2008 Woodie Awards
Library photo collection depicts university history
Paige Gabriel
Issue date: 11/1/07 Section: News
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The online exhibit contains a small fraction of the pictures available to students in the special collections department, according to Cox.
The pictures date from 1886, when the campus was called Chattanooga University, to the present, Cox said.
Most of the pictures in the collection are from the 1940s to the 1970s, Cox said.
"The Echo and the discontinued student yearbook, would send their pictures after they had finished using them and that is where a lot of our pictures come from," Cox said.
The department is working on cataloging the thousands of photos, he said. Most of the pictures in the special collections are unmarked so Cox and others are working to find names, places and dates for the pictures.
"Sometimes we will recognize someone from another picture where we know his name or we can date the picture according to who is in it or what buildings are in it," he said.
According to Cox, the collection contains pictures of the campus, faculty and staff, early men and women's sports teams and of every president and chancellor of the university.
One picture not included online, because Cox said he "thinks it is a little gruesome" shows medical students dissecting a cadaver in the old math and science building that has since been torn down.
According to Cox, many of the photos are in poor condition so the department will begin working on ways to preserve and organize the photos. Cox said he enjoys looking at the fashion of the students and the faculty in the pictures.
"There is this one picture with a young man who has a collar that is so high and so straight that I don't think that he could look down without slicing his throat," he said.
According to Cox, to take a long photo in the early 1900s, the camera had to pan slowly from one side to the other.
"It was a common prank for someone on one end after [the camera] had spanned where he was to duck and run behind and get on the other side by the time that the camera had reached that side," Cox said. "You can see that in one of our pictures."
Tiffany Halls, a Clarksville, Tenn., freshman, said, "I think it's great to see that students back then had a sense of humor, because that's something that I could see myself doing."
