Mount Allison Value Added

This image, displayed on the Facebook page Mount Allison has already set up for its incoming Class of 2015, shows a detail from the Memorial Library building currently under sentence of demolition. If you compare this older postcard image you'll recognize it as the space just above the arched entranceway. However, in the postcard the square over the arch is empty, the reason being that the university crest was not added until around 1980. [Chronology iffy. See comments. The space did include a sign while the building was in use as a library, but was empty for a number of years after it was repurposed.]

I'm working from memory here, but I seem to recall that the metal sculpture was manufactured in the Fine Arts Department by a man named Sid Dobson, a mature student we referred to as The Fifty-Year-Old Freshman, who would have been born at about the same time as the Memorial Library was built. The crest was affixed to the building with a minimum of fanfare, but with the general feeling of warmth that comes from having completed a task set you an earlier generation. WSH Crawford, the last president to have come up through the university, would have been there.

There is still time to change the Regents' minds about destroying the Memorial Library. Go to this petition. They are meeting this weekend. Douglas

Comments

[Smashed]

Originally, the space had a carved stone reading "Memorial Library 1914-1918"
http://eastmarket.com/smash/img_3320.jpg
You can see it in situ in this old photo.
http://eastmarket.com/smash/amle.jpg

[Douglas]

That photo with the trees' shadows is amazing. It really looks like a picture of The Past. Do you know when the stone sign went on the building and when it came off? Was it in the stairwell in later years?

[Smashed]

I don't know for certain, but I'd guess that it was there when the building was opened in the late 20s, but was removed to the inside around 1970 when the building changed from a library to a student centre. I believe it was with the plaques at the landing, part way up the stairs, in later years.

[Douglas]

Now I'm thinking that the postcard I linked to doesn't show it simply because of the angle of the sun, or the hand-tinting process. Regardless, the space was empty in the Seventies.