It’s old, it’s main
Old main is one of the oldest and most prominent structures on campus and could also be considered one of the most mysterious features in the history of Utah State University.
“I don’t [know anything about Old Main],” Michael Nicholls, a USU history professor, said in an e-mail. “I’ve been here a long time, but the building predates me,” he said.
Old Main predates everyone.
According to university archives, the south wing of Old Main was completed 115 years ago. However, ask anyone in Logan what Old Main is and it’s likely they’ll point eastward and talk about the building with the big “A” on top. Memories abound of becoming a True Aggie or sledding down Old Main hill just adjacent to this beacon of Cache Valley.
For students, it’s the building where they may have taken many of their core classes as freshmen. Many students and faculty members walk through the front doors of the historic building daily.
Old Main is and always has been the center of USU.The history of Old Main was written by a university archiviest, by the name of AJ Simmonds. Simmonds started writing the history in a series of short articles after a fire destroyed part of the buildings in the 1980’s.
In his first article, Simmonds said the push for building Old Main was also a push to start an agricultural school. In 1888, other locations proposed for the Agricultural College of Utah included Hyrum, Wellsville and Providence, he said. Logan won out, and the cornerstone was laid on July 27, 1889.
The south wing was to be the first section of Old Main completed on Feb. 22, 1890, according to Simmonds. The college opened that same year with 22 students enrolled, but by the end of the first school year, 139 students – 106 of whom were male- attended classes. The enrollment more than doubled the next year. Space became an immediate problem, though crowded classrooms couldn’t have been nearly as unpleasant as using the two outhouses outside of Old Main, which were the original restrooms on campus. Originally, the south wing was built without bathrooms, so two outhouses were placed outside the building; two outhouses for almost 300 students.
By 1893, a new north wing was built to accommodate the growing student body. On the third floor of this new wing was a gymnasium, which at the time was used for military drilling, as military drills were mandatory for all students in 1893, male or female, Simmonds said.
An armory of rifles was built alongside the gym, and a rifle range was set up inside the building in 1914.
During the 1890s, Old Main survived a proposition by Utah legislators to close the ACU and combine it with the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The college was able to avoid financial downfall and Old Main as we know it today was finally completed in 1902, Simmonds said.
Simmonds pointed out that the building was huge for its time and it was often advertised as one of the biggest educational facilities in the nation. The tower, in fact, was originally planned to be 50 feet taller than it is today, but it was scaled down due to lack of funds.
Old Main is not without its strange stories and myths. Nicholls said he would often disrupt former USU Professor Ross Peterson’s classes in the auditorium by climbing up into the ceiling and “speaking on behalf of God.” Peterson would do the same thing for Nicholls’ classes, Nicholls said. “We would tell students, in the voice of God, to keep their eyes on their own test papers,” Nicholls said.
The most peculiar story might be the one Professor David Lewis described in an e-mail about a “spectral thumb” that haunts the third floor. Lewis explained, “A particular faculty member lost her thumb in a
tragic accident [on the third floor]. The thumb was never found, but late at
night, people have reported it floating around the third floor, rapping on doors in the hallway and within the history department complex.”
The “faint red” ghost thumb has apparently been spotted most frequently at a “particular office that was once a women’s restroom – the scene of the accident,” Lewis said. He claimed to have never seen the floating thumb for himself, but he said, “I’ve heard some strange things up here late at night.”
Anyone who has taught at, worked at or attended USU most likely has memories from time spent within the walls of Old Main.
-cunningham@cc.usu.edu