The black and white photograph on this 5-3/8" x 3-1/2" postcard is only 3-7/8" by 2-5/8" to allow for a written message. At right, Mount Vernon Hall is a three-story with a one story building and tall chimney behind it. At left, in front of a tall standpipe, is the Observatory, a brick building, round with a dome roof and one end, and rectangular at the far end. Wooden fencing separates the buildings from a dirt road and leafless trees surround the buildings.
Mount Vernon Hall was the first building on the campus, built before the Legislature decided to establish Nebraska's first college in Peru in 1867. According to the "125 Year History" in The Peruvian (1993), the building, completed in 1866, was 40 feet wide and 80 feet long. A fire destroyed the building January 4, 1897. A woman's dormitory was then built on the same site.
The observatory was built in the early 1880s of brick with a 12-foot dome made of steam-bent lumber. The observatory was torn down in 1916 to clear the site for the T. J. Majors Training School.
