By Shannon Zeltmann, Staff Writer
This week in 1929, two men who helped build Glatfelter Hall in 1888 helped to remodel Glatfelter. The building, which had been formally named only a few years prior, was updated with stonework by the same same men who helped lay the bricks to build it when they were teens. Glatfelter was the largest building project in Gettysburg in the 1880s. The two workers estimated that the 1929 renovations cost double the amount it took to build Glatfelter.
This week in 1954, the Owl and Nightingales put on a play which was going to haunt Brua stage: Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward. The play was about novelist who wants to write a story about spirits. The novelist and his second wife decide to perform a séance with a medium to figure out what he should write about. Nothing happens at the séance, except for the novelist hearing the voice of his late first wife, which leads to the death of his second wife. Ultimately, the novelist is haunted by both of his wives.
This week in 1959, the new Student Union Building, called SUB, opened on the first day of December. Right by Plank Gym, it was the largest Gettysburg College building at the time. SUB housed the bookstore, radio station, bowling alley, swimming pool, ballroom, snack shop, and barber shop, serving as the peak recreation area for students on campus with all the amenities they needed. There were also 13 meeting rooms which groups on campus could reserve and use. It cost approximately $1.2 million to build.
This week in 1964, one student, M.J. Rossman, wrote about her semester in Florence. She wrote she only knew two Italian words before she went: Roma and spaghetti. She went on a ten-day cruise to see various islands around Italy but was seasick much of the time. Rossman went to university at Villa Rosa and lived with a host family. She could only speak Italian with their host family, so she had to learn Italian quickly. Rossman thought it was interesting how family-orientated Italians are, noting their close bonds with one another. She lived with two families, the first an upper-class family and the second a middle-class family, which gave her insight into the social climate. Rossman also liked going on adventures around Italy.
