#ThrowbackThursday!
The weekend of graduation Maria Murphy (class of ‘82) stopped by with a trivia question for us: where was this photo of her mother (on the left) taken on her graduation day in 1942?
We did a quick search around campus on our way to lunch thinking that perhaps it could be a door on Shattuck Hall or Clapp Laboratory, but couldn’t find an exact match. Carlin, one of the archives reunion assistants, discovered very similar stonework on the back of Rockefeller Hall, but there was no door beneath it. We went into our Buildings and Grounds collections to see if the stone had perhaps come from another building that had burned down, but none of the non-existent buildings matched the style either.
Finally we realized that we hadn’t yet looked at the Mandelles. They were indeed built just a year before Rockefeller Hall, so the similarity made sense! Finding no picture of the exact door in our files, we ventured to the other side of campus to investigate what was there. Sure enough, the door was right by the entrance to the South side of the dorm!
We really enjoyed our day of sleuthing (which included some excited yelling upon finding the right location), and were glad to see that Maria was able to get a picture of her own graduate in the same place!
