Special Collections - Anteater Antics

Early UCI Campus

John Edwin Smith, Founding University Librarian

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John Smith was selected as UCI’s founding University Librarian in June 1963.  The three new campuses (UCSD, UCI, and UCSC) opened with identical core library collections of approximately 65,000 volumes each. The undergraduate libraries at Harvard and Michigan were the basis for that core list. Based on the UC efforts, Books for College Libraries, first published in 1967, provided a highly influential core list of 50,000 volumes that every undergraduate library should own. In building UCI’s initial collection, Smith also wrote to each of the founding UCI faculty stating: “Send along your favorite basic list of 100 to 150 books which you would expect to find.” Many submitted lists, and on UCI’s first day of classes on October 5, 1965, the UCI library opened with a notable collection of 100,000 volumes. John Smith was University Librarian from 1963-1979.  Earlier in his career, while at UCLA, Smith was influential in the American Library Association’s intellectual freedom movement, an early high point of which occurred when ALA met in Los Angeles in 1953 and publicly stood firm against McCarthyism, endorsing the Freedom to Read Statement, issued that year jointly by ALA and the Association of American Publishers. John Smith died in Santa Ana on July 28, 1986.

AS-061.  University Communications Photographs. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

UCI Site Preparation 1964

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An aerial view in 1964 of site preparation for the first UCI buildings.

AS-056. Early Campus Photograph Albums 1959-1969. Special Collections and Archives. The UC Irvine Libraries. Irvine, California.

Vice Chancellor Manuel Gómez

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Vice Chancellor Manuel Gómez will retire at the end of August 2010, concluding an exemplary 38-year career at UC Irvine.  Here is a photograph of Manuel near the beginning of that 38 years. He has been a friend to Special Collections and Archives. We thank him for his support and encouragement, and wish him well in this new chapter of his life.

AS-061.  University Communications Photographs. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

Politicians at UCI in the 1970s

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In the 1970s a variety of politicians visited the UCI campus to engage students on the issues of the day. A sample of posters for those events is below:

University of California, Irvine Poster Collection, 1965-2006. AS-050. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California

Watermelon Eating Contest

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Anteaters of all ages participate in a watermelon eating contest at a campus picnic in 1966.

AS-061.  University Communications Photographs. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

How Aldrich Park might have been

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Early proposals for the design of the Campus Park (later called Aldrich Park) included an almost 300 foot tall central bell tower which would have been called “Centrum,”  as well as several connected lakes.  Centrum would have been the tallest built structure in Orange County and visible for miles. These aspects of the design were not completed.  The University Archives has numerous photographs of  Pereira’s architectural models and campus plans.  Pereira’s project workbooks ( Collection # AS-127), which document the various phases of campus planning can also be found in the University Archives.

 AS-061.  University Communications Photographs. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
 

Early planning for physical layout of campus

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In the winter of 1962, UC President Clark Kerr invited UCI Architect William Pereira and UCI Chancellor Daniel Aldrich to meet him in Berkeley to discuss how best to use the newly selected Irvine campus site. At the meeting, Kerr recalled an influential book he had read as a graduate student, Johann Heinric von Thunen’s Der Isolierte Staat (1863), in which he envisioned the ideal city “as a series of concentric circles starting out with central city buildings and going out to industrial, housing and agricultural areas.” Kerr then drew a rough sketch of a proposed layout of the Irvine campus, a circle with the names of disciplines around it. The basic design was then elaborated during the physical planning, which incorporated a concentric and radial scheme. The Central Campus was designed to consist of six quadrangles, each representing an academic unit, which radiated out of the ring. The ring unified the school both functionally and artistically. Distances between each quad were minimized and provided movement for pedestrians and bicycles. At the center of the ring is the 29-acre Daniel Aldrich Park, originally named Campus Park, which is the metaphorical heart of the campus. Designed as an informal gathering place, it was based on the central parks of cities and universities throughout the world.

UCI Campus Layout

First Graduating Class 1966

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The first graduating class, the Class of 1966, had 14 students. The Commencement Dinner took place on June 25, 1966 in what is now the Libraries Gateway Study Center.  Bernard R. Gelbaum (left), Professor of Mathematics, addressed the class. Graduating students were (left to right) Rita Anne Gregg, Jerene Clair Cline, Peter Leland Jacklin, Charles Dion McGregor, Michael Merrick Gollong, Vincent Jerrems Healy, Jr., Carole Carney Rathfon, Bland Ewing, Gail Lana White, Linda Ann Howey, and Roland Schinzinger. Not pictured were graduates Michael Max Asher, Mary Dorothea Polk and Mark Alvin Cross.

The Class of 1966 graduated on June 25, 1966.

 

Early Campus Photograph Albums. AS-056. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.