From left to right, the Law Building (Harker Hall), University Hall, and the Carillon Tower of the Altgeld Hall Library Building, found in Record Series 39/2/20, Box BUI – University Hall.
The turn of the century Illinois campus featured three towers along Green Street (seen above). While Altgeld Hall remains today, its two-towered peer building is gone. On Wednesday, September 13, 1871 the cornerstone was laid for the new multiple purpose University building later known as “University Hall”. The formal dedication was Wednesday, December 10, 1873, and Illinois Governor J.L. Beveridge gave the address. For seventy-six years, University Hall served most of the University population. Today, the Illini Union stands on University Hall’s former site, and all that physically remains is the bell, the clock, and the sandstone portal entrance (now, since 1998, at the Hallene Gateway Plaza).
Cleats from the Arthur Hall Collection after visiting Conservation. Found in Record Series 28/3/24.
Written by Leanna Barcelona
After a semester at the University’s Conservation unit, the artifacts donated with the personal papers of the Illinois football coach Arthur Hall are now back at the archives and a part of his collection. The collection donated from his family contains several newspaper clippings spanning from the beginning of his football career to the end of his term as probate judge. Artifacts such as team sweaters, football uniforms, cleats, hats, and baseballs from his time here, as well as small Illini memorabilia, are also part of the collection and over a century old.
Postcard of Coach Hall, c. 1907. Found in Record Series 28/3/24.
Arthur Raymond Hall was born in 1869 in Tonica Illinois and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1897-1902, graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Law and a Master’s Degree of English and Rhetoric from the College of Literature and Arts. As a student, he played on the Varsity baseball team in 1899 and the Varsity football team from 1897 through 1900, serving as the captain in his last season. In addition to varsity athletics, Hall was involved in the English Club, the Langdell Law Club, the Y.M.C.A., and the Philomathean Literary Society.[1]
