Birthday Cake at the Pioneer Supper - CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image

My one and only sister’s birthday is on Monday, and my best pal’s birthday was on Sunday, so in their honor, today I’m sharing with you this giant birthday cake! (Psst … consider this a preview of what’s coming next week on Tumblr.)

Now, technically, this oversized confection commemorating Knox College’s Centennial (1837-1937) would be an anniversary cake--unless you want to make some sort of philosophical argument for the higher ed institution as an entity with a life of its own. But cake’s cake, so I’m not complaining.

Certainly, celebrating 100 years (or 179 this year) is nothing to sneeze at, either. This cake was presented by Knox College President Carter Davidson and alumnus Selden Gale Lowrie at the Pioneer Supper held on Founders Day, February 15, 1937, at the Galesburg Armory, and photographed by Harold E. Way, also an alumnus as well as a professor of physics and photography at Knox.

As you’ve likely deduced from the name of this new digital collection, Prof. Way is the source of its 2,447 items spanning from the 1890s to the 1940s, including both his own photographic documentation of college life as well as images produced from the negatives and slides he collected. The collection description describes Way’s foresight with regard to photography in an anecdote suggesting that maybe college administrators don’t always know best--but, hey, they’re only human.

Written by Ellen Corrigan, Associate Professor, Cataloging Services, Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University

For more information about this and other CARLI Digital Collections, visit http://collections.carli.illinois.edu

To learn more about becoming part of CARLI Digital Collections and using CONTENTdm, see http://www.carli.illinois.edu/products-services/contentdm and http://wiki.carli.illinois.edu/index.php/Portal:CONTENTdm.