Your path: Hidden Arch
Marylhurst University Finds
Long-hidden Arch
Excerpt from an article by Sarah Dunlap and Dana Tims in The Oregonian, July 30, 2008.
When Hans Hoogendam began cutting into a wall during renovations at Marylhurst University recently, he only wanted to make sure his saw didn't cut into electrical wiring.
He didn't realize that he was opening a portal to history.
But that's just what Hoogendam, a carpenter with Schommer & Sons, uncovered when he cut a small, square-shaped hole near the top of the wall.
Behind the wall, he found a gracefully curving piece of dark, vertical-grained fir. A good portion of it, he observed, must have been hand carved.
Hoogendam quickly summoned Michael Lammers, Marylhurst's vice president of finance, who has been overseeing day-to-day operations of a $25 million campuswide renovation.
Together, Hoogendam and Lammers scanned architectural blueprints dated 1929 that Lammers had framed and mounted on the walls of the administration building's lobby. There, in two different views, they solved the mystery of exactly what had lain behind the wall, unseen and forgotten, for more than 35 years -- an arch over an oak performance stage in what once served as Marylhurst's English classroom.
Vintage yearbooks show neatly dressed students sitting and standing on the stage as their peers and teachers look on from below.
"That was an era when students didn't just study Shakespeare, but they recited it, as well," said Wesley Null, an associate professor of curriculum and education historian at Baylor University in Texas. "That sort of thing is long forgotten today, but it was very typical in the 1920s and '30s for students to be expected to take on the personae of the literary characters they were studying."
A few other remnants of the school's past have also turned up during the renovation, which after three years is nearing completion. Among them were a crumpled pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, a can of Prince Albert tobacco and a rosewood carpenter's square, which dates to the late 1920s.
As for the arch, it will remain intact and in place.
"When people talk about 'old school,' this is really it," Lammers said. "We're just thrilled it can now be properly seen and preserved."
