The Ask the Archivist column in the Fall 2020 Rochester Review answered a question from a Rochesterian who remembered Jimmy Carter visiting the River Campus in the 1970s, and asked how many US presidents had visited the University, when, and why. You can read the article here.
In order of campus visit, they are:
In 1921, 3-year-old Naomi Hooker and her family were targets of the Tulsa race massacre. While her older sister Olivia Hooker '62 PhD is credited as the first African-American woman to enlist and serve in active duty in the Coast Guard; Naomi Hooker Chamberlain is believed to be the first African-American woman on the University of Rochester faculty.
John Dabour's pastel portrait of Azariah Boody (featured in the administrative hallway of Rush Rhees Library) was the subject of the Fall 2019 Ask the Archivist column. Boody's initial gift of eight acres of land was the seed from which many traditions have grown, as this timeline demonstrates:
In the Fall 2018 issue of the Rochester Review, the 50th anniversary of a Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra concert at the Eastman Theatre was the subject of the "Ask the Archivist" column. The program was memorable for its music--Haydn's Symphony no. 90, Debussy’s “Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune” and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”--and the unintended intermission, when a rain of ping-pong balls brought the concert to a temporary halt.
A group of stock certificates was transferred recently to the University Archives by Vini Falciano, University Director for Institutional Research, who found them while moving offices from Wallis Hall to College Town. You can read about them in the Winter 2019 issue of Rochester Review, and see the whole group below.
The May-June 2018 Rochester Review "Ask the Archivist" column -- Was the University a Player in the Invention of Baseball? -- answered two questions from alumni: the first asked when baseball started at the University and whether Alexander Cartwright had a role. The second hoped to confirm whether Frank Zappa had ever performed on campus.
The film version of "A Boy and His Dog" by Harlan Ellison (May 27, 1934 – June 28, 2018) was shown in Upper Strong Auditorium on January 28, 1977. The UR Cinema advertisement notes "...this kinky tale set in 2024 A.D. may be offensive to some." The pages of the Campus-Times newspaper record that a leaflet was handed out prior to the screening by the Women's Caucus stating:
The Terry Prize was established in 1928 and awarded for the first time in 1929 to Theodore Zornow '29. Since 1929, a panoply of other awards have joined the Terry Prize, and are awarded annually--first at the Dandelion Dinner, then at Moving-Up Day, an awards assembly, and currently at the "Rockys."
You can read more about the Terry Prize here, and about some of the other named Student Life awards below:
Although he would only serve for seven years - one-fifth the tenure of his predecessor, Martin Brewer Anderson - Hill would make important changes and lay the groundwork for the transformative efforts of his successor, Rush Rhees.
According to biographer Aubrey Lawrence Parkman, when Hill took office the University of Rochester was "struggling to hold its own, and barely doing that. There had been no material increase in the yearly attendance of students, its out-of-town enrollment was dwindling..."
On January 31, 1850, the University was granted a provisional charter by the Regents of the University of the State of New York. It was contingent on raising $130,000, of which $30,000 was to procure a location for the school and buildings, and the balance was to be invested as a permanent endowment within two years.
