Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/197

FIRST STEPS IN EXPANSION 169 would require no less money than I wished for a university in the City of New York The total scheme is an imposing one. I doubt whether anyone but yourself could carry it out There will not be half money enough to give the scheme a fair trial. It was indeed an imposing scheme. This is not the place to ex- amine it or even to present it. That has been done elsewhere. All that is appropriate here is to indicate that the Plan of Organization was one of the early and great steps in expansion. It was indeed the greatest forward step the University ever took. The genius of Dr. Harper never shone more brilliantly than in this great piece of constructive work. What Frederick Scott Oliver said of Alex- ander Hamilton, in his book on that great man, might with equal truth be written of Dr. Harper: It was his policy and habit to overshoot the mark, to compel the weaker brethren to consider plans that were too heroic for their natural timidity, confident that the diminished fabric would still be of an ampler proportion than if it had arisen from mean foundations. The enthusiasm of the chosen leader and his recent achieve- ment in securing from the Founder the million dollars had excited among the Trustees the highest expectations. They began to get a vision of a really great University. And the first feeling this vision awakened among them was a doubt about the site. Some of them began to fear that three blocks made too small a campus. At the second meeting of the committee on buildings and grounds held November 28, 1890, George C. Walker, Martin A. Ryerson, and Andrew MacLeish were made a committee "to take into consider- ation the advisability and possibility of enlarging the University site." At the third meeting, January 2, 1891, this committee reported a proposition from Marshall Field to exchange a block of ground for one of the three blocks belonging to the University and sell a fourth block for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Thereupon "it was resolved that the committee recommend to the Board to accept Mr. Field's proposition on condition that the streets and alleys be vacated." Just a month later this recommendation was submitted to the Trustees. For the first time there was a division of opinion. The change suggested by the exchange and purchase of blocks was designed to substitute for a site two