The Rock (Northwestern University)

It serves as a billboard for campus groups and events, and has been painted with different colors and messages over the years.

The Rock, a purple-and-white quartzite boulder, was transplanted from Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, as a gift of the class of 1902.

With the first painting of the rock in the 1940s, it became a canvas for student art, opinions, advertising, messages, proposals, and jokes.

Scientists at McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science provided an epoxy to patch the Rock together again.

Author Bob Wood discusses The Rock in the Northwestern chapter of his 1989 book Big Ten Country.