Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/388

CHAPTER XIII A THIRD PERIOD OF BUILDING It was said in the preceding chapter that the history of the Uni- versity might almost be written in the history of its expansion. With equal truth it may be said that the history of the first quarter-century must be written largely in the record of the extraor- dinary building activities of that period. In twenty-five years the unparalleled liberality of its friends gave the University of Chicago an equipment in buildings which other great universities have failed to secure in two hundred years. The writer has not in these annals taken account of three buildings erected for the Morgan Park Academy, nor of the two houses built for professors at the Yerkes Observatory and other minor structures. If these were included it would be found that fifty buildings were constructed during these twenty-five years, or an average of two each year. The nine or ten structures to which no other reference than this is made cost about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, an inconsiderable sum when contrasted with the many millions of expenditure required by the forty buildings, the story of each of which is told in these pages. The third period of building, to be considered in this chapter, was a very brief one. It covered only two years and eight months. But during these thirty-two months thirteen buildings rose, most of them large and costly, and all of them essential parts of the University's developing life. It looked back for its origin to Mr. Rockefeller's 1895 subscription of three million dollars, which brought two million dollars from other givers. The year 1901 will always be distinguished in the annals of the University as the year of the Decennial Celebration, when many interesting events occurred. But nothing stands out more promi- nently in its history than the fact that it introduced another great era of building. The first structure to be erected was a temporary one. But although it was unpretentious and cheap, mean indeed in appear- 34