The Northrop Auditorium Inscription (It was harder than you think.)

Abstract

In January 1928, University of Minnesota President Coffman appointed a committee, chaired by Dean Guy Stanton Ford, to compose an inscription of 50 words for the façade of the new Northrop Memorial Auditorium. The committee did not begin meeting until February 1929 and labored for most of the year before producing an inscription acceptable to most of its members and President Coffman and approved by the Board of Regents. It was a quotation from Paul's Letter to the Philippians. But the individual responsible for having the inscription cut into the façade, the founding director of the University's School of Architecture, Professor F. M. Mann, refused to have the work done. Nothing happened for five years, in the midst of the Depression. In the spring of 1935 Vice President Middlebrook got the ball rolling again, and Mann brought in an inscription consultant who worked with the committee; they started over from scratch and deliberated at length again. There was finally agreement in May 1936.