Carolyn

Bookplates have long been used by libraries and individuals to record ownership and to ensure that a book is returned to the lender. These decorative labels are affixed inside the front cover or front pages and, particularly for a library, bear the institution’s name, and in the case of dedicated collections, the name of a sponsoring donor.

The bookplate employed for many years at the Clark Library is unsigned. But the name of the designer is found in The Bookman, a publication issued for the Friends of the Library of the University of Portland, October 1946 issue, p. [5]. There Colista Dowling (1881-1968) is credited with designing the graphic. Dowling worked as a commercial artist in Portland for sixty years and was known for watercolors depicting city and coastal scenes, book illustrations, and bookplates.

For most of its history, books in the Clark Library were adorned with one of these bookplates as part of book processing, but this practice has now been given over to stamps inking the Clark Library and University of Portland names on end pages and inside front cover. Present day library patrons will still find books with vintage bookplates in the library stacks. A reprint of Dowling’s vintage bookplate is used today to recognize donors giving $100 or more to the library during the University’s annual PilotsGive campaign.

Reference:
Allen, Ginny. “Colista Dowling (1881-1968).”The Oregon Encyclopedia. https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/dowling_colista_1881_1968_/#.YtmqdHbMLIU. Accessed July 21, 2022.

Land Acknowledgement
In these 1940s representations we see the land stretch out in unbroken horizons; in fact, even in 1901 the city of Portland filled the foreground between the Bluff and Mt. Hood.  And before that too, other people enjoyed these lands.  As stated in the University’s Diversity documents: We acknowledge the land on which we sit and which we occupy at the University of Portland. “The Portland Metro area rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area” (Portland Indian Leaders Roundtable, 2018). We take this opportunity to thank the original caretakers of this land.

There is a humorous, often repeated story recounted by Rev. James A. Anderson, C.S.C., (CP ’32, Chemistry faculty, 1946-1982).  Asked about the origins of co-education (women) on campus, he answers:

There wasn’t really too much difficulty about that, or at least if there was, it was a long time ago.  Because the beginnings of co-education was really with the Nursing School.  That school was at St. Vincent Hospital.  It just became more convenient eventually that the nurses would take a class here rather than over there.  Then, when Music was started, there were girls who wanted to take music.  So there was no particular problem.  The only problem was about the girl’s dormitory.  This had to go to the Superior General of Holy Cross [in Rome].  He said it was O.K., but to build it on the corner furthest away from the boy’s dormitory.  In retrospect, it might well have been built someplace else.  Everyone had to use the Commons and it might have been more convenient to have the dorms and eating facilities in the same general location.  But that was the only thing.  He didn’t exactly make a problem over the exact spot, just as long as it was as far away as we could get it.   [abridged]

This 1968 reminiscence found in the oral history of the University gives evidence of the first seed of a colorful anecdote about how the presence of women on campus was enough to inspire a paralyzing sense of sexual panic among the Catholic administration (fainting priests).  With this winking, knowing anecdote about cautiously positioning the women’s residence along the rim of the campus, ‘beyond whistling distance from Christie Hall’; the Villa Hall origin-story hints at fear & exclusion, assuming that our school has been reluctant to welcome women or to extend all students an equal equality.  Such foot-dragging is unlikely in the event however.  The women’s hall was built on-campus (a year before Kenna!).  And even prior to 1957, the Dean of Women had already been coordinating living arrangements for women students in boarding houses beyond campus, just across Portsmouth (in effect market-testing the need for a brick and mortar residence hall on the campus proper).

As things work over time, much has changed regarding the genteel living promised to women in the new and most-remote student hall.  Therefore, naturally, today Villa Maria is a men’s residence (since 1984), and too, the University has long since spanned Portsmouth (counting in the Franz Campus on the river) such that Villa now holds a central location, though the dining hall still seems remote to Villa residents.  Within the last twenty years the proud denizens of Villa have adopted a gorilla as mascot and a hall badge boasting modest excellence.  The kilted bag-pipe wailing Villa Drum Squad (see: the Celtic cross in the hall badge) has claimed a mixed gender membership for several years.

1956 Admissions Brochure

Citations: Oral History Program I:245-6; The Pilot, September ’56: A Guidebook for University of Portland Students, p. 14; Province Review (February 1957) p.3

Related post: https://sites.up.edu/museum/orientation-at-the-university-of-portland-campus/

Built in 1891, West Hall served the short-lived Portland University (1891-1899) and was purchased along with the 25 acres of the bluff campus by Archbishop Alexander Christie in 1901 as a Catholic college (Columbia University renamed University of Portland in 1935) under the direction of the Congregation of Holy Cross. As the only structure at our beginning, West Hall contained the entire new University: becoming classrooms, dormitory, library, dining hall, Chapel, and offices. Naturally library, dormitory, dining hall and Chapel later migrate as new facilities appear. Today West Hall/Waldschmidt Hall houses student services and administrative offices. 

In 1977, during the University’s Diamond Anniversary celebration, West Hall was named a historic building and placed on the National Register of Historic Places. At its century mark (1991-92), an extensive renovation brought an elevator, light, the grand-staircase, and more to the old bones. At a rededication ceremony thirty years ago on October 17, 1992, West Hall was renamed as Waldschmidt Hall in honor of the University’s 15^th president (1962-1978), Bishop Paul Waldschmidt, C.S.C. 

As the University’s longest-serving building, Waldschmidt Hall has welcomed all University presidents from the first, Rev. Edward P. Murphy who rang the opening bell on September 5, 1901, to the University’s 21^st president, Dr. Robert Kelly. 

For more pictures and history of West/Waldschmidt Hall visit the Clark Library’s Digital University Buildings Collection, displaying images of photographs and objects held by the University Archives and Museum (with descriptions from the Archives and Museum).

Portland magazine article about the first 100 years of West Hall
Mortar & Memory by Teri Van House Cettina ’86; illustrations by Dennis Clemmens

Related Posts:
In the Beginning: Cornerstone West Hall

In the Beginning: Day One