50th anniversary of president kennedy's assassination in dallas. join american history tv on november 23rd and 24th for eyewitness accounts of the events surrounding that fall day in 1963. we'll air footage of the kennedy funeral and president lyndon johns johnson's address to congress. watch ceremonies from dallas and the jfk library in boston, and we'll take your phone calls. "remembering jfk: 50 years after dallas" here on american history tv on c-span3. this weekend on c-span, road to the house 2016. maryland governor martin o'malley in manchester for the new hampshire democratic party's jefferson jackson dinner followed by congressman paul ryan at a birthday party fund-raiser for iowa governor terry branstad. governor o'malley is live starting later today at 7:00 p.m. eastern. on c-span2's book tv, hear from five of the finalists for this year's national book award for nonfiction. sunday at 1:00. and on c-span3's american history tv, go back in time to 1996 with the internet archives way back machine. sunday at 7:00 p.m. all weekend long, american history tv is featuring ann arbor, michigan. nicknamed tree town because of its dense forestation and parks and residential areas. hosted by our comcast cable partners, c-span's local content vehicles recently traveled there to explore the area's rich history. learn more about ann arbor, michigan, all weekend here on american history tv. >> it's ironic that this very important building and this very important foray into the sciences an estate where cloud cover will wreck the conditions for viewing for five nights. but this is the -- if you wanted to run with the big dogs, this is what you had to be doing. we are at the 1854 detroit observatory. it is the second oldest building on the university of michigan campus. only the president's house is older. and this was the first building built that was a dedicated scientific research facility. the building that is part of the campaign to transform the university of michigan that was first proposed by henry phillip tappen who was actually the first president of the university, he didn't get here until 1852. when he did, he wanted to transform the university of michigan into a research university. prior to that time, michigan was mostly a sort of provincial college where you really had to know your classical, greek and latin and be able to stand up and recite same. and he was really enamored of the prussian educational system. in the prussian educational system, there was a real emphasis on not only literature but also scientific curriculum. and you learned by doing. so not just reading from a book and standing up and reciting but conducting experiments on your own, learning to use the tools and push the frontiers of knowledge so you're adding something to the scientific knowledge of the whole. and so tappen really wanted to institute that here. and in the 1850s, astronomy and observations, observatories were fundamental to lots of other sciences. in part because the math is just ferocious. so if you understand the math to be able to operate a telescope like this, then you understand the math to move into engineering or physics or chemistry, lots of different sciences. so in the same way that today you need a biomedical engineering research center, in the 1850s, universities that wanted to be contenders needed observatories. so this was the first step in a very public commitment to taking the university of michigan in the direction of becoming a research university, scientific research. but it was also a very savvy public relations move on tappen's part because it's saying loud and clear, we have a commitment to scientific research at the university of michigan. we're willing to build this building, put some of the best instruments in the world at the time, the best scientific research instruments at the disposal of faculty and students. and it's then publicized because the image of this building was engraved on letterhead. it was put on catalogs. students talked, oh, my god, i can't believe you're going to dartmouth. dartmouth doesn't have an observatory. michigan has an observatory. so it was a way of attracting the attention of future students, and indeed the enrollment just skyrocketed. when henry phillip tappen proposed this building, he was approached by some folks in detroit who were willing to help him do the fund-raising. and they literally raised money by subscription. people would pledge $50 or $100. $500 was a huge amount of money. when tappen was sure that he was going to have enough money to build it, he himself went to europe to choose the instruments. on his way to europe, he stopped in new york city and contracted with henry fitz to build a big telescope in the dome, and then he went to broad and consulted with astronomers. and they suggested that this instrument, the transit instrument, be gotten from one of the firms in berlin. so it's a prussian instrument. this is before the german state. so pistor and martens in berlin contracted with tappen to make this instrument. all of it's still functional. you can still open the hatches. tappen had a budget of about $24,000, give or take. and most of that money actually went into the instruments. so he's really concerned with taking a pretty modest budget and making it look much more impressive than the budget would suggest that he could. but he also understood how the tools had to function within the building, so it's not just about a pretty building. i mean, they wanted it to look good. but they also needed it to function. and so you've got these piers that hold up the telescope here and in the central portion of the building. the pier is actually covered in stucco. and then the stucco is scored, and the lines that you've just scored are colored in to look like big blocks of quarried stone. and in fact, in the 19th century, ann arbor was called the little stucco village because so many of the buildings including the university buildings were actually brick buildings covered with stucco, scored to look like big blocks of quarried stone to evoke greek architecture and classical greek precedent. and so this building has got an archaeologically correct greek front porch, greek revival. but then we add the italian overhang. it's kind of a fashionable touch on top of the greek. so it's very concerned with appearing part of the tradition and then carrying it a little bit further. and if it looks good, that's gravy. tappen definitely wanted it to look good, but it also had to function. once this building came in, then we got a chemistry laboratory on central campus. the law school came in. engineering, the school of engineering starts here in this building. they learned to use these instruments first. the director here was teaching them the math they needed to carry that into physics. so really all the scientific curriculum comes out of work being done in this building. really, it set michigan on a path that not only made it one of the best universities in the nation, but one of the best in the world. and that's because henry phillip tappen didn't dream small. >> throughout the weekend, american history tv is featuring ann arbor, michigan. our local content vehicles recently traveled there to learn about its rich history. learn more about ann arbor and c-span's local content vehicles at c-span.org/localcontent. you're watching american history tv, all weekend every weekend on c-span3. when george wallace was governor of alabama during the 1960s, he fiercely supported segregation in his state, famously standing in the schoolhouse door to prevent the enrollment of black students at the university of alabama. wallace later retracted these views and apologized for his segregationist policies. in this program, historians dan

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