Published on Show Me Mizzou Sept. 16
In 1925, Columbia counted 12,700 residents. St. Louis neared 800,000 and Kansas City topped 360,000, while all of Missouri held 3.5 million. As this cover of the Missouri Alumnus shows, Mizzou was strutting through the Roaring Twenties with grand designs. Memorial Union was half-finished, and Memorial Stadium construction planning was underway, both tributes to Missourians lost in the Great War. Enrollment had just topped 2,900, a number that seemed bustling at the time. What was then a sweep of forest east of College Avenue is now student rentals and shared houses. A century later, Mizzou educates more than 31,000 in a state of 6.2 million. Columbia’s population has swelled to about 130,000. It’s a scale of change unimaginable in 1925.
To read more articles like this, become a Mizzou Alumni Association member and receive MIZZOU magazine in your mailbox. Click here to join.
