Steam whistle blows its top

David Johnston, director of marketing for the KU Memorial Unions, hopes to display KU's broken steam whistle in the newly remodeled Kansas Union. KU has had a whistle on campus since 1912. Photo by R. Steve Dick / University Relations

After 60 years of enduring 300-degree steam blasted at 175 pounds of pressure hourly, the bronze pill-shaped whistle atop Mount Oread finally blew its lid.

On the morning of Jan. 22, the whistle, salvaged from a German freightliner in the 1940s, cracked and flew 25 feet into the air, landing on the roof of the power plant building. It was damaged beyond repair.

For a moment, there was fear that the steam whistle — the "Big Tooter," as the very first campus whistle was called in 1912 — might be silenced for good.

But the tradition will live on. Officials with the Kansas University Endowment Association announced a few days later that a donor had stepped forward to pay for replacing the steam whistle.

It is believed a replacement will cost at least $2,000. However, KU still hasn't located a company with a whistle pattern to fit the steam pipe atop the plant.

The cracked whistle is now in the hands of the KU Memorial Unions, and plans call for it to be put on permanent display.

Whistles, which traditionally signaled the end of classes at 20 minutes past the hour, have a long and whimsical past at KU. A noisy, startling fixture on campus, a whistle first was used as a 7:45 a.m. wake-up call and a nightly curfew enforcer. But on March 25, 1912, it became a means to signal the end of hourly classes — and lectures by longwinded professors.

For a lively and thorough history of the steam whistle, please visit KUHistory.com.

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