When William Tolley was chancellor of Syracuse University during the mid-20th century, he’d reunite with friends from his own SU days while wearing a bathrobe. But it wasn’t just any bathrobe. It was flamboyantly red and covered in dozens of even more flamboyant buttons and pins.

‘He wore it as a joke,’ said Mary O’Brien, reference archivist for SU Archives. ‘What Chancellor Tolley did was just collect all sorts of interesting buttons and certain memorabilia, and he’d tack them onto his bathrobe … he used to wear it over his regular outfit.’

The bathrobe is one of 50 artifacts SU Archives, a research facility for the school’s history, chose to commemorate its 50th anniversary. Other items include a 1956 Goon Squad button, I.M. Pei’s original model of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications complex and a piece of the Berlin Wall, a gift a former SU student gave to the then-chairman of the slavic languages and literature department.

‘We basically picked them based on if they were kind of interesting or unusual, or they might represent something that’s historically significant at the university,’ said Meg Mason, assistant records manager and archivist.

Several of the items are on display for the duration of the fall semester at the Goldstein Alumni & Faculty Center, which displays a different themed SU Archives exhibit each semester.

Pictures of every item can be seen online, but currently viewable at the alumni center are the Berlin Wall piece, 19th-century bells that once signaled the changing of classes in the Hall of Languages and a Quadopoly board game. There are also several photographs documenting scenes, including a prank once played on the Women’s Building, a traditional salt rush of the early 1900s and the explosion of the Alpha Tau Omega cannon, which was fired after each SU touchdown until it sent five students to the hospital during the 1960 SU vs. Penn State game.

‘There isn’t enough room in that case (in the alumni center) for all 50 objects, so we sort of cherry-picked the ones that people would really want to see,’ O’Brien said.

Available display space has restricted the extent of the anniversary’s celebration, said Edward Galvin, director of SU Archives.

Besides the exhibit in the alumni center, there are also 50 buttons, which sport an array of phrases such as ‘LBJ for the USA’ and ‘Do it in the Dome,’ encased in Crouse-Hinds Hall to commemorate the anniversary. Other than that, SU Archives plans to distribute special edition squiggle pens during Homecoming and Reunion Weekend, recently renamed Orange Central. The pens, Mason said, were in high demand during the university’s summer Strawberry Festival.

SU Archives houses most of its collection in a university warehouse, the Hawkins Building, where about 15,000 boxes of records are kept, Galvin estimates. There is also a general reference collection on the sixth floor of Bird Library

‘They’re either donated by faculty members and alumni or they’re records that have come in from the individual schools, colleges and departments,’ he said.

The archives are mostly used for research conducted by alumni, descendants of long-ago students, campus news organizations and academics searching for information in the collected papers of notable faculty and alumni.

Universal Studios worked with SU Archives during an 18-month period to conduct research for the film ‘The Express.’

‘They came to us to know what the uniforms looked like, what the coaches’ jackets were, what color things were, what the masthead of The Daily Orange looked like at that point and so forth,’ Galvin said. The center also helped to reconstruct Archbold Stadium, providing filmmakers with about 100 architectural drawings in addition to pictures of what it looked like before the Carrier Dome replaced it.

A customized hard hat worn during the groundbreaking and ribbon-cutting ceremonies of the Carrier Dome by a former SU chancellor, Melvin Eggers, is also one of the 50 selected items.

bmdavies@syr.edu

Published on September 17, 2009 at 12:00 pm