The Bates Bazaar is a curated, occasional offering of curious and quirky Bates-related items that are just a click away on websites devoted to what’s vintage, historical, and wicked cool.
Postcard showing Olin Arts Center and Lake Andrews: $6.99
At any given time, there are several hundred vintage Bates-related postcards on eBay. Sometimes, it’s fun to look at them just to see how the campus has changed. This postcard on eBay shows Olin Arts Center and Lake Andrews prior to its major 1998 restoration.
The postcard shows only sparse vegetation around the pond, but the restoration changed that by adding lots of additional aquatic and terrestrial plantings to help filter sediments and nutrients from campus runoff, which were causing serious algae blooms.
Use your mouse to grab the slider (or swipe your finger if on a phone or tablet) to compare the two views of Lake Andrews and Olin Arts Center, about 30 years apart:
The pathway around the pond was moved back from the shoreline and improved. A granite amphitheater was created at the base of Olin, now a popular and sunny spot for events, gatherings, and just hanging out.
Much of the 1998 restoration was funded by the late Jack Keigwin ’59 and his wife, Beverly. The amphitheater is named for Florence Keigwin, an aunt who helped to raise Jack Keigwin after he was orphaned. Keigwin died on Sept. 24, 2024, at age 86.
Class of 1925 watch fob pendant: $41.97
This watch fob pendant (with a penny for scale), available on eBay, celebrates the Bates Class of 1925 and was perhaps given out at a class Reunion. In the days of pocket watches, a pendant like this would ornament one’s watch chain.
The reverse has a name: Daniel Franklin Downs. While we don’t know if the pendant belonged to Downs, we know he attended Bates for a year and, later in life, became an ordained Baptist minister and was active in prison ministries in Maine.
1930 Commencement Ball dance card: $30
The saying “one’s dance card is full” has a tangible meaning. Back in the day, attendees of a formal dance would receive a small booklet, or program, like this one for sale on Etsy.
Dance cards typically included things like the date, place, and time of the dance, plus the name of the band and the types of dances offered. Importantly, it provided space to write the names of one’s dance partner for each song.
At the Class of 1930 Commencement Ball, the band was the Georgians, a nine-member dance orchestra; the location was Chase Hall; and the dances were waltzes and foxtrots. The dance went from 9 p.m. all the way until 3 a.m.!
1931 Bates basketball medal: $59
This Bates basketball medal was not awarded to a Bates student but to high school athletes competing in the 1931 Bates Interscholastic Basketball Tournament. Founded in 1922, the Bates-hosted tournament evolved into today’s very popular Maine high school basketball tournament.
The medal comes in its original box, and was made by the Robbins Co. of Attleboro, Mass., once well-known for producing badges, medals, and brewery tap markers.
Bates Manufacturing Co. cotton label: $29.99
The Lewiston mills established by Benjamin Bates, who founded Bates, produced various textiles and cotton goods, including knitting cotton.
Available on eBay, this label for a pound of knitting cotton (4 1/2 inches by 6 1/2 inches) assures buyers that the cotton being sold is guaranteed to weigh a full, honest pound — no short-changing.
Ceramic drinking stein: $32.50
The seller of this ceramic stein claims it’s “likely 1960s or earlier,” but Bobcats know that a seal with the 1855 founding date has to be from after 1988 or so.
Around that time, President Hedley Reynolds, an historian, requested that Bates use 1855 as its founding date, the year that the Maine State Seminary was chartered, rather than the year the institution became a college (1864).
1960 Deansmen album: $24.95
The first Deansmen album is available on eBay, and its liner notes say the a cappella group’s history has been “brief but ‘merri-ful.’”
First organized in 1957 as the Hi-Hos, the group had cut one previous album, but it was only for private use. Just 10 copies were made.
The songs on the album, cut by RCA, include standards like “Blue Moon,” newly popular tunes like 1959’s “Climb Every Mountain,” as well as college and Bates songs like “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi” and “The Bates Smoker.” It also featured the African American spiritual “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel.”
On the cover are, from left, Bruce Manning ’60, Allyn Bosworth ’62, Don Mawhinnery ’63, Jack McPartland ’63, Jim Curtis ’63, Robin Davidson ’60, Steve Gilbert ’62, and Dick Parker ’62.
Rayon Bates sports singlet: $128
On Etsy, the seller of this singlet, made by Champion, suggests that “you are looking at a vintage rayon basketball jersey made for Bates College, circa late 1930s into the early 1940s.”
However, based on Bates yearbooks, the singlet (which doesn’t have a number on the reverse) is probably a track uniform of the post-World War II era, likely from the early 1950s, based on this 1952 Mirror photo of track coach C. Ray Thompson and his runners.
Categories Alumni
