Libraries, the Museum, the Press and the Station — the University's Memory and Voice

1873–2006 · collections, books and broadcast

The library before Hesburgh. The base fragment owns the Hesburgh Library building and its mural; the collection's course before 1963 is this article's ground, and it begins late: for thirty-one years the university had no general library at all. Small collections sat in professors' rooms and society shelves until President Auguste Lemonnier conceived a circulating library in 1872, opened in the Main Building in 1873 — the magazine's timeline adds the working detail that it opened each day at 3:45 in the afternoon, charged a dollar a semester, and held nearly 3,000 volumes within its first three years. On Lemonnier's death in 1874 the students asked that it bear his name, and Professor James F. Edwards, appointed by Lemonnier to take charge, ran it for fifty years. By 1879 the library numbered about 10,000 volumes. Then the fire of 23 April 1879 took the Main Building and the library with it. What survived is carried two ways and both print: the Archives account says students salvaged about 500 books, while Hope's history says Edwards saw the collection disappear in flame and smoke — the figures differ as rescue against ruin and are not averaged here. The rebuild was faster than the building: about 3,200 volumes within a year, past 16,000 by 1882 in the new Main Building, 26,000 in 1886, 40,000 in 1890, and by 1900 either 55,000 (the portal's series) or 52,000 (the library's standard entry) — the two university figures stand unresolved. In 1917 the collection moved into a building of its own, the Lemonnier Library — built 1916–17, now Bond Hall — sized for 618,000 volumes when the collection stood just under 100,000; it passed 103,000 by 1920 and adopted Dewey classification in 1929. Hesburgh announced the Memorial Library in 1959, ground broke in 1961, the books moved from Lemonnier in beer boxes in August 1963 in the Archives' photograph caption, and the building opened that September — the 18th in the base fragment's Archives account, the 21st ("opens its doors for use") in the magazine's timeline, both printed — reaching its millionth volume in 1972 and taking Hesburgh's name in 1987. The modern system adds the branch libraries — architecture, chemistry and physics, engineering, law, mathematics, and centers in business and the international institutes — around the main collection.

The museum: 1875 to the Raclin Murphy. The art collection is nearly as old as the library. Its origins are dated to 1875, when the Bishops Gallery — sixty portraits of American bishops painted by the Vatican artist Luigi Gregori — and a Museum of Indian Antiquities were established in the Main Building. In 1924 the second floor of Bond Hall became the Wightman Memorial Art Gallery, with Gregory Gerrer as the collection's first official curator in the Clio-compiled museum history's account. The Fred B. Snite family gave the funds for a dedicated museum in 1975 — a designation ceremony followed in 1976, the two dates standing in different institutional accounts — and the Snite Museum of Art opened in 1980. The collection grew past 30,000 works. The succession came in 2023: the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, named for its lead benefactors Ernestine Raclin and her daughter and son-in-law Carmen and Chris Murphy, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, opened to the public on 1 December 2023 — a 70,000-square-foot building, the first phase of a planned 132,000-square-foot complex, at the campus's south edge. The Snite closed at the end of 2023, its building passing to a new use as the Snite Research Center in the Visual Arts. The collection's sesquicentennial fell in 2025.

The Press — 1949, not 1939.Its first book was Charles Sheedy's The Christian Virtues, a textbook for students and lay Catholics whose project — backed by Dale Francis of the Department of Public Information — prompted Father Hesburgh to found a formal scholarly press, with Francis at its head; Sheedy's book opened the Press's first series, the University Religion Series. The Press joined the association of university presses in the 1950s — its own anniversary history gives official membership in 1954, while the standard encyclopedia entry gives admission in 1959, and both stand — published its first paperback in 1960, and built its lists in religion, philosophy, theology, medieval studies, political science, history, and Latin American and Chicano studies, publishing some fifty titles a year by its sixty-fifth anniversary in 2014. It describes itself as the largest Catholic university press in the world; the description is printed as the Press's own, attributed, not as this record's finding. The Press is not the university's first publishing: the congregation's printing office of the 1840s and Ave Maria Press (from 1865) stand in the base, and the Press of 1949 is the scholarly house built on that older ground.

WNDU: the university as broadcaster. The university's own broadcast stations are wholly absent from the base fragment, and their course divides cleanly in two. The radio came first: the South Bend station at 1490 AM had signed on in 1944 under the calls WHOT; the university bought it in 1954 for 140,000 dollars, and in 1955 it took the calls WNDU, with a sister at 92.9 FM. The television station followed as a deliberate Hesburgh project: WNDU-TV signed on 15 July 1955, broadcasting on UHF channel 46 through the Michiana Telecasting Corporation, the university's subsidiary, and opened with an address by President Hesburgh to its first audience. It was a full commercial station, not a public or educational broadcaster — among the very few commercial television stations a university has ever owned — and it took the NBC affiliation at once. David Sarnoff, the head of RCA and founder of NBC, came to Notre Dame for a special academic convocation on 30 September 1955 to mark the venture. On 29 September 1957 the station moved to UHF channel 16, the channel it kept. Its studios stood on the campus grounds until 1982. The divestiture likewise came in two acts, and the dates matter: the radio stations were sold in 1998 to Artistic Media Partners, the AM calls changing to WNDV on 23 November 1998 — the 1955–1998 span is the radio's, and only the radio's. The television station remained the university's for another eight years: on 24 November 2005 the university agreed to sell WNDU-TV to Gray Television for 85 million dollars in cash, the sale closed on 5 March 2006 after federal approval, and the university placed the proceeds principally in its endowment for student and academic initiatives, with student internships at the station expressly unaffected. WNDU-TV had meanwhile, in December 1998, become the first station in its market to broadcast a digital signal. It continues under Gray ownership as the market's NBC affiliate, its studios still on State Road 933 at the campus's edge, its calls still spelling the university that founded it.

Sources:

1. Hesburgh Portal, "The Library: Planning — The First Libraries" (University of Notre Dame Archives) — Lemonnier's 1872 conception and the 1873 opening; 10,000 volumes by 1879; about 500 books salvaged; 3,200 in a year, 16,000 by 1882, 26,000 in 1886, 40,000 in 1890, 55,000 by 1900; the 1917 Lemonnier Library built for 618,000; the August 1963 move.
2. Arthur J. Hope, Notre Dame — One Hundred Years (1943), chapter XVI — no general library until 1873, the name changed at the students' request, Edwards's fifty years, the fire's destruction; Notre Dame Magazine timeline — the 3:45 opening, the dollar subscription, the Memorial Library's doors for use 21 September 1963; the library's standard entry — 52,000 volumes by 1900, 103,000 by 1920, Dewey in 1929, the millionth volume 1972.
3. Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, museum history and opening accounts (raclinmurphymuseum.nd.edu) — origins 1875, the Snite gift and 1980 opening, more than 30,000 works, the 1 December 2023 opening, 70,000 square feet, the Stern design, the Raclin and Murphy benefaction; the Clio-compiled museum history for the 1924 Wightman Gallery and first curator.
5. WNDU-TV and WDND (1490 AM) station histories — WHOT from 1944, the 1954 purchase at $140,000, WNDU calls 1955, television sign-on 15 July 1955 on channel 46, the move to channel 16 on 29 September 1957, Michiana Telecasting ownership, the 1998 radio sale and 23 November 1998 call change, the $85 million television sale agreed 24 November 2005 and closed 5 March 2006; The Observer, 7 March 2006, for the proceeds to the endowment and internships unaffected; the university's Beyond Our Control research project (sites.nd.edu) for the campus studios to 1982 and the Sarnoff convocation of 30 September 1955. All facts summarized in this record's own words.