Several stories beneath the Arts Quad, within the vast archived holdings of Kroch Library, is a wealth of vibrant views of Cornell that have gone unseen for decades. It’s part of a massive collection of work by University’s official photographers—chronicling a changing campus, student life, official events, and candid views of the daily rhythms of the academic calendar.
Channeling Indiana Jones, Cornellians has for months been mining the archive in search of images that best capture East Hill in the mid-20th century—and the result has been an embarrassment of Big Red riches.
This story is the first in what will be a regular series that showcases a sampling of the photos—plucked from among thousands of pages of clear plastic sleeves housing the 35mm slides—which are at once remarkable and mundane.
Hold a loupe up to any random frame, and you may find undergrads studying amid a sea of paper, in an era before laptops; students lounging in dorm rooms and on quads, clad in period fashions; or an early version of Touchdown the Bear (looking far fiercer than today’s) frolicking with sports fans.
Many of the brilliantly colored slides—most of which date from the late 1960s through the early 1980s—were taken for campus publications, viewbooks, Cornell Chronicle news releases, and various presentations.
University Archivist Evan Earle ’02, MS ’14, says that while some of the photos were taken for official assignments, others reflect the creative eye behind the camera.
“Often, you can see the whimsy and beauty that a photographer captured more spontaneously,” he says, “not necessarily part of a historic event, but just something they stumbled upon or saw and realized it would make a good shot.”
Only a tiny fraction of the Archives’ many thousands of images have been scanned or digitized, Earle notes; many are filed under generic subject headings, such as “students—outdoors” or “athletics.”
(Want to get a first-hand look at them next time you’re on campus? Earle notes that visitors are welcome to browse photos in person.)
And Cornellians can even add to the collection: the Archives accepts donations of images documenting campus life in all eras. Last year, for example, the family of former yearbook staffer Jim Cunningham ’71, BS ’72, MEng ’75, gave several large boxes of his prints and negatives.
“Of the tremendous number of images captured by Cornell’s photographers, only select shots may ever have been published,” Earle observes, “while many other wonderful moments of campus history are stored, waiting to be rediscovered.”
This story originally appeared in Cornellians.
