Little mysteries: how a simple idea got complicated

A few weeks ago, there was a dedication on my campus, of a historical marker commemorating the illustrious history of our institution. (click on the image to see a larger version if you want to read a bit about this history)

What a great idea for a blog post! I could write about this new marker, as well as the one that's always (since I've been here anyway) been on the wall of the Library. Here it is:


It would an easy post to write, because I'd just have to have pictures of the plaques, and then pretty much let them speak for themselves.

However, as soon as I began to look at this project more closely, it started to get complicated.

First of all, the "new" marker that was just dedicated has "2008" at the bottom. Had it been sitting in a closet somewhere for 3 years? Did it take that long to have its limestone plinth fashioned? This mystery is being pursued.

Then, a closer look at the marker that I've walked past several times a week for the past 30+ years (I'd probably only rate as a seventh- or eighth-class noticer, if I was lucky, in this friend's taxonomy) prompted another question. Why is this marker, whose text has nothing to do with our Library or even libraries in the abstract, in this spot?

Some of my colleagues and I speculated that perhaps the Library building was the best and newest structure on campus when the marker was put up. But I'm not sure about that. It probably wasn't newest, anyway. [Although we still think it's the best.] Since this marker is dated 1973 and our building opened for business in 1968.

Could the radio studio mentioned in the marker text have been located in another building on the site of the current Library? This theory is also being pursued.

Wanting to be sure that I included all markers on campus in my initially simple post, I asked around about any more that might be lurking somewhere. But what one of my colleagues remembered as a marker over at the Law School was only the unofficial one you see here on the right.

The address it refers to, though, brings up a whole new aspect to the complicate-ness of this once simple idea.

You see, our University hasn't always been where it is today. As you might be able to tell from the somewhat convoluted text on the "new" marker. (Here's more detail, and more clearly expressed, in the inimitable Handbook of Texas, should you be interested.)

The school the Brothers of Mary from France originally began, in 1852, was downtown on College Street. Where there are at least two more historical markers, as I learned from the official (but not completely accurate—it has the wrong address for the location of the 1973 marker, for one thing) Texas Historic Sites Atlas.

So.....at some future date I'll make a pilgrimage down there to get pictures of those markers for you. And, maybe, by then, I'll have these other mysteries solved. Stay tuned!