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Description |
Leafless trees line the road that curves up in front of Merrill Hall at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, in this 7"x5" black and white photograph. The three-story brick and shingle building on a limestone foundation is embellished with pedimented windows on the third story, a tower topped with a weather vane, multiple chimneys, and a small balcony. There is also a black, metal time ball in the lowered position on a shaft attached to the roof. |
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Historical Information |
Merrill Hall served as the nucleus of the school for 90 years. Over time, the building housed the administrative offices, classrooms, faculty offices, male student housing, the campus print shop, and the mail room. Ground was broken for Merrill Hall on April 12, 1879, on a site between the current Padour-Walker and Perry Campus Center buildings. Merrill was the first building to be erected on the college's new rural campus on the eastern edge of Crete, and was symbolic of the school's expansion and coming of age as a four-year college. The hall was named for the Reverend O.W. Merrill, a member of the General Association of Congregational Churches, and the building was designed by the prominent Boston architectural firm, Cabot and Chandler, hired by Thomas Doane.
At 3:07 a.m. on February 28,1969 alarms sounded and the campus and Crete community were made aware that Merrill Hall was on fire. In only 90 minutes time, Doane College's oldest campus building was completely destroyed.
The time ball, which weighed 56 pounds and measured 32 inches in diameter, was connected electrically to a Greenwich Mean Time clock in the Boswell Observatory and dropped at noon exactly every day. Each morning a student using a rope and pulley system would raise it back to the top. Installed in 1884, the time ball helped not only those at Doane College but also the Crete townspeople adjust to the new nationwide Standard time. The ball now resides in the museum display at the Boswell Observatory on the Doane College campus.
Sources: 1) Thomas D. Perry, History of Doane College 1872 to 1912 Crete, Nebraska (Doane College Crete, Nebraska, 1957), 34. 2) Janet L. Jeffries, Images of America, Crete (South Carolina, Arcadia Publishing, 2012), 65-66. 3) Janet L. Jeffries, "Spacing Time: The Time Ball at Doane College" Nebraska History 80:3 (1999): 105-108. |
