Interior View: Into the Archives : Weinberg College

Interior View: Into the Archives

by Rebecca Lindell

Deep under East Fairchild, behind an unassuming garage door, lies a vast motherlode of Northwestern history: collections storage for the University Archives.

Here rest artifacts that tell thousands if not millions of Wildcat stories: medals, a time capsule, hardhats from groundbreakings, athletic uniforms, fixtures from long-demolished buildings, even a Wheaties box celebrating Northwestern’s 1996 Rose Bowl team.

University Archivist Kevin Leonard ’77 (left) can tell many of these tales, having overseen this accumulation of ephemera for more than 30 years. Leonard, who majored in history at Northwestern, moves easily through the climate-controlled catacomb to pinpoint items of particular significance to the College, from early manuscripts by writers bound for fame to an astronomy professor’s research on UFOs.

But much of the material in the enormous space is still uncatalogued. “We get this stuff from people late in life, sometimes after death,” Leonard explains. “We comb through it, develop an organizational scheme, weed out duplication, remove extraneous material. It takes a long time to get things in order.”

Join Leonard for a walk through the archives.

A history of its own: The cavernous archive encompasses the original basement of one of Northwestern’s first buildings, Fayerweather Hall, built in 1887 and demolished in 1953. “It used to be full of old business records, an automobile or two, old desks, things like that,” Leonard says. “It was also a bomb shelter after World War II, so it’s a pretty significant space.”

Literary boxes: When English professor Leon Forrest (1937-1997) was working on the novels that would lead to his acclaim, he stored his manuscripts in these vintage wooden sherry boxes. His Forest County Trilogy manuscripts — also in the University’s collection — retain their original edits in red ink.

Paschke’s pallete: Pop artist Ed Paschke (1939-2004) produced many significant works during the decades that he taught at the College. His Northwestern bequest included this palette, which retains his original swirls of brightly colored oil paint.

UFOs observed: Astronomy professor J. Allen Hynek’s explorations into the UFO phenomenon inspired many observers to share their “close encounters of the third kind,” a phrase originated by Hynek (1910-1986) himself. This sketch, referencing a purported UFO encounter of the 1950s, is one of many in his collection.

A Nobel Laureate’s notations: Professor Dale Mortensen, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics, left behind a blackboard full of equations when he died in 2014. The board has been sprayed with a preservative to ensure that the chalk markings do not fade away.

Artifacts from Alaska: When Congress approved the purchase of Alaska in 1867, it took into account the testimony of Northwestern-affiliated naturalists Robert Kennicott and Henry Bannister (Class of 1863). Numerous artifacts from the pair’s 1865 Alaskan expedition are found within the Northwestern collection, including their spyglass, diaries and sketches of wildlife and culture.