C-Bench - 1903 - Chicago, IL - Dated Architectural Structures Multifarious on Waymarking.com

This round stone bench, a gift of the class of 1903, turns out to have quite a history. It is known as the C-Bench and used to be the subject of some university traditions.

Here is an excerpt from an article about the bench:

Early on, “no freshmen” seems to be the only hard and fast rule of the C-bench, even though a group of freshmen were occasionally tasked with both protecting the bench and performing at it. What is abundantly clear is that the traditions regarding the bench were taken very seriously by the University population. The same volume of the The Chicago Alumni Magazine quotes at length an article originally published in The University of Chicago Weekly, entitled “The Chicago Summer Student: What Is He?” One of the article’s gripes was the disregard summer students had toward established tradition: “[the summer students] blissfully disregarded all established properties of place and thing—the women sat upon the ‘C” Bench unblushingly! They were always doing such ridiculous things—one found it hard to forgive them.” It’s difficult to imagine the University, in its current state, taking any traditions as seriously as the C-Bench was once taken.

As for the popular story that the C-Bench was once reserved only for athletes and their girlfriends, this tradition seems to be of a much later era. In The University of Chicago: An Architectural Tour, it’s stated that the C-Bench, “was for the exclusive use of athletic lettermen (and the girls that they were kissing). Segregation of this sort was abolished (or it simply faded away) after World War II when athletes lost a measure of their prestige on campus.” But other sources mention different dates to mark the death of this tradition. The website of the University of Chicago Magazine writes, “until the 1960s convention dictated only lettermen and their dates could use the circular C-bench.” I’ve heard word from the son of an alumnus that the C-Bench was reserved for athletes even into the 1970s. Although it seems that the bench was, at one time, reserved only for athletes, it seems unlikely that this tradition started as early as 1903.

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Year built or dedicated as indicated on the structure or plaque: 1903 Full Inscription (unless noted above): 1903 Website (if available): [Web Link]

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