There’s a brick in the side of the wall that sticks out a bit more than all the other bricks. It’s jagged, grey, densely solid. Beneath the brick, the inscription lies:
STONE FROM DOUGLAS HALL
OLD UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
1856-1889
It is old. It is original. And it is conveniently located in a frequently used passageway. It is set into the side of the building called Classics.
This brick has heard so many things.
Its original home was in a ten-acre plot of land on the corner of 35th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. Its father was Senator Stephen A. Douglas, author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, and its brother Bleeding Kansas. This brick listened to the groans of 123 slaves and the murmurs of liberty conspiracies. It held the weight of contentious elections and suffered the shakes of civil wars. It was saved from the fires that demolished its original standing place, and was carefully placed into a new home, uninterrupted on 59th street.
This brick then stood by as students hustled past. It listened to the clicks of heels as students traverse to class, whispering names of Kant, Plato, and eventually Arendt and De Beauvoir. Has listened to the Latin twinge of the Chicago Boys and the galvanized politics of future senators and scholars.
This brick has witnessed the first kiss of a girl on the brink of love; the chuckle of a boy with a pen and epiphany in hand; the sniffles of the people in limbo, waiting for a grade or an answer or a direction; the scrape of a back being pushed against it by enemy forces; a grunt as someone tripped; the drunken giggles of kids headed back to the dorms; the rain, snow, sleet, and sun of changing seasons and many years.
We don’t notice the brick, and perhaps it doesn’t notice us. But it has absorbed us. In it are all the elements that influence our now. Should we choose to notice, we might inform our next.
Process notes:
I was inspired by the tone of the narration in John Keene’s novella, which was kind of a weighted matter-of-fact. But I was also inspired by a paragraph I read in John Lanchester’s novel Capital which describes the history that occurs on a street called Pepys Road. But all the histories described are single clauses that just hint at bigger, broader narratives. It was hard for me to recreate the effect, but it’s quite wonderful. I also wanted to be accurate with my history of the brick I noticed. I learned a lot about the history of The University of Chicago that I hadn’t realized, especially since I walk past this particular brick almost every day. I think there’s something powerful in taking a moment to reflect on all of the little things that make up one big thing and how that influences the ultimate construction.
“As an homage to this pre-1890 legacy a single stone from the rubble of the original Douglas Hall in Bronzeville was brought to the current Hyde Park location and set into the wall of the Classics Building.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_University_of_Chicago
https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2017/11/21/dean-boyers-bike-tour-leaves-stephen-douglass-slav/
