Monmouth College - Ravelings Yearbook (Monmouth, IL)

Page 16 text:

Monmouth College. N educational institution ' s growth maybe traced along various lines. You may measure this growth by the increase in its student body from year to year; you may measure it by the broadening of its influence through an increasing number of alumni and a widening circle of friends: you may measure it again by noting the gradual enrichment and strengthening of its courses of study. Measured by any of these standards, Monmouth College has grown and is continuing to grow. There is still another way of reading her history, however, and that is as we find it written in the build- ings that have housed her. It is the building question that confronts Monmouth to-day. Wherever she is known and loved, her friends are thinking buildings and talking buildings. The disastrous fire of last November has decreed that it must be so. One will be forgiven, therefore, if in writing a historical sketch he deals only with the earthly house of this tabernacle. Monmouth College and the houses in which she has lived might in- deed be a better caption for this article. In April 1853, Monmouth was selected as the home of a newly-born school which had not yet been bap- tized Monmouth College. N. A. Rankin, E. C. Babcock and James Thompson were appointed a building committee to provide a dwelling place for the infant institution. A building site was donated by A. C. Harding in the western part of the city, on what is now A Street between Detroit and Euclid. Some three years elapsed, however, before the building could be finished. During this time, Monmouth Academy, as it was then called, boarded around For a time a home was found in the Christian church, located on the present site of the city scales on North 1st Street. A little later a move was made to the basement of the Presbyterian church, which stood where the Opera House now stands. In 1856 Monmouth Academy was raised to the rank of a college and camped for a few weeks in an old, one-room, district school which occupied the present site of the Y- M C. A building This school house was afterward moved to the corner of Archer and B Streets, where it still does service as a dwelling. In October of 1856, the new building on the lot donated by General Harding was finished and the tenant life of Monmouth College came to an end. For seven years this building served as her only home. From it the five classes from ' 58 to ' 62 were graduated. In April 1859, A. Y. and David Graham offered ten acres of the present campus as a new buildm g site on condition that a suitable brick or stone building should be com- menced by Sept. 1st, 1861, and fin- ished within three years there a f t er. The proposition i ■ f . t i •,, • • •■ ■ » 3 Jo, ,a .: A - '

Page 18 text:

was accepted and a building committee appointed con- sisting — in addition to Dr. Wallace — of Alexander Young, James G. Madden, Ivory Quinby, A. C. Harding, A. Y. Graham and J. A. Young. This new building was finished in May, 1863, costing $18,489.78, less, it is said, than the or ginal estima ' e. Monmouth College moved into this new home on May 12, and there remained until that fateful day last November. The building from which she moved was used for a number of years as an academy building. Later it housed a boarding club and became known in the student world as The Barracks. Still later it was converted into a soap factory. It was torn down in 1902. As originally built, the building of 1863 soon became too small. At a meeting of the Senate in |une, 1875, steps were taken towards its enlargement. A committee con- sisting of Prof. J. C. Hutchison, Chauncey Harding, and William Lafferty was appointed to take charge of this work. Uncer the supervision of this committee the work proceeded vigorously,, and at a cost of $14,220 the addition was finished and in use before the next June. Other buildings were added from time to time, the Presidents house in 1885, the Auditorium in 1897 and the Gymnasium in 1900. The old main building, however, re- mained the best loved of all the group It was the building that to generation after generation of students stood for Monmouth College As it lay a heap of blackened ruins on that November evening, wherever the news was carried to an old Monmouth stucent it brought a feeling of sadness. This sadness has been succeeded by determination. The cry from every quarter is Monmouth College must be better housed than ever before. It is toward this end students, faculty, trustees, alumni and friends are now bending their energies A new Carnegie library is up and since December last has been doing a main building ' s work. A heating-plant — long wishsd for - has also gone into commission. The foundation of a splendid new structure to be known as Wal- lace Hall has already been laid. McMichael Science Hall will be but a few months behind it, while a young ladies ' dormitory at no distant day will adorn Hanna Field, — the new part of the campus added through the beneficence of Mr. and Mrs. W. D. Brereton in 1906. It is the hope, too, of all that the glory of this latter hou s e shall be greater than of the former. -10-