In 1901, the Board of Trustees adopted University President Andrew Sloan Draper’s recommendation to spend $250 on the domestication of squirrels for the campus. He thought the squirrels would have an influence on University life and on the feelings of students.

“I was shocked about that,” said Jenny Velasco, junior in LAS, who did not know why anyone would put squirrels on campus.

Though there was a plan for squirrels on the University’s campus, there were no original plans for a Quad. Throughout the last century, the Quad has served many purposes for University students.

According to the University’s Web site, in the University’s early years, the buildings were scattered widely apart across many acres of land. As buildings were added, a sense of space and community evolved.

University Hall, located where the Illini Union is currently located, had a significant impact on the future building placements. As buildings were built, they opened up to the Quad, which was a campus feature by 1905, according to Historic Preservation from the University Archives. The University’s Web site says a series of footpaths and dirt roads criss-crossed the campus, which also helped to form the Quad.

According to Historic Preservation, between 1891-1894, Acting Regent Thomas J. Burrill was sensitive to the campus’s physical appearance. He directed tree plantings along the northern and southern parts of the axial walk of the Quad, which later became known as Burrill Avenue, a Boardwalk on the west side of the Quad. This was the first important landscape feature of the University campus.

Old photos of the Quad show the large number of trees that decorated the campus, especially along the Boardwalk. However, in the 1950s and 1960s, the campus lost 90 percent of its trees to Dutch Elm Disease, according to Illinois Alumni News, March 1962.

Over the years, the Quad became the heart of the University and many activities took place on it.

A photo in Illini Years: A picture history of the University of Illinois shows students played baseball near Harker Hall. They played around campus with disregard for windows in the 1870s.

According to more photos from Illini Years, the senior class had a picnic on the Quad in 1884, students had their graduation ceremony on the Quad in 1897 and band concerts were held on the Quad in the early 1900s.

Old photos found in the University Archives show a student ice-skating on the Quad in January 1959 and students sitting on the Quad on spring days in the last few decades.

According to the Illio, streaking hit the campus in the 1970s. Near midnight on March 8, 1974, 12,000 people went to the Quad to watch about 600 streakers race from the Quad to Fraternity Park.

According to Manuel Garcia, assistant director of admissions and records and alumnus, students in the early 1990s played frisbee and football on the Quad. They would hang out between classes, have rallies for anything that was controversial and make announcements.

“It was kind of a center place,” he said.

And the Quad remains a center place today, when thousands of students came together, on the Quad, on the nights of the Final Four and of the NCAA Championship game and as students spend hours in between classes sitting and playing games on the Quad on nice, sunny days.

John Alderson, freshman in LAS, said he likes to play football and baseball on the Quad. He said he also likes “Quad sliding.”

“Whenever it rains a lot, big puddles form on the Quad, and people go sledding, and it forms mud pits,” he said.

Rich Schweighart, freshman in engineering, said his favorite thing to do on the Quad is to play football. He said he hangs out on the Quad when it’s nice outside, about once a week.

“We enjoy the Quad,” he said.