Earthquake exhibit documents human story behind 1906 wreckage
The entrance to the university at the end of Palm Drive before and after the 1906 earthquake. A centennial exhibit, “The Earthquake of 1906: Stanford University and Environs,” is on view at Green Library through Sept. 15.
In her work as university archivist, Margaret Kimball has encountered hundreds of photographs documenting the devastation that the April 18, 1906, earthquake left in its wake. Many of the most illuminating and dramatic of the images have found their way into the centennial exhibit The Earthquake of 1906: Stanford University and Environs, on view at Green Library through Sept. 15.
Shown alongside photographs illustrating the pre-earthquake contours of the young university, the images offer shocks of both recognition and awe in pictures of rubble piled beneath the arches of the Quad and of wrecked, never-rebuilt edifices standing on familiar spaces.
In creating the exhibit, however, Kimball has constructed a narrative told only partly in sandstone. The exhibit also pulls together letters, telegrams, journals and recollections of survivors to paint a vivid account of what they saw and felt on the morning of the earthquake and the days that followed. "My idea from the beginning was really to take the students, the faculty, staff and let their stories tell people today what happened in 1906," Kimball said.
Responses to the disaster reveal an array of emotions and reactions, ranging from a kind of excited thrill to objective scientific curiosity to humanitarian concern—sometimes expressed all at once.
"Our house shook at such a rate that I thought, by gosh, for a time that the meat was really going to be removed from my bones," wrote Edward Curtis Franklin, professor of organic chemistry. "But it was interesting, nevertheless. I have long had a desire to experience an earthquake and I must say that I rather enjoyed this one, until I began to realize the havoc being caused."
