American University - Talon / Aucola Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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A U C L A The University was opened on May 27, 1914, and classes of the Graduate School were begun in the fall in Hurst Hall. The graduate institution, however, moved from the campus to the present Down-town Center on F Street between 19th and 20th Streets, northwest, when the United States entered the war. The Army took charge of the University campus and converted it almost overnight into Camp American University. Tents and army shacks were spread over the campus; sol- diers slept nightly on the site of the present Hurst Hall-Battelle crosswalk. The un- finished McKinley Building was completed hurriedly as a laboratory for the Chem- ical Warfare Service, and a new and larger laboratory building was begun beside it. At the close of the war, the Graduate School elected to remain in its down-town location, and plans were begun for the establishment of a College of Liberal Arts on the campus. The army ' s half-finished chemistry building was opened on September 23, 1925. Its rapid growth necessitated the construction of Battelle Memorial, used at present as a library, in 1926; the Gymnasium in the same year; and Hamilton House in 1930. The enrollment has increased from 81 in 1925-26 to 363 in 1934-35. The School of Public Affairs was established at the Inauguration of Chancellor Joseph M. M. Gray on March 3, 1934, when President Roosevelt, striking the key- note of the new national and university administrations, declared: Among our universities you are young; you have a great future — a great op- portunity for initiative, for constructive thinking, for practical idealism, and for national service. [l»]

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CHAPTER ONE The Cainpus ON Christmas Day, 1889, Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, began a search for a site on which to erect the physical fulfillment of his vision — an academic city in Washington, a nation-wide university for graduate study. After three weeks of intensive travel which took him over almost every square foot of the District of Columbia, he selected a 92-acre plot on old Loughboro road, on a mighty hill — the highest elevation in the vicinity. He paid $100,000 in five annual installments — a mere fraction of its present value. In March, 1895, he turned the property over to the trustees of The American University, which had re- cently been chartered by act of Congress. Founders of the University traced its inspiration back to an incident which tra- ditionally occurred during the American Revolution. Informed that continental forces had seriously damaged Harvard College during their stay there, George Washington is said to have expressed regret at the vandalism. Turning to Na- thaniel Green, he voiced the hope that as soon as the new nation should be estab- lished a national American university would be located in its capital as one of the world ' s centers of learning. Within a few years after the founding of Washington, D.C., movements were on foot in many groups to establish such an institution . The campaign to establish the present American University was initiated by William Arthur, who wrote an article shortly after the Civil War in Harper ' s Mag- azine, urging that American Methodists co-operate in establishing a national Methodist university. The movement had reached the stage of a drive to raise $150,000 for a College of History Building when Bishop Hurst presented the cam- pus site to the trustees. The College of History, which still bears that inscription, although renamed Hurst Hall, was begun in 1896 and completed in January, 1898. For eighteen years its classrooms remained dark and unused except for occasional exhibitions, meet- ings, or pilgrimages. The founders dreamed of erecting countless other buildings, similar in architecture but more imposing. Halls devoted to Francis Asbury, the Epworth League, and to Methodists in various states were built on paper, and pledges toward their fi- nancing were solicited. The only building of this group which materialized was the Ohio College of Government, renamed the McKinley Building in honor of one of Ohio ' s favorite sons, who spoke at the ground breaking for the building in 1901 as President of the United States. For the past few years, this building has been oc- cupied by the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory of the Department of Agri- culture, although it probably will be re-modeled for University purposes in the near future. [II]

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BATTELLE MEMORIAL