The Rock Records and Artifacts

The Rock is a landmark on the Evanston Campus of Northwestern University. A large boulder of Baraboo quartzite taken from the Devil’s Lake region of Wisconsin, the Rock – as it has been known to many generations of Northwestern students – was brought to campus as a gift from the University’s graduating class of 1902. Northwestern students of that time had become familiar with the landscape and geological features of central Wisconsin from curricular field trips to that area.

The Rock at one time incorporated rudimentary plumbing, a trickling water spout, and a small water retention basin. That is, at its original placement at Northwestern, the Rock served as a naturalistically styled water fountain. The fountain failed at some unknown point in time but, even so, the Rock has remained prominent on campus, a monument to its donors, a meeting place for students, and a gathering spot for many social, cultural, and political events and rallies.

The tradition of painting the Rock began as early as 1938 when it received a coat of red paint following a Minnesota victory in football at Northwestern’s homecoming game. A subsequent event occurred in 1941 when a coat of white paint and the numerals “44” appeared on the Rock, presumably put there by a member or members of Northwestern’s freshman class. Other such incidents, generally viewed as regrettable acts of vandalism, occurred sporadically to the Rock during the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. By the mid-1960s, painting the Rock had taken on the patina of campus ritual, a way to demonstrate student spirit. Eventually, such painting became a celebrated tradition at Northwestern. Remarkably, some Northwestern students in May, 1971, were questioned by campus police for removing paint from the Rock, opining that the landmark looked better in its natural condition.

The practice of painting the Rock had become exuberant by the late 1980s, with adjacent surfaces, including trees and sidewalks also coated by students. The problem of confining the paint to a more limited area caused University administrators to move the Rock, in summer, 1989, from its original campus location, located halfway between University and Harris halls to a spot about 30 feet east and isolated from pedestrian traffic patterns. The Rock, when chiseled from its base in preparation for the move, split into sections which were later mortared back into place. Staff of Northwestern University Archives salvaged a small piece of the Rock at that time and added into the University’s historical collections.

In 2009, a student group operating under the guise of “The Rock Excavation Organization” generated controversy by using hand tools to remove the hundreds of coats of paint which had accumulated on the Rock. Once again, staff of University Archives sprang into action, securing for its collection a large, thick section of that paint. Soon after removal of its layers paint, the Rock became again the object of regular, often daily coatings.