The Archive Alcove

Month: January 2025

The Men’s Squad, 1915

By

On January 27, 2025

In 2024-25

Back row, from left to right: Meacham, Fisher (Coach), Swan | second row-Tharp, Jones, Lynch, Loper (Captain), Targgart, Norris.

Last week, we saw the women’s basketball squad, that won the interclass league in 1915.  This image shows the men’s team, which had just captured its sixth consecutive conference championship, having edged out the University of Iowa for the title, once again. From 1908 to 1915, Grinnell was on an epic winning streak, loosing only 12 (out of a 100) games, scoring 3,147 points (to their opponent’s 1,594 points), with two undefeated seasons, and 6 championship titles (besting Kansas, Illinois, Iowa State and the University of Iowa).

Note the gothic G that the basketball team wore as their emblem until the 1930s, when it was changed because students complained it was too difficult to decipher (fans could not tell if it was meant to be a G a C a B, or something else).

The 1915 Women’s Basketball Champions

By

On January 20, 2025

In 2024-25

This picture captures the victorious senior women’s basketball team after they won the 1915 inter-class series (hence the “class champs” written on the basketball). While men’s athletics revolved around intercollegiate competition, women’s sports were organized along intramural lines, and at Grinnell, that meant that each academic class would field a team that competed against other years. In 1915, the “senior women” went undefeated, winning the title and the coveted Silver Loving Cup (which had been donated by H.W. Somers that year to promote a “keen spirit of rivalry” among the teams, and add even more drama to the series). The senior team was comprised of E. Hoesley, H. MacEachron, H. Whitney, E. Dunham, I. Barhite, I. Pyle, and R. Coy.  This same team won the previous year’s championship as the junior squad in 1914.

 

Holiday Travel in the 30s

By

On January 15, 2025

In 2024-25

Many Grinnellians may recall that (before 1970) many people often travelled to and from Grinnell via the train, using the Union Depot train station that was located across from Central Park and the Monroe Hotel. Less well known is the fact that several bus lines also served Grinnell over the years, such as the Union Pacific’s “Stages” line, that the railroad giant had created in the 1920s to compete with Greyhound and other emerging bus lines.  This advertisement appeared on campus in November of 1939, touting their luxurious new “super” coaches that would whisk travelers to these midwestern destinations as well as dozens of other cities (by changing buses a their hubs in Chicago, Kansas City, and Omaha).  The picture below shows engineers proudly installing an air-conditioner into one of the new super-coaches that would service towns like Grinnell.

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