What's online?
Digitized images from the Chatham University May Day Collection depict festival activities occurring on campus in connection with May Day celebrations. Images document theatrical, musical, and dance performances, as well as elaborate costumes, set decorations, and staging. Community engagement in the May Day celebrations, illustrated by large crowd and audience scenes, is also notable.
What’s in the entire collection?
The Chatham University May Day Collection documents the production of elaborate May Day celebrations and performances on campus by students, faculty, and members of the regional community between 1905 and 1947. The collection chronicles these celebrations through photographs and programs and also documents the production of the performances through planning meeting minutes, scripts, and production team registers.
About the Chatham University Archives
The Chatham University Archives, housed in Jennie King Mellon Library, contains official institutional records, annual reports, university and community publications, financial records, student publications and tutorials, yearbooks, alumni and alumnae records, student and institutional scrapbooks, architectural drawings and/or renovations plans dating as far back as 1869. The history of the university is further attested by an array of photographs, slides, drawings, maps, souvenir programs, and models of the campus. Memorabilia are present in a wide variety of formats from athletic costumes to personalized napkin rings. The Archives also features the Rachel Carson Collection which documents the environmentalist’s undergraduate career (1925-1929) at the Pennsylvania College for Women.