Introduction          1  2  3  4  5  6 

I am writing at my desk in my second floor apartment in Old Main Village (OMV) located directly above what was once the president's office, which I occupied back in the '60s and '70s. I am drawn to the history of the area and am reminded of how little time each of us has in the scheme of things. As I look out my window I see the buildings of downtown Mankato and its sister city, North Mankato, across the river. I feel the sweep of the Minnesota River valley and the large area of fertile farm land it drains. I visualize Old Main, once the centerpiece of Minnesota State's lower campus, as it stood out against the hillside looking out over the cities and the valley. This year the Mankato area is celebrating its sesquicentennial.

As I look I find it hard to believe that 150 years ago much of this area was Indian Territory and Mankato was the last outpost. Or that Mankato was the upper end of shipping on the Minnesota River, a main source of supply and travel for land seekers, settlers, prospectors, woodsmen, adventurers. Or that the Big Woods reached from the Mississippi as far west as Mankato but is now gone, lost to the woodsman's axe. This is the Mankato of television's "Little House on the Prairie". But this is also the Mankato of the 1862 hanging of 38 Dakota on its main street following the Dakota and US Army conflux, earlier that year.

During the past century and a half the valley changed from Indian Territory to fertile farms, small towns and villages. Mankato has grown from pioneer river town and Indian Territory outpost to twin cities (with North Mankato) to almost 50,000. The State Normal School established by the State of Minnesota in 1868 later became Mankato Teachers College in l92l, Mankato State College in l957, Mankato State University in l975, and Minnesota State University, Mankato in l999. It has become an institution of nearly 15,000 students with a broad range of programs and extensive graduate work.

From the old photographs located on the wall when I enter Old Main Village I learn that it is the second Old Main for the campus--the first was built in 1869, the year following the establishment of the State Normal. The first Old Main, a four-story, twin-tower skyscraper of its day, housed all classes at first. By 1894, to accommodate the growth of the State Normal, two wings were added to house classrooms and offices giving it an appearance not unlike the Old Main of today. The Normal continued to grow and in 1906 a Campus School Annex was built on to Old Main to house more classrooms and offices and to provide space for a campus school as a laboratory for the training of teachers. A disastrous fire the winter of 1922 destroyed the first Old Main and both its added wings but left the Campus School Annex intact. The loss was immediate and personal to staff and students alike. In the Teachers College 1922 yearbook is a short essay entitled "Our First Assembly" (following the fire). President Cooper and other faculty were seated on a platform at the front of the First Presbyterian Church that morning the essayist noted. "The students sat silent, waiting. Their faces expressed that loss that comes when we realize we have looked our last upon a familiar setting of our everyday life and feel powerless to adjust ourselves to the new order. The President rose to speak. There was no need for him to pause as usual with outstretched arms. The room was still, very still this morning." Their Old Main, the symbol of their college they knew so well, the very heart of their college, was gone.

A second Old Main built in 1922 following the fire is the one you see today with its broad entrance, its three arches and the twin towers above, flanked by two wings of classrooms and offices.

In the late 1950s because of limited room for expansion of the lower campus, a legislative decision was made to build a new highland campus and in due time abandon the lower campus. The transition to a new campus took nearly 20 years and was completed in 1978. It required a two-campus operation for most of the period and for several years the college provided bus service between campuses and to the down town area.

It is of little wonder that former students of this period returning to campus have mixed feelings for their campus, indeed for their alma mater. And today there are faculty who never knew the lower campus, and others then nearing retirement who barely knew the new campus. Progress and growth are not without their scars and affect all of us unevenly. Old Main is a bridge for many of us between the eras though as the story unfolded we very nearly lost Old Main.

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