By Tom Taylor, Professor of History
Fifty years ago, Wittenberg College spent five days celebrating and dedicating one of the the most remarkable building projects in Wittenberg history.
The Elgar Weaver family of Brookville Ohio launched the effort in the 1940s with an initial gift of $500,000 toward a new chapel and library.
Approved by the board of directors in December 1949, groundbreaking did not occur until January 8, 1954. For the next thirty-two months Wittenbergers watched the three-story library and the chapel above it take shape. After removing 28,000 cubic yards of dirt, workers took 6500 cubic yards of concrete, 157 tons of steel, 390,000 face brick, as well as Indiana limestone, Missouri and Tennessee marble, Pennsylvania and Vermont slate, and Tennessee flagstone, and turned them into a building complex over 200-feet long and high. They needed three miles of pipe in the chapel floor just to heat the chapel.
Architect T. Norman Mansell was joined by James Bonelli, Louis Ewald, Oliver Smith, and several other artists to fill the interior of the chapel with ninety stained glass windows, one of the nation's first and largest murals painted on orlon, and countless other finishing touches
-- not to mention six nine-foot statues on the exterior of the tower.
Replacing Zimmerman Library, the new library dramatically expanded space for reading, books, periodicals, and audio-visuals, and it included a "Treasure Room" downstairs to house the Luther collection. Ilo Fisher, Head Librarian, issued borrower's card no. 1 to President Clarence C.
Stoughton library, and card no. 2 to Dean Wendell C. Nystrom; Student Senate President and Springfield native Larry McCoy received the first student card.
The formal celebration and dedication of the library and the chapel began on Sunday afternoon, September 23rd , with a service to thank those who had worked on the project. The next several days included twelve seminars (on architecture, organ building, modern libraries, drama, etc.); two plays (Everyman and Murder in the Cathedral); several public lectures (including one by Frank Fry, president of the United Lutheran Church in America); three chapel talks (one by legendary professor Margaret S. Ermarth, another by 1956 Alma Mater Sheila Little); three organ concerts on the new $50,000, 52-rank instrument; and various other musical concerts (including one by music professor Margaret Kommel). These events culminated in the formal dedications on Thursday, September 27, when eleven hundred people turned out to hear singing by Robert McFerrin, Sr., famed baritone of the Metropolitan Opera, the keynote address by President Emeritus Rees Tulloss, and music from the Wittenberg Choir led by L. David Miller.
(Sources: Wittenberg Archives, Weaver Chapel Archives, Clark County Public Library Springfield Reference Vertical Files, Springfield News-Sun)
