CONTENTS OF OLD MAIN CORNERSTONE
MAY OR MAY NOT BE REVEALED

Old Main's cornerstone may or may not be opened during Reunion Day festivities April 28.

By MARK EDWARDS

There’s a mystery on the campus of Indiana State University, which has been brewing for 134 years. When the Class of 1951 gathers for an April 28, 2001 reunion, the group may be asked to collectively play Sherlock Holmes and try to answer some troubling questions. 

The clues to this particular mystery seemed to hit the deadest of ends with the collapsing walls of ISU’s Old Main building more than half a century ago. Dr. Watson would have called this the "Case of the Time-Capsule Conundrum."

It all begins—as any good tale of mystery—outside an imposing gothic hall complete with gabled towers, double flights of twisting stairs and weighty wooden doors that were bolted shut at night. One thousand feet of wrought iron and limestone fence surrounded the towering 195-ft long structure. It seems that Old Main could have reasonably assumed its aged name the day the paint dried.

In August of 1867, virtually everyone in Terre Haute seems to have been on hand for what promised to be the most spectacular ceremony in the city’s brief history. 

The famous and not-so-famous of the time gathered around the foundation of what was to become the Indiana State Normal School Building. Hoping to leave a piece of their present for posterity, the planners had filled a tin time capsule with a cache of significant documents to be sealed within the cornerstone. 

The Terre Haute Express of August 14, 1867, provides a detailed list of articles left for future Terre Hauteans to find. The remarkable collection ranged from the city’s first marriage license, inventory, and death certificate to a personal message from Governor Oliver P. Morton freshly returned from the Civil War in 1865. For an unknown reason, the cornerstone had the date August 9, 1867 engraved in its surface, but the ceremony was actually held four days after that. The event ended with the capsule in place and the history of Indiana State University had begun.

The cornerstone and time capsule were threatened 21 years later during a devastating fire in 1888.

"The fire was up in one of the tower flue areas," ISU archivist Susan Davis said. "They couldn’t get to the fire right away. The door was locked, the story goes, and they couldn’t find the janitor who had the key. Needless to say, most of the structure was wooden inside and it destroyed the interior of the original building." 

A new building was erected on the same foundation and the cornerstone on the southwest corner remained intact. A good portion of the external building was salvaged during construction. There was no reason to believe the capsule had been damaged, and it remained in place for the next 62 years.

In 1950, a Cincinnati demolition team began razing Old Main and the cornerstone was removed and forgotten.

"When I started in archives, they didn’t know where the cornerstone was," Davis remembers. "Some thought it was dumped in the Wabash River. Others said it had been tossed in a landfill or demolished altogether. It was lost."

On December 1, 1997, a crew from facilities management asked supervisor Don Yarbrough what he wanted done with an "old slab of concrete" they had been working around in the basement of Gillum Hall. 

"I told them to get it out of there during cleanup, " Yarbrough said. "But when they pulled it away from the wall someone saw a date on it. I called Susan Davis to see if she knew what it was."

"I was really excited, " Davis said. "I knew immediately it was the missing cornerstone. I ran down to Gillum Hall right away and had them put the cornerstone in storage to be opened at the right time."

The 50th anniversary reunion of the Class of 1951 seemed a perfect opportunity for the opening. The students would all certainly remember the razing of Old Main in 1950. Many would have attended classes or events in the aging structure. They would have seen workers carrying out stained glass windows and the valuable chimes from the tower.

"The event seemed to be an exciting way to welcome back the Class of ‘51," said Liz Tuttle of the Alumni Affairs office. " It will close out the day’s events on April 28 in Dede I."

Susan Davis is as excited as anyone about the reunion. The idea of opening a capsule that may be filled with historical documents once thought lost forever is too good to be true.

Too good to be true? It could be that that’s the case.

"The other night I found the 1867 newspaper which listed the contents in the library microfilm files," Davis said. "I copied the articles and went home to review the list. It was exciting. Reading along, I came across a sentence that stopped me cold. It said they laid the ‘top of the cornerstone’ above the time capsule. My heart sunk. I believe we only have the top of the cornerstone and not the time capsule itself."

It seems that no sooner did one mystery appear to be solved — when the cornerstone turned up in 1997 — than another mystery surfaced. If the time capsule is not there, why didn’t the demolition crew discover it in 1950?  Where is the capsule filled with a score of documents? It seems too large a quantity to have been missed 50 years ago.

A thorough review of newspaper articles from 1950 never mentions a time capsule or its recovery.  Interviews with some Statesman reporters from those bygone days have turned up foggy recollections of the building coming down, but no real clues.

Davis is still hopeful someone can shed light on what happened to the collection.

"It would be wonderful if I could find someone who knows anything about it," Davis sighs. "The contractor who tore down the building may have come across the capsule, opened it up and found everything deteriorated. Maybe it was thrown away. Or maybe somebody might have gotten it and we just don’t know about it. We haven’t dug deep enough to find out. Perhaps on April 28 someone from the Class of 1951 will say ‘Hey, I remember that.’"

April 25, 2001