100 Years Ago (1903)
Memorial Church, built at the behest of Jane Stanford to honor her late husband, was dedicated in January. Clergy from various faiths participated in the elaborate ceremony. In February, Ethel Rhodes and William Armfield Holt, both in the Class of 1902, were the first to be wed there. Decorative work continued for two years, including installation of mosaics created by Salviati & Co. of Venice, Italy, and stained-glass windows by J. & R. Lamb Studios of New York.
Chemistry became the first science department to move off the Quad when the new, 60,000-square-foot Chemistry Building opened near the Oval. The sandstone-over-brick structure featured 16-foot ceilings on the first floor, fireproof labs, a library, offices and a large lecture hall. It served the department for 85 years.
Eight campus residents died in a typhoid epidemic that struck Stanford and Palo Alto in April and was traced to contaminated milk. With no campus infirmary—and no fully equipped hospital between San Francisco and San Jose—officials set up an emergency ward for male students on the fourth floor of Encina and one for women in a Palo Alto boarding house. Jane Stanford contributed $1,000 to help with costs.
75 Years Ago (1928)
The University leased 65 acres adjacent to El Camino Real and Stanford Avenue (now Escondido Village) for an aviation school and local airport, complete with a 2,400-foot northwest-facing runway. It moved to the Palo Alto baylands in 1935, chased there by a lawsuit filed by College Terrace residents.
50 Years Ago (1953)
A high-speed electronic computer, the IBM Card Programmed Calculator, was installed in March at the instigation of Albert Bowker, director of the applied mathematics and statistics laboratory, and Frederick Terman, ’20, Engr. ’22, dean of engineering. Reading punched cards, it performed computations that took too long on desk calculating machines. The machine stored 16 words in its electromechanical memory.
As the Korean War wound down, students staged a massive blood drive in the basketball pavilion, collecting 4,640 pints of blood in five days with help from the Palo Alto Red Cross.
With less than half of the 7,000-member student body housed on campus, the University announced plans for a major construction program: a women’s dorm (Florence Moore Hall), a replacement for Encina Hall to house male freshmen (Wilbur Hall), a graduate engineering men’s dorm (Crothers Memorial Hall) and a large addition to Stern Hall.
25 Years Ago (1978)
Physics graduate student Sally Ride was one of six women named to the astronaut corps by NASA. Ride, who earned three degrees in physics (BS ’73, MS ’75, PhD ’78), applied for the job after reading a NASA ad in the Stanford Daily. In 1983, she became America’s first woman in space.
Karen Bartholomew, ’71, writes this column on behalf of the Stanford Historical Society.
