July 13, 1964 saw the death, at age 74, of Br. Ferdinand Moser, C.S.C., pictured. He had come to the University in 1933 and became, in addition to his teaching, the University’s first landscape architect, establishing the beginnings of a remarkable collection of varieties of camellias as well as rhododendrons, azaleas, holly, and other plantings, especially the tall sequoias (S. gigantea) that now tower over the campus. His tenure started much too late, however, for Br. Ferdinand to have planted one of the campus’s iconic trees; the awe-inspiring white oak in the Pilot House plaza is estimated to be at least 300 years old.
On July 20, 1901, Alexander Christie, Archbishop of Oregon City, entered into an agreement to purchase from the University Land Co. a building and twenty-eight acres of land on Waud’s Bluff in the far, far outskirts of North Portland, under the conditions that “a school be conducted and a major building erected within ten years,” according to James Covert’s 1976 University of Portland history, A Point of Pride. On July 22, 1901, the portion of the present campus that had formed the old Methodist Portland University (including West Hall, now Waldschmidt Hall) became the property of the Archdiocese of Oregon City under the title of Columbia University. The Archdiocese later ceded the same property to the Indiana Province of the Congregation of Holy Cross, which continued to operate the institution under the Columbia University name until 1935, when the name was changed to the University of Portland. In 1968 the Indiana Province turned the assets of the University over to its newly formed lay board of regents, which has governed and operated the University ever since.
For more University history see the University Almanac at www.up.edu/almanac.