The first half
of this pamphlet is an in depth but to the point history of the early
years of the college. It describes how the school burned down twice
and how the school has almost been closed down several times because
the state government has tried to stop funding it. Due in large
parts to the efforts of William J. Sutton and Noah D. Showalter, two
early leaders of the school, it managed to over come these
difficulties. Even with these problems combined with nation wide
problems like the great depression the school has managed to
consistently expand and construct new buildings. The buildings in
the historic district of the school have stylistic continuity because
they were designed by one of two architects, Julius Zittel or George
M. Rasque. I like this section because it is written in a concise
manor that pacts a lot of information into a short space.
The second half
of the pamphlet is a more detailed description of the nine stops.
Each section starts of with a biography of the person who the
building is named after if applicable. I likes these section because
most of the buildings are named after people who had a large impact
on the early years of the school, by learning about them we also
learn about the history of the school. To some extent through the
lives of these individual we can also learn about the history of
education throughout the state and the country as a whole. This
serves to put the historical narrative of the college into a larger
context. Another thing that contributes to this is how people from
all over the nation have had an impact here.
The other part
of these sections describes the buildings themselves. These section
goes into detail about the styles of the buildings. They also
describes renovations that the buildings have under gone and how this
has effected their historical integrity. Another detail that these
sections cover is what functions the buildings have served over the
years. Personally I don't care that much for the detailed
description of the styles of the buildings but I recognize that it is
necessary. However, I did find both the description of the
renovations and the functions of the buildings to be informative.
Things I liked about this tour: I think that this tour contained a lot of information, that was, for the most part, well organized. It gives a lot of background so that you can better appreciate the information it gives you about the stops. One thing that I really didn't like about this tour was that the stops didn't appear to be in any particular order and we definitely not organized into a convenient walking rout. A more minor problem was that there was a bit of repetition between the background information and the stops and between the stops. Despite these issues I think that this tour was good over all.
