Happy Birthday Radford University! To celebrate, we have posted some material from the Archives documenting the first few years of Radford.
Views, from 1913, prior to the first classes being offered at Radford.
Radford was established by an Act of Assembly on March 10, 1910 by the following legislation. This copy of the Act was inserted in the first book of minutes from the Board of Trustees. The first Board chair was W.T. Baldwin, and George B. Cassell was secretary of the Board (note the “Roll of Members of Board” written in Cassell’s handwriting) .
A copy of the Act of Assembly that established what we now call Radford University, page 1.
Act of Assembly establishing Radford Normal School, page 2.
The Board of Trustees (which was later called the “Board of Visitors”) met four times between July 1910 and November 1911. They were charged with some very basic and very critical responsibilities: draft bylaws for the Board, select a site for the campus, purchase property, solicit bids for planning the campus buildings, and other tasks. Scanned copies of the first four meetings of the Board of Trustees are available here.
Radford would open its doors for classes in September 1913 after several years of hard work. Between 1910 and 1913 the Board of Trustees hired John Preston McConnell as president, who hired a faculty and staff, established a curricula, built the Administration Building (later Founders Hall), found housing for students, and began to recruit students for the new Normal and Industrial School for Women.
In order to promote the school a small photo album entitled Views was published in 1913, prior to the first school session. The cover of Views is pictured above, with some photos from Views below. The 1913 issue of Views and the 1920 edition of Views (which includes photos of student life at Radford) are available here.
Architectural drawing of the Administration Building, the first building on the Radford campus.
Heth House was used as a dorm in 1913.
As a Normal School, Radford would be training teachers in the local public schools.
Radford’s publicity often stressed the region’s natural beauty.
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