Back then, opening up an apple got you seeds and a snack: some of Reed College's first faculty in front of the Hall of Arts and Science (today, Eliot Hall), in 1914.
In 1911, William T. Foster, Reed College's visionary first president, looks out toward a boundless future (and now into it) before the college was built.
An X-ray view into not only a building, but its past: stonemasons rough in the cornerstone of Eliot Hall before the actual ceremony in May, 1912. And is that Buster Keaton supervising?
From a historic post card just before ground was broken, a 1912 architect’s sketch of the Sallyport through one of the first buildings at Reed College.
Students race from the future into the past in a 100-yard-dash in 1915. After nearly a century, parking finally subsumed the tennis courts to make way for the College’s new performing arts center.
(i’m writing this caption in lower case and inside parentheses because we have to be quiet: we’re in the south reference room in the reed college hauser memorial library circa 1930, when it was Brand Spanking...

SHHHHHH!

...er, sorry, ms. unger (the librarian in this picture)... er, when it was brand new.)
Reed students and faculty, gathered at the northern entrance to Eliot Hall, 1917. President William T. Foster, his children and their donkey (the company car of yesteryear?) are on the front, right-hand side.
A maypole dance behind Eliot Hall in 1916.
The entrance to Reed College: at peace today, and marshaling for war in 1918. William Foster, the institution’s first president, was a pacifist, but as the world slid toward war, donors began to penalize him for it, and financial support for the college plummeted. A year later, he was gone.
The origin of a myth? The ne’er-do-well toughs of House F (now Doyle Dormitory, as you can see in the contemporary part of this image) with one of the Reed College's enduring traditions: the Doyle Owl. Students have been stealing it from one another and displaying it in odd locations since, well, perhaps this picture, taken just a few years after the college opened.

Then and now, today

Collapsing the passage of time

Ne’er-do-well students with the Doyle Owl, circa 1920. | © Matt Giraud Photography

Time is the art of the photographer: capturing a rich, dynamic story in the fraction of a second the shutter opens. But in the course of branding Reed College’s Centennial, I decided to collapse a larger span of time, re-shooting historic photos from exactly the same spot to tease out the threads that connect then to now.

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