Introduction: Past Writers of a Present History

A drawing of Jordan River, now known generically as campus river.

Jordan River

Institutions of higher learning in fact have a long history of association with the garden, be it the parks and groves of the famous Greek schools, the Roman villa, the bowers of Sainte-Geneviève in medieval Paris, the Italian garden academies of the Renaissance, the British college garden, or the idyll of the traditional American campus. The question that interests us here is whether there is more to this association than just a matter of setting.
—Robert Pogue Harrison, Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

A university’s natural environment, modified by human intervention, provides more than a setting for higher education. The physical campus becomes part and parcel of institutional image, identity, and integrity. The singular magic of a place is evident from what happens there, from what befalls oneself or others when in its vicinity, ecological philosopher David Abram has written. To tell of such events is implicitly to tell of the particular power of that site, and indeed to participate in its expressive potency.1 By touching the place with hands and eyes, by walking through it and observing the interacting patterns of natural landscape and built environment, by listening to and reading stories about the lore of the place and its denizens, one might activate an ancient and ineffable sensibility. This book explores how history and landscape and place-making contribute to Indiana University (IU)’s institutional identity.

Voices along the Way

Between 1890 and 1977, a handful of books dealing with the narrative history of IU were published. The authors were faculty men, nearly all of whom were retired. These books’ content reflected a loose consensus on the dominant themes found in the institution’s history. Among them were the value of public education, the worth of individual students, curricular changes responding to social needs, the academic community at the juncture of intellectual ideals and practical living, the symbiosis between students and teachers, and the animating ideal of research as the basis for knowledge.2

But general narratives are but one form of university history at IU. Casting a wider net, one finds program, department, school, or campus histories; studies of student life; biographical directories of administrative officers and trustees; autobiographies, memoirs, and biographies; and various thematic and topical works. They defy easy summary since they vary widely in tone, approach, and length. Their authorial demography, perhaps not surprisingly, is more diverse in gender, ethnicity, and age—although the vast majority have either worked or studied at IU.3

In 2020, Indiana University commemorated its 200th anniversary with a broad and inclusive public history program.4 One of its goals was to engage critically with past institutional narratives; to reexamine their assumptions, sources, and methods; and to write new, empirically based historical accounts that take a more inclusive and equitable approach that does not privilege one set of historical actors over another. In this way, more voices could be heard as well as new perspectives explored, especially ones that are underrepresented in existing histories.

This book focuses attention on record-keepers (archivists, historians, editors, faculty, and staff) who preserve, make accessible, and interpret written documentation about university programs, events, and people. In addition, because the campus is the physical embodiment of the institution, and it too has a history, physical plant staff (planners, architects, landscapers, gardeners, and groundskeepers) receive consideration as well.

Emplacing the University

Persistent lacunae in IU’s historiography are the role of place and the process of place-making as key components of institutional image and historical identity. This is ironic because members of the university community have been touting the beauty of the flagship campus in Bloomington since the late 1800s. In more recent times, outside experts comparing campus design and facilities implementation across the nation judge IU to be in the top rank regularly. How and why did the university develop America’s legacy campus, as a recent book title phrased it, and what were the institutional consequences of possessing a vivid sense of place?5

Focusing on place might open new conceptual horizons. It can be argued that the campus itself has a measure of historical agency, albeit a nonhuman one. Its assemblage of natural elements and processes provides a unique environment of opportunities and constraints. From this perspective, the campus serves as the place where the university is enacted and the academic community is, both literally and metaphorically, grounded. It follows that the design and operations of the physical plant are historically important, and so the work of campus planners, architects of structures and landscapes, and caretakers and gardeners assume a renewed significance. Such individuals express their intentions in the media of stone, brick, and wood used for buildings and other campus facilities or in a vegetal palette of trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers. The choices made by architects of buildings and landscapes are rooted in the rich traditions and disciplines of design, captured at a specific moment, as they shape the physical plant. The resulting visual image and tactile feel of the campus became part of the university’s historical identity that cannot be completely conveyed in words.

Sense of place is built on historical and experiential knowledge of a particular locality. Relevant past work includes IU political scientist Lynton K. Caldwell’s brief foreword to the encyclopedic survey The Natural Heritage of Indiana, in which he distinguishes natural features are what they are and where they are without regard to human presence and places defined by human perception. Thus, the qualities and characteristics defining a place express not only its biophysical attributes, but also its aesthetic value and historic significance.6 Near the start of the twenty-first century, three IU professors in the humanities and arts—Will Counts, James Madison, and Scott Sanders—composed a portrait of Bloomington in words and photographs, attempting to capture the special qualities of the community. Explaining their approach and motivation, the preface states, Good places are shaped by the gifts of nature and by the labor and love of many people over generations. The city of Bloomington, tucked away in the forested hills of southern Indiana, is one such place. Three of us who have worked here, played here, reared children here, and set our roots right down to the limestone bedrock made this book to chronicle and celebrate our home town.7 In my own previous historical work, I have employed the concept of genius loci to shed light on the activities of IU administrator Herman Wells at Indiana University.8

Plan of the Book

This volume is divided into three parts. The first deals with origins and beginnings. 1  First the Forests locates the nascent institution in a new town in a new state, painting with a broad brush some salient features of the frontier environment and culture. 2  The First Historian recounts the story of the first teacher, the Reverend Baynard Rush Hall, and his career. Because much of what we know today about the institution’s early history came from his 1843 book The New Purchase, he also qualifies as the first historian. 3  Inventing IU History deals with how a distinct genre of historical writing about Indiana University arose in the 1890s in response to significant changes in the university. An 1883 campus fire led to a decision to move the campus to a more promising locale and an 1884 presidential scandal caused a change in leadership that catalyzed serious historical reflection for the first time. With deep connections to IU and representing different generations, three individuals—Theophilus Wylie (1810–95), David Banta (1833–96), and James Woodburn (1856–1943)—composed narratives of institutional progress circa 1890 as a response to the move to Dunn’s Woods and the fresh leadership of David Starr Jordan. They anchored the university in the collective memory of the community and gave voice to institutional aspirations for the future. The subsequent career of institutional history is sketched, with critical commentary.

Part Two analyzes the design history of the flagship campus at Dunn’s Woods. The narrative reveals a remarkable consensus about conserving the native woodland character of the landscape at the beginning and then enduring persistence in extending that vision as the campus grew one hundredfold, from twenty to 2,000 acres. The result of that extraordinary fidelity to local conditions was a cultural landscape of acknowledged beauty and integrity. 4  Establishing University Park opens with the university moving to a new campus in 1885, having outgrown the original Seminary Square location that had served as the site of instruction for sixty years. A fateful decision in the ordinary course of building placement nudged the university community toward a variation of the medieval Gothic quadrangle as the campus design evolved organically. The remnant forest was preserved as new buildings, made of local limestone, were constructed to frame Dunn’s Woods in a giant quadrangle. By 1915, two out of four sides of the frame had been completed and a start made on the remaining two sides. 5  Beyond the Quadrangle explores the period between 1915 and 1945, when additional lands were purchased and the campus moved beyond the great quadrangle that married the gray stone buildings and the green woods. Further development occurred on Third, Seventh, and Tenth Streets, and Jordan Avenue (now Eagleson Avenue) was built to provide a boundary on the east. The woodland theme was carried through by the preservation or renovation of green spaces as the campus acquired specialized facilities (e.g., athletic stadium), accommodated the proliferation of professional schools (e.g., music, education, business), and started housing students on campus. Attentive members of the academic community noted the delights that the Indiana campus held. The chapter ends with the disruptions caused by the economic woes of the 1930s and the mobilization for the Second World War. 6  Cultivating New Ground covers 1945 to 1980, a time that saw an exponential increase in the campus footprint, to about 2,000 acres, designed to accommodate tremendous growth in student enrollments, academic programs, and athletic facilities. With this increase in scale, the pace of campus development quickened as well, and the campus grew into its present configuration, roughly divided into zones for academic structures, residential life, and athletic and sports facilities. 7  Landscapes of Learning analyzes the decades 1980 to 2020, a period characterized by increased attention to historic preservation and focused infill. Renovation and rehabilitation of existing structures began in earnest in the mid-1980s, starting with the repurposing of the old stadium into an arboretum, followed later by the restoration of the buildings comprising the original Old Crescent surrounding Dunn’s Woods. At times, the modern physical plant stretched, but did not break, the century-old conservationist ethos that has been transformed in the twenty-first century into a search for environmental sustainability.

Part 3 offers another route into place-making, focusing on narratives and stories that emplace Indiana University into historical contexts. Sometimes references about literal places are absent but implied. The point is that our perceptions and understandings of Indiana University as an institution are shaped and conditioned by historical narrative. Using a biographical approach, 8  The Keeper of University History analyzes the little-known career of Ivy L. Chamness (1881–1975), the first (and only) person to hold the title of editor of university publications (1917–52). The chapter focuses on her work on behalf of university history, as editor of the Indiana University Alumni Quarterly, as developmental editor for both volumes of the official History of Indiana University, and as a contributing historical writer. Because she was a woman in a patriarchal society, Chamness’s significant historical contributions were undervalued during her career and subsequently overlooked. The evidence demonstrates that she was the linchpin that kept the practice of IU history going through the mid-twentieth century. 9  Academic Community and University Necrology explores the practice of honoring deceased faculty members by memorial resolutions written by faculty colleagues. Highlighting the human quality of the institution, faculty careers of teaching, research, and service are the warp threads of the tapestry that is the university while the students are the weft yarns. The contributions of two key faculty members—chemistry professor Harry Day (1906–2007) and English professor Donald J. Gray (b. 1927)—are examined in their roles as university necrologists. 10  The Resurrection of Wylie House reexamines the role of IU administrator Herman Wells (1902–2000) in the preservation of the 1835 house built by Andrew Wylie, the first president. Beginning with his first encounters in the 1930s as a young faculty member, Wells developed a lifetime commitment to the historic house, the most significant artifact remaining from the early history of Indiana University. In his lengthy career as president (1937–62) and university chancellor (1962–2000), he was responsible for the university’s initial acquisition of the house in the 1940s and was involved with decisions for architectural restoration in the 1960s and its gradual emergence as an operating museum in the 1980s. The history of that relationship is explored at length, echoing themes of materiality and identity.

A brief coda, occasioned by the 2020 global pandemic, allows reflection on the meaning of the term watershed, taken literally and figuratively. Used to periodize the 200-year history of Indiana University, it can connect history, landscape, and sense of place in constructive ways.

This book is built around the notion that writing institutional history should be a multivocal, iterative, and cumulative process. Multivocal in the sense that the subjects of analysis are individuals from all strata and positions in the university and that a variety of sources is used. History is never finally done, once and for all. Fundamentally an iterative process, there can only be the latest revision to contend with prior interpretations. New sources and different angles of vision can occasion revisions of old stories and help one comprehend how interpretation changes over time. Institutional history is also cumulative: each work has the potential to enhance our current understanding. This historical accumulation creates practical problems for attempts to comprehensively portray an institution over a long span of time, however. It can be done, but there are reasons that the last comprehensive narrative of Indiana University was written fifty years ago in a tome of 1,500 pages in three volumes.9

I hope these chapters remind us that a shared institutional history can be an abundant tapestry that weaves together the stories of students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, citizens, and visitors even though their individual experiences might vary widely and differ profoundly. The university’s campus can be seen as a palimpsest inscribed with a record of interventions and mediations—great and small, temporary and permanent—of both the human and the nonhuman environment. Everyone can learn to observe and think of the past within the present, to discern enduring design patterns within the campus landscape as well as the human intentionality within its structures of values and goals. There are benefits to be gained and insights to be gleaned in understanding the past writers of our present history, whether that history is written in ink, chiseled limestone, or the ground beneath our feet.10

  1. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (New York: Vintage, 1996), 182.↩︎

  2. Theophilus A. Wylie, Indiana University, Its History from 1820, When Founded, to 1890, with Biographical Sketches of Its Presidents, Professor and Graduates, and a List of Its Students from 1820 to 1887 (Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, 1890); Samuel Bannister Harding, ed., Indiana University, 1820–1904 (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1904); James A. Woodburn, History of Indiana University: Volume I, 1820–1902 (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1940); Burton Dorr Myers, History of Indiana University: Volume II, 1902–1937, The Bryan Administration, ed. Burton D. Myers and Ivy L. Chamness (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1952); Thomas D. Clark, Indiana University: Midwestern Pioneer, 4 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970/1977).↩︎

  3. See How To Conduct Research at the IU Libraries University Archives.↩︎

  4. Office of the Bicentennial, “Indiana University Bicentennial Final Report” (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2020), https://wayback.archive-it.org/219/20240413230003/https://200.iu.edu/doc/IU-bicentennial-final.pdf.↩︎

  5. See Thomas A. Gaines, The Campus as a Work of Art (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1991), for comparative campus analysis; and J. Terry Clapacs, Indiana University Bloomington: America’s Legacy Campus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), for his use of America’s legacy campus.↩︎

  6. Lynton Keith Caldwell, “Foreword: A Sense of Place,” in The Natural Heritage of Indiana, ed. Marion C. Jackson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), xvi.↩︎

  7. Will Counts, James H. Madison, and Scott Russell Sanders, Bloomington Past and Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), x.↩︎

  8. James H. Capshew, “Indiana University as the ‘Mother of College Presidents’: Herman B Wells as Inheritor, Exemplar, and Agent” (Bloomington: IU Institute for Advanced Study, 2011), https://hdl.handle.net/2022/14123; James H. Capshew, Herman B Wells: The Promise of the American University (Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press; Indiana Historical Society Press, 2012).↩︎

  9. Clark, Indiana University.↩︎

  10. Eric Sandweiss, “Personal Communication to the Author,” June 7, 2024.↩︎