Hunting for buried treasure can reap unexpected rewards. In fact, lurking inside the fortress-like walls of some of our west suburban colleges are some real jewels: rare book collections, obscure relics of history, scientific wonders and precious art works.
So let`s take a tour. Finding these largely unnoticed gems takes only a scant bit of industriousness, a little time and a desire to see the unusual.
For instance, the Charles Prouty collection of rare Shakespearean books rests unobtrusively in a corner of the Charles B. Phillips Library at Aurora University. Prouty, a professor at Yale graduate school, was an enthusiastic sort of man, one who loved his football and martinis as well as his Shakespeare.
Don Fuller, professor of English, likes to tell the story about the late Prouty`s visit to the Egyptian pyramids. ”He danced for joy when he reached the top of the pyramid, toting along his own record player just for the event,” said Fuller.
It`s partly because of the nature of this man that today the university contains Prouty`s collection of rare books. He was a chain smoker and found it uncomfortable to work in libraries where smoking is generally not allowed. So that he could puff away at leisure while working, he amassed his own assortment of reference books. As a former student Prouty`s, Fuller invited the professor to speak at the college, and Prouty later gave his collection to the university.
Included in the set is a second edition of ”Holinshead,” a history of England written in Shakespeare`s lifetime.
”Shakespeare would rewrite actual phrases from this book in Iambic pentameter,” said Fuller. ”It`s such an unspeakable thrill to lay out one of these volumes and realize this is exactly what Shakespeare wrote from.”
Other books that Shakespeare fans recognize as valuable include a 1720 edition by John Stripe of Stowe`s Survey of London and an 1820 edition of
”Dodsley`s Old Plays.”
As Prouty was zealous about his passions, so, too, was James E. Burr, who fervently pursued his dedication to the abolitionist cause and is remembered at Wheaton College, where, unnoticed by most who pass by, a small flat stone marks the spot where he lies buried beneath a big tree. He said he wanted his final resting place to be ”on grounds untrampled by slavery.”
In July 1841, along with two other men, Alanson Work and George Thompson, Burr made a trip to Missouri to help free two slaves. The men considered the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad to be part of their Christian duty, but slave holders considered it theft. Ultimately, the three were led into a trap and had to face an angry mob who first threatened to shoot them but then bound them in ropes and marched them to Palmyra to stand trial. Not allowed to testify on their own behalf, they were found guilty of grand larceny and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.
Burr was pardoned in 1846, partially because he had injured his arm and couldn`t perform prison work. He lived in Princeton, Ill., until his death in 1859. He left an endowment to be used for ”educating indigent young men who are wholly devoted to the cause of Christ and wish to preach to all, irrespective of color.”
Equally as opposed to slavery as Burr was William Miller, founder of the Millerite movement. He preached in the 19th Century that Christ would return and the world would come to an end in 1843. Orrin Roe Jenks, a former president of Aurora University, began collecting Miller material until he eventually had the largest collection in the country, now housed at Aurora University, said David Arthur, professor of history.
”His movement was part of the 19th Century Jacksonian age, when there were a great deal of social movements ranging from temperance to
antislavery,” said Arthur. ”He had about 100,000 followers, and there are churches that are still in existence that came from that movement, including Seventh Day Adventist.”
In the chapel at Aurora University, rich primary colors depict the story of Christ`s return, painted by a man whom people may not recognize as the renowned Norwegian artist Lloyd Herfindahl.
Herfindahl earned a reputation early in his career for a satirical style, then later gained national recognition for his murals. Three of his large paintings at Aurora tell not only the Old and New Testament stories but also the history of Aurora University.
”He has an elaborate, detailed style,” said Bob Emory, director of public relations.
At Illinois Benedictine College in Lisle, famous monks join Christ in scenes from the Old and New Testament on 14 stained glass windows by Irish artist Patrick O`Shaughnessy.
”They`re interesting from the point of view that at that time the monastery was serving the Czech and Slavik immigrants, and here you have the monks hiring an Irish artist,” said Father Michael Komechak.
A monk noticed O`Shaughnessy`s work at the old St. Patrick`s Cathedral in Chicago and suggested he design windows for the Lisle abbey, explained Komechak. The windows are fashioned in a style popular in the 19th Century and inspired by windows at the Abbey of Emmaus monastery in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Inspiring students was important, agreed monks and brothers, Hilary and Edmund Jurica, also of Illinois Benedictine College.
But visual stimulus need not be limited to art. It should include the sciences as well, they believed. And so the two set out to develop a set of charts they could use as teaching tools for biology. The result was the Jurica charts, one of the first visual aids used for science, said Father Theodore Suchy of the college.
”They developed a whole set for the plant kingdom and another whole set for the animal kingdom,” said Suchy. ”Some are still used in schools today. It was a very innovative approach.”
Copies of the charts lie on shelves in the Jurica Museum on campus, eclipsed by the hodgepodge of stuffed animals and specimens that the Jurica brothers, both of whom died some 20 years ago, amassed and that now make up the displays in that collection.
An Alaskan brown bear rears on its hind legs as it guards the entrance to the eclectic group, including some extinct animals and others on the endangered species list. Some are shown in three-dimensional exhibits built to resemble the animal`s natural habitat.
On one shelf sits the skull of Bushman, the famous Lincoln Park gorilla who died in 1951. The museum possesses the entire skeleton, although it is not yet assembled.
”I would like to see his skeleton put together some day,” said Suchy.
Imagining Bushman in his prime is easier when looking at the shaggy side of the Perry Mastodon on display in a two-story revolving glass platform at Wheaton College. One view of the towering specimen reveals half of the creature`s side with fur and skin as it must have looked. The other side shows the framework of the skeleton underneath.
The bones of the Perry Mastodon were uncovered by Judge Sam Perry while excavating a pond in the backyard of his Glen Ellyn home. Now reassembled with some original bones and others recast from fiberglass, the elephant-sized creature peers out from a display that visitors can view indoors or out, year- round.
The mastodon, weighing nearly five tons, roamed the prairies of northern Illinois, which probably looked pretty much like the prairie sample in Glen Ellyn meticulously reconstructed on the eastern edge of College of Du Page by biology professor Russell Kirt. Several trails lead into the nine-acre plot that comes ablaze throughout the year with the vividly colored flowers of prairie plants.
”There are always 10 or 12 species in bloom mid-May through October,”
said Kirt. ”We plant about 8,000 seedlings every year, and that makes our prairie pretty showy.”
When he began the project in 1975, not many people knew much about prairies, he said. Since then, many more people have become aware of the importance of preserving prairie plants, he said.
Kirt regularly leads community and adult education walks through the prairie, although those who want to set out individually are free to follow the well-worn trails.
Native American Indians knew the prairie and its trails well, say the exhibits at the Schingoethe Center for Native American Cultures, tucked in the basement of Dunham Hall at Aurora University.
Herbert Schingoethe, patron of the center, found his first arrowhead while a young boy on his father`s Sugar Grove farm. It was the beginning of a collection that would grow to include more than 3,000 objects from tribes as varied as southwestern Indians, Alaskan Eskimos, Mayans and Toltecs.
”What is significant about the museum is that it is very contemporary,” said Marcia Lautanen-Raleigh, curator. ”It tells what native Americans are doing today through the work of such artists as Maria Martinez, a potter from a pueblo in the Southwest; kachina carvings by Robert Chee; and the unusual feather carvings on pipestone and antlers by Richard Kearns.”
Schingoethe`s philanthropy leaves a picture of the culture of Native Americans, just as Andrew Carnegie`s generosity provided access to learning when he donated the funds to build a library at North Central College in Naperville.
Carnegie commissioned the construction of many libraries across the country at the early part of the century, although few of them remain standing today, said Pierre Lebeau, assistant vice president of academic affairs.
The Carnegie building at North Central, however, now containing the computer science labs, was renovated in 1985, but the exterior was preserved as it was originally designed in 1906.
”It`s real value today is that it was not destroyed,” said Lebeau. ”A lot of schools simply built over them. Our Carnegie building is valued for its architectural significance.”
Architectural impact probably wasn`t on Abraham Lincoln`s mind when he chose his Springfield home, but nonetheless, historians and curators alike study the architectural features of the only home Lincoln owned, his Springfield residence. Three scale models of Lincoln`s home constructed by Thomas Dyba stand out as the most unusual part of the unusual Lincoln Collection in the library at Illinois Benedictine College.
”Our collection is geared toward Lincoln as a homeowner,” said Bert Thompson, special collections librarian. ”We have more than 5,000 pictures of the inside and outside of the house, several thousand books on Lincoln, a reproduction of a life mask and a little metal inkwell that he used when he rode on circuit.”
Lincoln loved books, as most children learn in school, and probably would have loved to indulge himself in the two rare collections tucked away in North Central`s Oesterle Library.
He could have run his hand over the rich, leather textures, for instance, of the Haven Hubbard collection of fine bindings.
”What is notable in this collection is the way the books are bound,”
said Carolyn Sheehy, director of library services. ”Hubbard gathered works of various authors, including Alexander Dumas, George Eliot and Sir Walter Scott.”
Music is the key to the Sang collection, which contains first editions of works about famous jazz artists, such as Paul Whiteman and Louis Armstrong.
Jazz is surely one of the musical styles represented when students or members of the public come to chronicle their work at the new high-tech recording studio at Elmhurst College.
”It`s a professional facility,” said Tim Hays, acting chairman of the Music Department, who said the studio was built to enhance the college`s music business program, which is aimed at more than just the performance end of music but also the business and technical ends of it. The studio serves as a community resource for recordings ranging from composition and performance demos to music for film or advertising.
The inconspicuous studio is available for just about anyone`s use, to tape any musical presentation, perhaps even a rendition of ”Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” inspired by a visit to the equally state-of-the-art new weather station at Elmhurst College, where six sensors identify and measure wind direction and speed, temperature, humidity, precipitation accumulation and the amount of energy coming from the sun.
Inside on the first floor of the Computer Science and Technology Center, visitors can read a display that indicates weather conditions.
”When you walk up to it, if the main screen is on, you get actual data of the weather conditions, and every 20 seconds it cycles and gives a graph showing, for example, the temperature curve for the past 24 hours, the dew point and wind direction,” said Ken Brehob, geography professor.
Maintaining a weather station has been a tradition at Elmhurst College since the 1960s, said Brehob.
”It`s fascinating for people interested in weather,” he said.
The same people who have an eye on cloud formations might be interested in nebula (clouds of gas and dust) seen through the 14-inch telescope perched on the top of Armerding Hall at Wheaton College.
In the spring and fall, astronomy students help people learn and identify all sorts of deep space objects. Some planets are more visible at different times of the year, said Joseph Spradley, astronomy professor. Jupiter may be seen in the spring, but Saturn is more prominent in the fall sky.
Just as Spradley knows well which stars appear in the seasonal skies, Ragnar Moen makes it his business to predict which trees bloom seasonally at the Arboretum at Elmhurst College, camouflaged as most of the landscaping in and around the campus.
The wide variety of labeled trees, many of which Moen has planted himself since he arrived at the college 25 years ago, were registered as an arboretum in 1966. It is accredited by the American Association of Botanical Gardens, the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., and Arboreta, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Well-known varieties such as the Texas red oak, tulip tree and a selection of buckeyes mingle with more unusual specimens such as the cucumber magnolia and dawn redwood, a tree discovered in China in 1941, said Moen.
Links to the Orient also are represented by the writings of Margaret and Kenneth Langdon, who once lived in Siam (Thailand).
Most people recognize Margaret for her novel ”Anna and the King of Siam,” but her husband also wrote books on the region: ”Siam in
Transition,” ”Chinese in Thailand” and ”Southeast Asia; Crossroad of Religions.”
The Langdons, who graduated from Wheaton College, chose their alma mater to house their personal papers and reference materials.
”It is such an outstanding concentration of material dealing with southeast Asia,” said Paul Snezek, director of learning resources. ”They traveled through many of the areas themselves. It includes journals and original photographs, some of the royal family.”
In addition, a collection on Madeline L`Engle also has a special place at Wheaton College.
”She visits and lectures here on a regular basis,” said Snezek. ”Often people classify her as a children`s author, but she is much more than that.” A children`s author, but also much more than that, was C. S. Lewis, who penned the famous ”Chronicles of Narnia.”
Visitors can find books from Lewis` personal library, his letters and the carved wardrobe that inspired the tale ”The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” if they wind through the hall of the Buswell Memorial Library and up the stairs to the Wade Center. The center also contains the desk where J.R.R. Tolkien wrote ”The Hobbit,” some of the original art work by Pauline Baynes for the Narnia series and Lewis` pipe, tea mug and teakwood box.
In addition to his works for children, Lewis wrote the theological classics ”Mere Christianity” and the ”Screwtape Letters.”
Theology in a less academic style is revealed through the hymnal collection at Wheaton College.
”We have more than 2,000 volumes that trace primarily Protestant hymns back to Luther up to this present day,” said Snezek. ”People who study hymnals say it is one of the more complete and outstanding hymnal
collections.”
Theology and its themes entered later in the life of Malcolm Muggeridge, a British journalist who was influenced by Mother Theresa, said Snezek. Muggeridge, who died recently, lectured at Wheaton College. His collection of writings is one of the most recent additions to the collection at the college. ”He was a social critic and wrote lots of political commentary,” said Snezek.
Political commentary similarly dominates the work of the Imagists, a group of painters studying in Chicago in the late 1960s.
”It was a mood that reflected a world of imperfection, farce and outrage,” said Sandra Jorgensen, Elmhurst College art professor.
The college first began collecting pieces from this school in 1971, with works by such artists as Ed Paschke and Roger Brown.
”It`s a style of art that is very odd and hard to like at first glance,” Jorgensen said. For the college, it has been a buried treasure that has reaped unexpected rewards.
”These artists have now become internationally famous,” she said. ”We didn`t know that when we first started collecting them. We had no idea, and now we`re sitting on this gold mine.”
So there is gold at area colleges: a wealth of buried treasure and riches, just waiting to be mined.
