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The beautiful new library, now North Thirteenth’s visual shortstop, will
make 1871-1942 students brothers to the pioneer who slept, ate, cooked,
played and quarreled in one room. The new edifice has a student lounge,
auditorium, social studies reading room, general and humanities reading
room and browsing room. Those who did their lounging, their browsing,
their studying of the humanities and their date making all in one big
room under an uncompromising row of green shaded lights will feel
outmoded indeed.
But casting envy aside, this generous gift, one of several from the late
Don Love, is a welcome addition to the campus and the city. True, it
turns its back on the city as it communes perpetually with its sisters
of The Quadrangle—teachers’ college, social sciences and Andrews
hall—but it is a slender ribbed, sightly and aristocratic back. Earlier
buildings were sardine-packed on a small campus. Later edifices, given
space on the avenue, took on social graces. To the north of the
quadrangle, Memorial mall forms the center of another group of
aristocrats—Morrill hall, Bessey hall, Memorial stadium and the
Coliseum.
The new library is not yet completed. We had wondered if, when the day
of occupancy came, the former library would go the way of the old cannon
which once stood guard beside it. This cannon, brought to the campus
from the fortress of Havana at the end of the Spanish-American war, was
dedicated with ceremony as a memorial to Nebraska students who had
fought for Cuban freedom. The cannon had stood in Seville in the time of
Charles III of Spain.
A few weeks ago the cannon was ignominiously trucked off for scrap,
without ceremony or apology. But the library is to remain and will now
house the university’s extension department.