4 Upstanding Young Ladies

Indiana University’s first women’s dormitory, Memorial Hall, was constructed in 1925. Arguably one of the most impressive buildings on the Bloomington campus, it features a castle-like entrance way topped with four decorative battlements and embellished with a large chandelier which seems to have emerged straight from a Harry Potter novel. Inside that entrance way, one can find carved in stone reminders of the values of scholarship, service, fitness, and prayerfulness Indiana University hoped its female students would adhere to while residing within the building’s walls.¹

In addition to these lessons in virtue for the young women of Memorial Hall, the entrance to the east wing of the dormitory features a quote from Sir Walter Scott which also seems to be reminding female students to be on their best behavior…

Finding the lighter side of Memorial Hall

Not all of Memorial Hall’s carvings are quite so stern, however. The entrance way features many other decorations in a more whimsical vein, including carvings of a sleeping student and an angry professor ringing a bell to rouse the student from his slumber on either side of the exterior arch:

(If you look closely, you might even see a few owls nestled near the doorways. If you look more closely still, you will see that this fellow is not the only owl pictured in this chapter…)