School History

Catalogues and Bulletins reaching back to the beginning of the University list at least ten general usage phone numbers and exchanges for the outside caller seeking to reach someone on campus.   Though the very first phone number was not even a number at all.  In 1901-1902 callers would simply pick up a telephone and ask an operator to be connected with “Columbia University”.   There was likely just one phone in West Hall (the only building then, now Waldschmidt Hall) and by the mid-1920s (with two campus buildings!) there were two or three phone lines serving the campus, including a pay telephone in Christie Hall.

From two or three phones in the mid-1920s, campus telephone service added stations on individual wires in the 1930s.  These moved back to a switchboard exchange passing through West Hall in 1938.  Christie Hall had a private pay telephone on each floor for student use; the student residents were responsible for answering the phone for an entire floor or wing.   An arrangement recalled by Fr. Barry Hagan, C.S.C., ’53, former University Archivist, in an oral history conducted by Archivist Brother David Martin, C.S.C, in 1968: “The telephones; there was one telephone per floor; it was located right next to the steam pipe.  You walked into a room lined with a kind of iron or steel sheeting and pulled shut behind this heavy fire door; …  you stood inside and absolutely sweat profusely while you made your telephone calls.”

A switchboard operator fielded calls placed to the University at UNiversity2626, UN1641, TWinoaks 8841, TW5541 from the 1930s through the mid-50s.   The expanding demand for telephone service in the 1950s ushered in a 7-digit number-system nationwide and the university’s number changed to BUtler 9-5541; the West Hall UP switchboard then successively becomes 289-5541, 286-7911, 283-7911 through the 1960s.  Today, cell-phone demand has created a ten-digit system, and we are 503-943-8000.

The first private telephone in a dorm room was installed in 1957 in Christie Hall by sophomore student, Don Gorger.   In 1966, The Beacon notices that phones were installed in all rooms in Mehling Hall.  The University provided phones for student rooms until about 1985.

Portland Magazine reports 1,415 telephones on campus in 1993: 800 for faculty and staff; 600 for students; and 15 pay phones.  Today (January 2016) Information Services reports there are 956 VoIP telephones running on the University’s network: 946 for faculty and staff; 10 for students.  There are no pay phones operating on campus.  And no count at all accounting for wireless mobile devices, which seem to be issued in multiples far in excess of one per-person.

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The slowly filling hole in the ground at Portsmouth and Willamette is slated to be occupied by 270 students in state-of-the-art, weather-sealed residence units by August, when the 2016-2017 term begins.

The new residence hall is as yet unnamed.  Which takes us back fifty years when an earlier building was announced for campus in 1964, intended to house 400 students with a projected cost of $1.8M.  By 1965 plans were scaled back to 260 students at $1.25M.   When ground was broken in July 1966 the construction plan allowed a full year to finish and occupy the building before August 1967.

Still, even then, an anxious touch-and-go proposition, according to the weekly Faculty News & Notes: “the men’s dormitory will pass the halfway mark in allotted construction time.  At last report the project is on schedule with about 35% of the work completed”, February 10, 1967 (emphasis added).  But the building appearing on 1967 Campus Maps as New Men’s Dormitory was ready, and received the first class of student residents in August.  It was another two years before the building received a christening; dedicated April 9, 1969 as Shipstad Hall; named for UP benefactor and Dad (two children attended UP) Eddie Shipstad, who received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts in 1963.

So welcome Unnamed Co-ed Residence Hall of 2016.  Shipstad Hall was delayed two years getting a name, and waited 20 years before becoming UP’s first co-ed residence hall in 1987, but was there on-time when students arrived and is still proudly serving today.

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A University campus is a space set apart, consecrated — classroom and quadrangle — space for mind and spirit to soar.  At UP, each residence hall has additional space set apart for a student chapel as an anchor or sanctuary for private prayer and reflection and hall Mass liturgies.

The Chapel of Christ the Teacher squares the Academic Quadrangle, flanked between the Commons for food, Buckley Center for classes.  Feeding body, spirit, mind on the Bluff.  Designed by Oregon architect Pietro Belluschi, with wood carvings by Oregon artists LeRoy Setziol (doors, posts, lintels), the Chapel is a cool building with Oregon textures, a place of quiet and reflection within.

Dedicated October 5, 1986, the 2001 brochure notes: “The Chapel of Christ the Teacher is the University’s mission encapsulated: a space for teaching and learning, for prayer and spiritual journey, and for service to others – which, of course, is active prayer.”

Our school was founded by Archbishop Alexander Christie and opened for business in 1901.   But from the first Archbishop Christie thought the school should be in the hands of educational specialists and so brought Holy Cross religious to Portland from Notre Dame, with the result that in 1902, Rev. Michael A. Quinlan,  C.S.C. became the second president of Columbia University.  The first team from Notre Dame was Quinlan, Fr. William Marr, C.S.C., Fr. Patrick Carroll, C.S.C., and Brother Wilfred Schreiber, C.S.C.  Marr and Carroll stayed two years, through 1904.  Fr. Quinlan was succeeded by Fr. Joseph Gallagher, C.S.C. in 1906.  Bro. Wilfred stoked the furnaces and ran the heating plant until 1933, when blood-clots and phlebitis side-lined him at the age of 60.

Over three decades, Bro. Wilfred’s ministry was dedicated, behind the scenes, invisible.  The understated tribute in the student newspaper announcing Brother’s retirement (shown here at the bottom) defines once more the particular and human meaning of a life given in consecrated religious friendship.  The students’ words, printed on PAGE ONE, show Bro. Wilfred present in the awareness of the students, who know his name, his humor, and his devotion.  Our second exhibit is the only extant photograph of Bro. Wilfred, near age seventy.

The Broken Wall Memorial located between Christie and Howard Halls is currently broken and under repair.

The veterans’ memorial has been an evolving site.  The first element is the Praying Hands segment, dedicated in 1948 as memorial and tribute for members of the UP family who served in World War II– the names of those who died in the war are engraved on the bricks, the total number of bricks is equal to the number of students and alumni who served.

In 1948 the Praying Hands wall was the eastern most structure on campus – ten years before Kenna Hall and twenty before Shipstad.  Landscaping was minimal.  We just had not yet filled in the space between West Hall (now Waldschmidt) and Willamette Boulevard.

Into the 1960s the Praying Hands monument was incorporated along with recognition of our AFROTC program at the outdoor Military Mass, which itself was part of Campus Day events.  The square border-hedge dates from 1962.  No sheltering trees yet, but the fire-plug has been in-place since 1951.

The familiar look comes from 1990, when Broken Wall segments were added to the Praying Hands around a circular pavement.  More shrubbery was added.  Also, from 1990, we have maintained the continuous tradition of UP cadets from Air Force ROTC and Army ROTC squadrons mounting 24-hour vigil for Veterans’ Day.  November 11, 2015 will mark the Twenty-fifth year of this observance.

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Praying Hands Memorial, 1951

May 9, 1962

Campus Day, 1965

Dedication, 1990

Praying Hands, 1990

Berm, 2015

Broken Wall, 2015

Repair in Progress, 2015

The University’s commitment to music as an academic accomplishment and as a gift that enhances any event and every life is as old as the University itself (The Catalogue of the Academic Division, 1902 lists course offerings in Violin, Piano, and Voice).  A dedication witnessed here by the photos of the 1904 band members with sartorial ensembles ready to enliven concert halls and sports stadiums.

In the 1930s and 40s Pep Bands in full uniform graced the fields of Multnomah Stadium for football games and marched on Broadway Street in downtown Portland for homecoming parades and pep rallies.   In 1943, the Pep Band, along with students, faculty, staff, gathered at Union Station to send off the University’s enlisted reserve.

Though none embodied the vitality of music so much perhaps as the legendary Philip Cansler (trumpeter, band director, enthusiast, keeping Portland Purple from wig to shoes; 1980-2007).   Today’s Pep Band supports crowd and teams at sporting events home and away.   The beat continues on.  Go Pilots!

It was Fr. John Zahm, CSC who was Provincial Superior when Archbishop Christie first looked to the Holy Cross community to provide staffing and leadership on the Bluff.  After a hasty survey visit to the Northwest in January of 1902, Fr. Zahm agreed to the deal, swiftly dispatched a team of priests and brothers, such that the new and improved Columbia University was in-session on the Bluff by the time of his second visit in December of that same year.  Speaking before the student body and guests, he pronounced that the school’s “future is secure and it is only a question of a few years before it would take the more foremost rank among the educational institutions on the Pacific Coast.  He announced that he had his architect working on the plans for a new Hall, and also on a new library building.  Schools of Law, Medicine and Technology will follow, he said, in a very few years.”

The report on Fr. Zahm’s reception and welcome appears in the December 1902 issue of The Columbiad, the precursor student publication of the BEACON.   The report concludes: “We trust that it was only the beginning of those happy occasions that will make Columbia known far and wide as the New Notre Dame” (volume I, issue 3, p. 47).

In 2014 the University of Portland, for the 20th consecutive year, received a top-ten ranking by U.S. News & World Report.  In the magazine’s “2015 America’s Best Colleges” issue, the University of Portland is ranked 8th out of 114 institutions listed in the “Regional Universities – West” classification.  So in the meantime, it seems as if we are doing quite well.

For further, see James T. Covert, A Point of Pride: The University of Portland Story, pp. 34-37.

This October students host neighborhood children in the residence halls and the Chiles Center for Halloween fun.   The basement of Shipstad Hall, scary enough in normal times, is decorated as a Haunted House.  And Trick-or-Treat events are scheduled for monsters, princesses, and characters from Frozen (college students as well as visitors in costume) on Halloween Day.

The seed of these celebrations, from an earlier slice of time, is the annual Orphans’ Christmas Party.  From as early as 1948, University of Portland student run service groups sponsored and hosted Christmas parties for children from St. Mary’s Home for Boys (Beaverton) and Christie Home for Girls (Oswego).  The tradition was maintained into the 1960s by the Associated Women Students, bringing as many as 100 orphan children to campus each year for this holiday event.   Then, as now, the festivities were almost as much for those who give as for those who receive.

On October 26, 1936 the University paid a sum of $600 to Mr. Mark Paulson for relinquishing his rights and claims to the name, “University of Portland”.