Windows and Parlors

The Chapel has nearly reached completion.  Just a few final touch-ups and some pews and she will be all set.  We have already had our first official college event in the chapel and that was this year's President's Council Spring Reception.  People were invited to see the new chapel as well as the parlor and center rotunda.  Many were also taken aback by the stained glass windows that surround the room.  Each window depicts either a college song, tradition, or historical event.

One of my favorite rooms in the newly renovated Cowles Hall is the parlor.  What I like the most are the original french doors that were in the room when they were working on the first floor.



Originally, the parlors were specific rooms for the sororities on campus.  There were two types of Greek letter societies.  One was literary and the other were class sororities. They existed on campus for sixty-nine of the College's first hundred years, from 1865 to 1925.

The first society was Callisophia, organized in 1856 with Dr. Cowles as its sponsor.  The second, Philomathea, was founded a decade later, in 1866, and was sponsored by Dr. Ford.  Both were literary societies. Callisophia, whose Greek letters were Kappa Sigma, had a Latin motto: Per aspera ad astra (Translates to: "Through hardships to the stars").  Philomathea's Greek letters were Phi Mu, and it also had a Latin motto: Cor unum una via ( Translates to: "One heart, one way"). 

Each of these societies had a parlor in the west wing of the main hall.  In these parlors, the societies assembled libraries, conducted meetings, and girded for public programs, which were called "exercises."  These exercises went heavily into discussions of highly elevating nature and were well attended by the public.  They were presented in a time before the auto, the movie, the radio and the cord were presenting materials to the masses.

image taken for the 1905 Iris yearbook

In 1883, Callisophia and Philomathea dropped their old names in favor of their Greek letters, by which they were designated until they dissolved voluntarily on December 13, 1911.  The parlors, so long sacred to Kappa Sigma and Phi Mu, were then opened to anyone who cared to enter.

The Class sororities date from 1905 and they existed for two decades. Delta Psi comprised the class of 1907 (juniors in the year of organization). Zeta Rho was for the sophomores and Epsilon Gamma was for the freshmen. The seniors had no sorority the first year.  In the Fall of 1906, the new freshmen formed Delta Phi. Thus there was a sorority for each class.

These sororities remained active through the twenty years of their existence until what has been called their "sudden demise."  The reasoning behind the dissolution appears to have been that a greater unity among the students might be achieved if the barriers of the societies ceases to exist.  Kappa Sigma and Phi Mu were dissolved in 1911 for other reasons, which are detailed in the faculty minutes of 1911.  The members submitted formal statements in which they expressed the feeling that their continued existence was detrimental to the best interest of the college.

The decision to disband the two old societies found opposition from many graduates.  Older Alumnae, of the time, would return to campus and often pay sentimental visits to one of the parlors to recall the glad days as members of Kappa Sigma or Phi Mu.

Other early societies still exist today on campus such as Orchesis, a dance group and Sibyl, a literary society.  Callisophia  also stills exists on campus but as a student and staff annual journal published in co-operation between the gender issues group and the women's studies program.

Major Photo Update

Check out the College Flickr Page to see even more photos.

Work on the chapel is moving forward at an almost breakneck pace. A large portion of the wood paneling is up and the stained glass windows are going in this week. You can see them in a couple of the photos provided above. The windows are back lit so when the lights are turned on, I will show you what they look like.

I have found two interesting passages from an Iris yearbook dating back to 1897. The first is a fun anecdote and the second is an interesting piece about Elmira College's history. Both take place during the College's founding years. The first tale is as follows:

"One fall in those first years there was a famous rebellion. When the girls returned after the vacation, they found that the butter used on the table was of very bad quality and that the winter supply of the same kind had been put in. Remonstrance proved in vain. By some pretext, one of the girls obtained the key to the storeroom and at midnight of the same evening, tub after tub of that obnoxious butter rolled down the hill and fell with a splash into the lake. Next morning in the chapel our honored president, after gravely stating his views of the escapade of the night before said, in conclusion, that he would see the guilty parties in his study at a certain hour, although he would mention no names and would leave it to their honor to report there. At the hour appointed the president answered a knock at his door and found, to his surprise, the entire college assembled outside to acknowledge the deed of the night before."

The other piece has to do with the College's original name for first-year students.

"Elmira was chartered by the legislature in 1855, ten years before Vassar. Her first class graduated in 1859. At the time when Elmira was founded there were only two co-educational colleges in the country, at Oberlin and at Lima. There was no college for girls alone, and no model on which to form one. For example, Dr. Cowles was rather afraid of calling the first class of girls the Freshman class, and so coined a word for it, calling it the Protomathian Class. It was not until ten years later, that at the founding of Vassar, the two presidents agreed to call it the Freshman class, irrespective of sex. The Lady Principal was at first called the Principal Preceptress, but this seemed a clumsy term and Dr. Cowles again coined a word which has been rapidly and universally adopted."

Many things have changed over the years. For the next blog, I will give you a brief list of them. One thing you may not have known is that at one time, there were sororities on campus.