As recorded in the Carroll
News of February 12, 1932, the 150-foot high structure had been topped
off without fanfare one week earlier. Reporter Adrian Foose, Jr., was
one of only 6 people on hand.
"Far from the ground and chilled by a frosty breeze," he wrote, "two
men labored with a large stone, groaned, said unkind things about it,
and shoved it into its final position with a sigh of relief, the last
piece of the tower.
"The fact is that the dreams of Carroll are becoming
realities and soon we of the student body will be enjoying the b enefits
of a new college atmosphere -- a new and greater Carroll."
Foose was unaware that the dreams were fading as the Great Depression
threatened to strangle Carroll's capital campaign. Three
weeks earlier, construction had been officially suspended. The finishing
touches would not be completed until the summer of 1935.
For more than three years the campus would lay unoccupied -- except
for Grasselli Tower, which became the temporary residence of Frederick
Odenbach SJ (above, right). The biologist-turned-meteorologist-and-seismologist
moved in with his dog Hector, his parrot, a gun (for pheasant, probably),
an Arctic sleeping bag, his cooking utensils and his laboratory instruments.
After beginning its history as the university's seismology lab, Grasselli
Tower would serve a variety of purposes: it would house the Carroll News,
the radio station and a phonecenter for fundraising. Cadets of the Reserve
Officer Training Corps would rappel down its facade. And the tower would
serve as the landmark for the Heights campus.
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