in 
 anticipation while President Sproul, 
 dropping all official dignity and 
 becoming just "Bob" Sproul of the 
 class of 1913, heaved on a chain 
 hoist and lifted the granite block 
 above the cornerstone. 
 
 COPPER BOX REVEALED 
 
 His efforts revealed the copper 
 box which was placed In the build- 
 ing on May 3, 1873, when its con- 
 
 struction was begun. And the ef- 
 forts of Professor Emeritus Ed- 
 mund O'Neill, graduate of the 
 class of 1879 and veteran educator 
 of the university, revealed the con- 
 tents of the box. 
 
 His chisfel and hammer opened 
 the corner stone, and there were 
 yellowed newspapers, pictures, and 
 university registers which had been 
 put there when Professor O'Neill 
 was "Eddie," just one of 150 un- 
 dergraduates on the then isolated 
 campus. 
 
 In the box were more than a 
 dozen newspapers of May 3, 1873, 
 a "half dime" dated 1869, a medal- 
 lion bearing the names of the 12 
 members of the class of 1873, uni- 
 versity registers of 1869, '71 and 
 '73, and several undergraduate 
 publications of that day. 
 
 The biggest laugh the watching 
 crowd had was when Judge Everett 
 J. Brown of Oakland, graduate in 
 4897, held aloft a small booklet 
 taken from the cornerstone and 
 announced its title, "Rights and | 
 Conditions of Women, a woman's 
 suffrage tract containing the ser- 
 mon of the Rev. Samuel J. May." 
 
 Indian battles in Modoc county, 
 the death of Congressman Brooks, 
 a Mississippi tornado, and police 
 court and Alameda grand jury re- 
 ports were the leading stories in 
 the newspapers. 
 
 INDIAN WAR NEWS. 
 
 Under the heading, "This Morn- 
 ing's Dispatches," 0:1^ n^v^paper 
 told "the latest from Modoc coun- 
 ty," and of the expected arrival of 
 Gen. Jeff C. Davis, who would lead 
 the fight against the Indians. Clas- 
 sified advertisements on page one 
 of the paper included those of 
 wine and liquor stores, portable gas 
 machines for sale, and one that 
 announced that the advertiser 
 would "whiten buildings." 
 
 Another story told of the trou- 
 bles of Constable Enright of Liver- 
 more, who walked about town all 
 night "to satisfy the whim" of his 
 prisoner, an "inoffensive man who 
 was unfortunately under the influ- 
 ence of liquor at the time:" Liver- 
 more had no "lock up" at the time, 
 and the constable's walk was to 
 keep the prisoner happy while he 
 awaited a hearing before Justice 
 Freeman, the story said. 
 
 Papers in the corner stone In- 
 cluded the Daily Alta Californian, 
 the Oakland Daily Transcript, The 
 San Francisco Chronicle, the Daily 
 Morning Call, the Overland 
 Monthlv. which "dealt with the 
 
prnent of the country," the 
 is; Bulletin, the Oakland 
 Home Journal and Alameda Coun- 
 ty Advertiser, the Oakland Daily 
 News and the Evening Torch 
 
 Sale, for $25,000, of a parcel of 
 land to George O'Nara Taaffee, 
 Danish consul, was announced by 
 Captain J. D. Farwell in one of the 
 papers. The land, in Alameda near 
 Park street, sold at $2400 an acre, 
 the story said. 
 
 A note left In the copper box 
 said that George Miller and his 
 family had a "M. E. Sunday school 
 picnic" on the site of North hall 
 the day the corner stone "to stand 
 for many hundreds of years" was 
 laid. 
 
 Professor O'Neill. In an address 
 at the ceremony, told how he stood 
 "in trepidation on this spr 
 years ago, when he took his uni- 
 versity entrance examinations in 
 North hall, then one of the two 
 buildings on the campus. 
 
 FEW FARMS, FACTORY. 
 "Toward Oakland then," h^ 
 "there were only a few farms. To- 
 ward the bay there was one fac- 
 tory, which served its pu 
 when we sent freshmen there to 
 seek the recorder. And around 
 here there were only the brown 
 hills." 
 
 The age of North hall and the 
 vouth of President Sproul, n-- 
 
 mphasized by Judge Brown, 
 ho introduced the president for 
 his address at the exercises. 
 
 "When North hall was sagging 
 as much as it e\ - I, and 
 
 when its walls and bannisters bore 
 as many carved initials as they 
 could hold, there was born li 
 Francisco the man who is now 
 president of the University of Cali- 
 "ornia," he declared. 
 
 Dr. /Sproul, in his address, urged 
 he alumni to unite in support of 
 their alma mater. Their organized 
 efforts, he said, would aid in the 
 university in times of stress such 
 as that which recently occurred in 
 the state legislature. 
 
 Other leaders at the exercises 
 were Sumner Mering, councilor of 
 the Alumni association; Robert 
 Sibley, executive manager of the 
 association; J. C. Rowell, graduate 
 4 and librarian emeritus of 
 the university; Theodore Morgan, 
 senior class president; Stern Alt- 
 shuler and Ruth Waldo, retiring 
 president and vice president, res- 
 pectively, of the student body. 
 
 NORTH HAL 
 
 M P 
 
 O A 
 
 IN L 
 
 O L 
 
 R B 
 
 A 
 R 
 
 vg 
 
 R 
 
 Commencement 
 1931