On driving up in front of St. Edward’s at Austin, I could scarce credit my eyes. There stood the central structure of the college — completed and occupied about a year ago — a magnificent edifice in modern Gothic style built of beautiful white Texan limestone, four stories in height. … The corridors are spacious — double stairways run from the basement to the central tower on the top of the edifice. Special attention has been given to light and ventilation. The school furniture is of the latest pattern. The roof is of the best slate. The view from the college [tower] is equal, if not superior, to that from the dome of the capitol. It commands the city, the finely-wooded valley of the Colorado and of hills rising tier upon tier in the blue horizon at a distance of 30 miles. — Father T.D. O’Sullivan, CSC Notre Dame Scholastic, March 29, 1890
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Above, after the fire, 1903. Below, the Austin Statesman, April 10, 1903.
The dedication of an institution of higher learning, to be conducted under the fostering care of an organization whose zeal is proverbial, and whose noble [effects] are benevolence and the elevation of humanity, marks a step in the onward march of progress. In these spacious academic halls will gather year after year an ever increasing throng of eager students seeking to unravel the deeper mysteries of the truth, and the answers here received will do much to guide their footsteps through … to honorable success. — Clarence H. Miller, Austin lawyer and orator As paraphrased in the Austin Daily Statesman, Oct. 11, 1889, on the dedication of the original Main Building
Marie Curie became the first woman and the first Pole awarded a Nobel Prize in physics; she was honored along with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel for research in radiation phenomena.
W.E.B. Dubois’ treatise The Souls of Black Folk — on the “strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century” — was published.
St. Edward’s [C]ollege, situated on an eminence three miles south of this city, and one of the leading educational institutions in the [S]outh, is reduced to ashes, and what was once a magnificent four-story stone building is now razed to the ground. … Fire, which originated in the dormitory of the [youngest students], completely destroyed the magnificent structure. … Smoke yet ascends, but the damage is done. … Totally gutted in the interior, the exterior is a mass of leaning walls and crumbling columns that may fall without a moment’s warning. The work of rebuilding the main structure will be inaugurated as soon as plans can be drawn. It is recognized that the institution is a necessity and the fact that all is now ruins will not deter [the] Holy Cross community from replacing the college as soon as possible. Work is commenced to begin as soon as the burned walls are cold. — As reported in the Austin Statesman, April 10, 1903
Pablo Picasso painted The Old Guitarist, later counted among the most famous works from his “blue period.”
Enrico Caruso made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.
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