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

Page 25 text:

Ceas blllty 0l, ta nt feU thumbs, respectively, of Wolfe and son. . . . Going ' to take up selling unemployed apples. Prof Smith? . . . Mid-term exams, or teacher ' s holiday! . . . Preparations under way for reviving periodic frenzy among studes in May!

Page 24 text:

Stalling for Time ? Red-checkered sheriff and be-mus- cled damsels, scientific shouts, historic harangues, and harber shop harmony at faculty thespian attempt. . . • Dr. Bentley whipping off to G. B. and hack. . . Parking space line-ups blind one with new chro- mium and baby-blue paint. . . . Regular bread-line of advice-seekers in offices. . . . Dr. Bauer rushing to meet Mrs. B. . . . Donble-s Andersson or single-s ditto? . . . Office under capable and beguiling

Page 26 text:

Ilistorv of A.I . So we are setting up on this hill as upon a high pedestal once more the compass of human life with its great needle pointing steadily at the lodestar of the human spirit. Let men who wish to know come and look upon this compass and thereafter determine which way they will go! Thus spoke President Woodrow Wilson on May 27, 1915. at the official opening of the American University. He with the rest of the brilliant assemblage was witnessing the birth of the youngest Univer- sity in the United States at that time. On that day the hopes and plans of many years reached a final tangible culmination; it was soon after the Civil War that American Methodists began a movement aim- ing at the establishment of a great national Christian institution of higher learning in the Nation ' s Capital. Physically the first step was taken by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, the constructive mind hope behind the enterprise, when he purchased a 9 L 2-aere tract of land on Loughboro Road (now Nebraska Avenue) in 1890 and held it until 1891 when the American University had its inception as an organization to be chartered by an act of Congress in 1893. Measuring his faith by his courage, in that transaction we perceive the spiritual foundation upon which the foundation of the University was established. This was spoken in 1915 when the grad- uate school began its classes, but the speaker, Bishop Cranston, real- ized that the task was just beginning, for he warned his listeners that the impressive May program was prophetic rather than monumental. And for the next twenty years plans and building programs con- tinued to take form proving the wisdom of his utterance, with the College of History (now Hurst Hall) and the McKinley Building as material results. During the war, however, the campus was turned over to army occupation, its grounds being covered with tents and temporary buildings, some of which still stand. By necessity the Graduate School was removed to a more convenient down-town loca- tion where it has remained ever since. The half-finished laboratory building of the Chemical Warfare Society was taken over by the Univer- sity and converted into the present Women ' s Residence Hall. In 1926 Battelle Memorial Library and the Gymnasiun were added, continuing the classic principle of building construction in the early buildings. In 1925 the University again held an opening ceremony, this time for the College of Liberal Arts, filling the empty campus of a decade before both physically and ideally as those great men first conceived it. 20