Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/337

CHAPTER XI THE SECOND ERA OF BUILDING Within less than six years after the opening of the University on October i, 1892, the annual attendance of students increased more than threefold from seven hundred and forty-two the first year to two thousand three hundred and seven in 1897-98. The need of additional buildings was early apparent and every year became increasingly urgent. Happily, the friends of the institu- tion were ready to supply the need. They were so ready, indeed, that the second period of building activity began before the first was fairly over. The President's house was built in 1895, and marked the close of the first building period. The first building completed in the second period, though not the first one planned, or actually begun, was the Haskell Oriental Museum. It has been related in a preceding chapter how, in January, 1893, Mr. Ryerson, president of the Board of Trustees, proposed to give the University one hundred thousand dollars toward a fund of five hundred thousand, "with which to meet the exceptional expenses of its organization, and the pressing demands for general improvements, and for an equipment in keeping with its endowments." It was in connection with the raising of this fund that Mrs. Caroline E. Haskell of Chicago, the widow of Frederick Haskell, and a most generous friend, who had already given the University repeated evidences of her interest and liber- ality in the endowment of the Haskell and Barrows lectureships, arranged to give one hundred thousand dollars for building the Haskell Oriental Museum. This gift, with its accretions of interest, fully paid for the building, which cost one hundred and three thousand and seventeen dollars. The cornerstone was laid July i, 1895. At this time the custom was inaugurated of laying corner- stones in connection with the erection of the public buildings of the University. At the close of the Convocation exercises, which were held in the quadrangles in the open air, the audience repaired to 297