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The Crimson Gathers Funds for a New Home

Finances Improve; the War Approaches

"Well. Sunday night then. The alumni can take the sheet home on their last day and show our tergiversations to their families."

"This is a better paper to send to Cleveland," ventured the Managing Editor softly, watching for the President's mood. "It has a good top column baseball victory, for one thing."

The President showed simply by his silence that the discussion was closed. "We're going to take a taxi downtown and put the papers on the train," he announced agreeably after a pause. To Corey he said. "Come along, I know a new speakeasy. The taxi is on the Crimson."

Weakly Corey let his hat fall upon his desk.

"And I better take this masterpiece downstairs," said the Managing Editor, glancing at his wristwatch.

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"Wait, now," said the President. "What are we going to call it?"

GEORGE WELLER'S Not to Eat, Not for Love, did for The Crimson what Erich Segal's Love Story did for Harvard hockey a generation later. The 1929 Editorial Chairman's narrative of life at Harvard gained name for its author and his subjects far outside of Cambridge. The churning out of editorials described here was part of an average day at The Crimson in the period from 1905 to 1930. Little else remained constant in this quarter century, as the paper expanded to one more column and several more inches, dropped the heavy emphasis on athletics, and took notice of the Great War by sending most of the editors to the Army, interrupting the publishing schedule for a month or so.

After the great football battle of 1907, when the proponents of the sport had prevailed, the editorial page began to turn its thought toward more academic matters. We learn from earlier histories that the paper's relations with the College administration were at a low ebb around 1906-1910, but what, if any, reaction University Hall had to such editorials as "Theses," "New Elective System," and "Age Upon Entering College" is unknown. In any case, the frequency and importance of editorials made them difficult or impossible for the President to handle on his own any more, and, in 1911 the Editorial Board was established to handle page two.

The old shaded off into the new in the years before the War, when executives still changed every half year but the paper adopted a new, more open format. Photographs became more of a rule and less of an exception, and extras were no longer confined to football results. President Eliot's retirement brought not only its best extra to date, but also its biggest scoop. Only the President, Managing Editor, Business Manager, and printers knew that the patriarch of the Augustan Age of Harvard was stepping down until the extra hit the streets. The paper also had the best word the next year on the progress of Eliot's internal struggle over whether to accept Taft's offer of appointment to the Court of St. James. Eliot stayed in Cambridge, and The Crimson had the news ahead of the Boston papers.

The death of Fabian Fall '10, the President, in the summer of 1909 shocked his contemporaries, for the young Englishman had become a popular figure in his two years at Harvard. A marble bust of Fall stood in a niche in the Sanctum of the Plympton Street building until the late Sixties, when it was removed by person or persons unknown.

The financial state of the paper was strengthened considerably by the efforts of George Gund '09, the Business Manager, whose name is now attached to the immense ziggurat which houses Harvard's Graduate School of Design. But once again, the editorial content of the paper suffered, and, in the years from 1909-1912, the growth of advertising, combined with the four-column, four-page paper, cut down severely on the amount of space which could be devoted to news and editorials. As a result, the editors of the Class of 1912 devoted their efforts to the optimal use of space. New headlines and more imaginative makeup were introduced; new features were tried; and most important, the size of the paper was increased. More six and eight pagers, and fewer fours, appeared, as the Business Board sold enough ads to make them possible. Every penny which could be set aside was put into a fund to build a permanent home for The Crimson. The quarters in the basement of the Union were unsuitable for an expanding daily paper, and the desire for a building owned exclusively by The Crimson had built up over the years since the turn of the century. The move to the Union had come after a plan to finance a Crimson building by renting dormitory space in the lower floors had fallen through.

Robert Bell Reddick's Ten Walking Tours of Cambridge dismisses the building at 14 Plympton Street in about half a sentence, giving short shrift to its "neo-Georgian" design, and saying that Lampy's castle "puts to shame the Crimson Building." Harvard's semi-official book on it own architecture, Education, Bricks, and Mortar, doesn't mention the building at all, Newspaper buildings by and large are rough, functional structures, which serve a practical daily purpose and expedite the production of their publications. Few of them win architecture awards, and none of them can approach in grandeur the Lampoon's pleasure dome. The Crimson's building has served its purpose for two generations.

THE BUILDING on Plympton Street was designed by H. H. Murdock '01 of Jardine, Hill and Murdock, New York architects. Murdock had been the driving force behind the combination dormitory newspaper, office printing plant plan which had failed in his senior year. The land on which the building was built was acquired in two steps--the first parcel by a committee of graduates and undergraduates, with Crimson money, the second through a $6000 gift from Thomas Cole, of Duluth. Minnesota, father of F. L. Cole '15, then President, Cole's gift, along with a matching sum collected from graduates, was enough to get the project underway. Groundbreaking took place in the Spring of 1915; the building was ready for occupancy by November. The Crimson Printing Company, which had shared the offices in the Union, installed itself in the Plympton Street basement; the Alumni Bulletin moved in downstairs in keeping with its long standing love of football. The Crimson issued its first number from the new building on the day of the Yale Game, November '20. A news story in the next issue made the justifiable claim that. "The ownership of its own building by the University daily sets a precedent for all other colleges and universities throughout the country." Although the building itself remained to be paid for, the Bulletin and Crimson Printing rentals made enough to meet the payments and cover takes as well.

The new Editorial Board was the most exciting thing happening at The Crimson in the new building. For the first time, late night reviews of Boston and Cambridge plays were written and run the morning after opening night. With the President no longer doing editorials singlehandedly, the paper took a sharper editorial stance. Through the Spring of 1915. The Crimson ardently opposed involvement in the First World War, a controversial but well articulated position which R.H. Stiles '16 reversed when he became President in the autumn of 1915. With the exception of "the crew scandal, in which the paper charged favoritism in the selection of the first boat, the War was the only pressing issue of the period. Enthusiasm for war combined with an ill-disguised distaste for Wilson's reelection in 1916 to produce a burgeoning campaign for entry into the conflict. The dark days of the pre-War period were frightened only by a College-wide controversy over the number of beer ads which ran in The Crimson. The editors were naturally reluctant to give up the advertisements they were paid in kind.

BEER AND POLITICS were the hallmarks of 1916 Graham B. Blame I went to St. Louis and Chicago for the party conventions, and The Crimson poll showed Harvard 1940 to 662 for Charles Evans Hughes over Wilson. Editorial neutrality was bravely preserved until the election. The next day, a headline announced.

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