The Administration Building and Lake Mennith, ca 1886

On September 8, 1885, the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary (now known as the University of St. Thomas) celebrated its opening day.   The five faculty and sixty-two students lived, studied and attended classes in the only building on campus, the Administration Building.  This building sat on what is now the upper quad of the Saint Paul campus. Board and tuition for the year was $180.00 with an addition $20.00 for the washing and mending of clothes.

John Quinlan studying in the Administration Building, 1906

Unlike the many majors students have to choose from in 2014, the first students of St. Thomas followed a strictly regimented course of study.  Courses in Latin, Greek, German, Mathematics, Natural Science, English and Christian Doctrine were required for all students.  Classes in Drawing, Instrumental Music and French were offered as optional courses.

 For more information on the history of the University of St. Thomas, browse through the Timeline of UST History.

Phase one of the Department of Special Collections compact shelving project is complete!  Over two days, we moved over 2500 boxes of materials out of their home in the department’s climate controlled storage area.

One of the spaces we are using for temporary storage is the Special Collections reading room.  Because of this, the department cannot accommodate on-site researchers until the end of the project.   The department will provide phone and email reference service.  As the majority of the manuscript and University Archives collections are in storage, the staff will not be able to access the content of most of the collections.

In the interim, we encourage the use of the department’s digitized collections.

During the summer of 2014, the Department of Special Collections will be installing compact shelving in its archival storage area.  We are very excited about this as the project as it will increase the capacity of the area by over 50%, allowing for growth of the university’s collections of archival, manuscript and rare books collections for many years to come.

To accommodate the work involved in this project, the University Archives and manuscript collections currently held by department will be placed in storage and will not be accessible for the duration of the project. We will be able to place limited amount of essential records in temporary storage for access during this project. The University Archivist is working with affected university departments to identify those materials.  Access to these records will be by appointment with the University Archivist.

Additionally, the reading room for the Department of Special Collections/University Archives will close June 23, 2014 and will remain closed through the end of August 2014. During this period, there will be no access to Special Collections & University Archives materials by faculty, staff, students, and other researchers in the department’s reading room; phone and email reference service will be limited.  In the interim, researchers are encourage the use of the department’s digitized collections.

The cooperation of the UST community and other researchers during this project is greatly appreciated.  Please contact Ann Kenne, Head of Special Collections/University Archivist (2-5461), for additional information.