Museum classroom honors 'grand old man of science'.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 3/16/05): What is now Deady Hall was the only building on campus - and known simply as "The University" - when the University of Oregon opened in 1876. It was not named "Deady" until 1894. A March 5 story on Page G2 on the UO's Thomas Condon exhibit incorrectly said it was one of two buildings.

" ... his determination to accept the findings of geology and Darwin, without giving up his religious beliefs, saved the faith of many and gave both evolution and the methods of science a fair start in Oregon."

- Robert D. Clark, UO president 1968-1975, in his book "The Odyssey of Thomas Condon: Irish Immigrant, Frontier Missionary, Oregon Geologist"

He was not only a man of religion and a man of science, he was a missionary and a family man. A scientist and a teacher. A colleague and a collaborator. A Christian Darwinist and a beloved professor.

Thomas Condon was also known as "Oregon's grand old man of science."

It says all of this right on his classroom walls. A classroom that is a reproduction of the one he occupied on the University of Oregon campus from 1876 to 1905 and that opened at the UO's Museum of Natural and Cultural History on Feb. 24.

The museum decided upon this particular exhibit "because Condon is one of the founding fathers of the university, and he's a fascinating man," Patty Krier, the museum's program director, says of the project that's been a year in the making.

Condon was one of only three professors on staff when the UO first opened for classes in 1876 with 89 students. He taught geology, paleontology, geography, physiology, zoology, botany, rhetoric, ancient history, enthnology, the history of civilization and international law.

A teacher in New York as a young man, the Irish-born Condon (his family moved to the United States when he was 11) entered the seminary and trained as a missionary.

That led the 31-year-old and his wife of two weeks, Cornelia, on a 3 1/2 -month voyage aboard a clipper ship to San Francisco in 1852. The American Home Missionary Society had assigned Condon to its Congregational Church in St. Helens, northwest of Portland.

During the next decade, the family man who had 10 children (four of whom died of illness in childhood) had preaching stints at churches in Forest Grove, Albany and The Dalles.

Five years later, Condon, who as an Irish lad had played in the stone quarry where his father worked, made his first trip to the fossil beds of Eastern Oregon's John Day area.

There, he began to collect and study the fossils that would make him Oregon's first-ever state geologist in 1872, a job that paid $1,000 a year.

An offer from the state's new university in Eugene four years later provided a greater income and gave Condon the chance to return to his teaching roots.

The natural history museum exhibit not only re-creates Condon's classroom, it's also a look back at the UO campus and Eugene in the late 19th century.

"We've taken this opportunity to kind of create what the university was like when he was here," says John Erlandson, the museum's director.

If not for the tireless work and research of the museum's exhibits coordinator, Cindi Budlong, and her assistant on the project, Amy Crain, it never would have happened, Krier says. Nor without the help of UO emeritus professor of paleontology Bill Orr, who is the director of the Condon Collection - which contains some 35,000 fossil specimens - and the expert on the exhibit.

The exhibit includes Condon's pick, compass and part of the fossil collection that is named for him and has grown by some 34,000 specimens since his death in 1907. The Condon Collection includes a 44 million-year-old crab found in the Roseburg area, a 25,000-year-old giant beaver tooth found in the Willamette Valley and a 2 billion-year-old piece of graphite discovered in Canada. The exhibit also includes black-and-white photographs of the city and the campus in the late 1800s.

"The University in Thomas Condon's Day," reads a sign in a hallway leading out of "Condon's Classroom." There are photos of Deady Hall and Villard Hall - the only two buildings on campus when the university opened - sitting in back of the football field where the Ducks first played in 1894 along what is now Kincaid Street. Among other photos is one of a muddy Willamette Street in 1891.

One of the many placards that adorn the walls of the classroom has a blurb from the Eugene City Guard newspaper of May 12, 1877. It says: "Last Saturday, Professor Condon accompanied by his University class started for the top of Spencer's Butte, and quite a large number of our citizens, in buggies, hacks, wagons, on horseback and on foot followed in procession."

There also is a piece of blackboard framed in glass that contains the final white-chalk note Condon wrote to his students: "A goodly enrollment of the class in general geology enables us to announce that the opening lecture of the work may be expected on Thursday at 11 o'clock - T. Condon."

The 83-year-old professor retired soon after he wrote that note in 1905, and died two years later after contracting the flu, shortly before his 85th birthday.

His classroom is still here, though, Krier notes. And she's not just talking about the makeshift one at the museum, "because the whole world was his classroom."

THOMAS CONDON

What: New exhibit at the University of Oregon's Museum of Natural and Cultural History

When: Through August

Where: 1680 E. 15th Ave.

Admission: $3 for adults; $2 for seniors and youths 18 and under; $8 for families

Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Condon's influence is reflected in the many places that bear his name:

Condon bust: Tower at UO's Cascade Hall is graced by this piece of hammered sheet copper

Condon Butte: Five miles northwest of the North Sister

Condon Chapel: Original name given to Eugene's First Congregational Church when Condon founded it in 1889

Condon Club: UO study club founded in 1920 survived into the 1960s

Condon Elementary School: The original Roosevelt Junior High School building near the corner of East 18th Avenue and Agate Street became this grade school in 1950 and closed in 1983 (Now called Agate Hall, it houses UO offices)

Condon Hall: Campus building at the corner of East 13th Avenue and Kincaid Street dedicated in 1926

Condon Lectures: Established in 1944 as an "interpretive science lecture series" (Guest lecturers over the years included astronomer Carl Sagan in 1968)

Condon Collection: 35,000 specimens housed at Pacific Hall and at the natural history museum are the largest collection of fossil vertebrates in the Northwest

Condon Oaks: Two massive oak trees near Villard Hall were the only two trees on campus when the university opened in 1876

SS Condon: One of about 420 "liberty ships" built by Oregon Shipbuilding Corp. of Portland during World War II

Thomas Condon Paleontology Center: This fossil museum in Kimberly in the John Day area is a national monument

LECTURE SERIES

In conjunction with the Condon exhibit, the UO will hold an April lecture series - "The Ages of Extinction: Investigating Oregon's Past" - in Room 175 of the Knight Law Center at 5:30 p.m. Fridays:

April 7: Katharine Cashman, UO geological sciences professor: Volcanoes and Humans

April 14: William Orr, UO geological sciences professor: History of the Condon Collection

April 21: Donald Grayson, University of Washington anthropology professor: Ice Age Extinctions

CAPTION(S):

The new exhibit at the UO includes 50 historic photographs of Thomas Condon. Brian Davies / The Register-Guard Brian Davies / The Register-Guard Fossils from the UO's Museum of Natural and Cultural History's Condon Collection are included in the exhibit.