The undergraduate department of the university has always recognized that its field of usefulness lay in the city of St. Louis, and no attempt has been made to draw students from a distance. In the early catalogues of the university is found this notice: “Washington University has the advantage of not being incumbered with the dormitory system, which has been proved by experiment to be both expensive and troublesome—a great part of the disturbances so common in collegiate institutions and most of the temptations to which young men in college are exposed, arise from their monastic mode of life, and the consequent removal from the social influence of home.”
But in the last fifty years conditions have changed. St. Louis is no longer a small western town of 78,000, but a metropolis of 700,000 inhabitants and the great commercial center of a vast and rapidly growing territory, especially to the south and southwest, and preparations had to be made to receive the increasing number of students coming to St. Louis for university training. Then the westward growth of the city had left the group of university buildings in the midst of factories and other objectionable surroundings. The noise was uncongenial to classic teaching, the passing cars and heavy traffic prevented delicate scientific observations and the dirt and smoke made the situation almost unbearable.
In 1896 a tract of land containing 110 acres on the western border of the city, adjoining Forest Park, was purchased with the intention of moving the undergraduate department to this high and commanding situation. The purchase price of $296,000 was subscribed by citizens of St. Louis, largely through the efforts of the president of the board of directors, Mr. Robert S. Brookings, to whom also belongs the credit of raising an endowment fund of $500,000, of which he gave one fifth, as well as the gift of the Cupples Station, a large group of wholesale business buildings with splendid railroad facilities, valued at $3,000,000, the joint gift of Mr. Brookings and Mr. Samuel Cupples.
An architectural competition was held to select a design for a group of buildings for the undergraduate department on the new site. Plans were submitted by the best architects of the country, and after careful deliberation by an impartial committee those of Messrs. Cope and Stewardson, of Philadelphia, were selected.
The style of architecture is that of the Tudor-Gothic period, and the buildings are constructed of the best red Missouri granite in the most substantial manner, and are thoroughly fireproof; they are all two stories high, thereby avoiding tedious climbing, the lecture rooms and numerous laboratories are large, well-lighted and ventilated, and all the latest improvements in scientific education are included, making them equal, if not superior, to any group of college buildings in the country.
Eleven buildings are now occupied and ready for occupancy by
