Most campuses have a few landmarks with stories to tell There he stands, all tall and regal and rigid, peering silently every day at the college students as they pass. Some offer passing glances back, some sit down next to him and crack open a chemistry book and lose themselves in their ... science or whatever.
Inside that head, though, what could he be thinking?
Does he think about the days when he led the nation, the days when he abolished slavery?
Does he think about his assassination at Ford’s Theater?
Does he think about his wife?
Or does Abe — the statue version at MSU’s student union — think about those days during the 1970s and 1980s when, every year, some punks removed his noggin, and he stood there tall, proud, Republican and headless, while the students had their way with his cranium and returned it days, or perhaps weeks later?
“The head was removable at one time, and it became a class thing to take the head,” said Scott Hagebak, operations director for the Centennial Student Union, who denies having ever removed Abe’s head, although he certainly attended MSU during some of the “questionable” years. “It would disappear, pictures would be taken, and then it would return.”
The Lincoln shenanigans are over now.
Several years ago, some administrator who thought “enough was enough” had Abe’s melon permanently affixed to his body. End of story. Now he’s just there. Sometimes noticed, usually ignored.
Around the region at area colleges and universities, odd landmarks with stories behind them dot the campuses. Whether it’s Abe Lincoln’s head, the Gustavus Rock or the never-ending staircase at Bethany, stories abound about those campus crannies that make life a little more interesting.
Gustavus Adolphus College has its share of quirky landmarks.
One is a Paul Grandlund sculpture that greets visitors to the library. The sculpture contains block-like letters BC and AD, as in the time markers for before and after Christ.
“There’s a tradition where students spin it to see what grade they were going to get on their test,” said GAC’s Steve Waldhauser.
“They were doing it when I came in 1977.”
Another quirky item is the big rock that every year gets painted by different student groups. Waldhauser said that some years, the paint from one student is barely dry when another comes in to redecorate.
“I think we’re on our third rock,” Waldhauser said. “At one time someone claimed to have stolen it. But the rumor is that it was actually buried.”
There have been no excavations to confirm the rumor.
Gustavus also has a much-talked-about system of tunnels that are difficult but not impossible to penetrate. Security guards have surprised successful students in years past, but break-ins are rare.
A much more accessible quirk exists right on the mall between Old Main and the student union. Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas says, “If you stand a certain direction, your voice echoes off the buildings just right and it sounds like you are in surround sound.” Look for the cement blocks in a semi- circle formation.
At Bethany, the most talked about quirk is the staircase of more than 100 steps that connects the campus with a residential area at the bottom of the hill.
Jon Marozick lived in Larson Hall as a student and then on Fifth and Sixth streets while working at Bethany. He walked up those steps, and counted them, for 10 years.
“One time I remember the words to ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’ and ‘ Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ were written with one word on each step,” he said. “Those songs were in my head all day.”
Mark Wiechmann said he used to live in a house on the side of the hill and used the steps to get to work at BLC. He said sometimes the steps didn’t get shoveled that well, and he actually slid down the hill holding on to the railing to maintain balance.
Ann Splinter, South Central College’s marketing and public relations director, said there wasn’t much for quirky landmarks on campus. But there are a series of carvings in the limestone on the exterior of the building, completed in 1969, that depicts technical careers.
“One of the carvings is of a punch card used for computer careers at the time,” she said. “ Technology has changed!”
Abe Lincoln’s head isn’t the only landmark at MSU. Several memorable sculptures decorate various parts of campus, including the red wavy one on the campus mall that most people refer to as “ the lips.”
But according to Hagebak, the piece of MSU most people talk about, the fountain in the middle of the mall, has a history most don’t know about.
Purchased from the 1965 World’s Fair in New York, it was designed with wind sensors on it. The waters, it is said, would dance with the wind. The more the wind blew, the higher the water went.
At the world’s fair, it was eight feet above ground and people never saw the unsightly plumbing. But when it was installed in Mankato, it was a foot or two below ground and all that pipe — and the motor — was in plain view.
The sculpture associated today with the fountain was never part of the original World’s Fair attraction. It was added later to cover up some of the plumbing. Faculty member Bill Richmond constructed it in 1975.
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