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

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BATTELLE MEMORIAL

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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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Mckinley building