Brigham Young University - Banyan Yearbook (Provo, UT)

Page 19 text:

All the city had been aroused, and next morning the students were moving everywhere about the smoking embers. There seemed to be no note of hope left in the subdued conversa- tion of the little groups here and there. The only question seemed to be how soon they could get ready to start for home. Presently Brother Maeser, whose white hair and dignified bearing had already made him venerable, mounted a chair, and called the crowd to order. There was hope shining out in his fine, strong face and courage in the ring of his voice. Bidding the students not to lose heart, he invited them all to a meeting in the Stake tabernacle. Here the lesson of the fire was impressed upon us? and we were told, not only that the school would go on, but that steps had already been taken to erect new and suitable quarters. Events moved rapidly that day? President Smoot had just completed the bank building on the corner of Academy avenue and Center street? and although the First National Bank corporation, the Smoot Drug Company, and various office renters, were ready and eager to move in, the grand old man moved them all off, to give a free home to the homeless school. By the following morning black-boards had been made and placed in the walls, and desks and benches filled all the rooms. That the institution should, in the face of so overwhelming a calamity, lose only one day of regular work, was al- ways thereafter a source of tender pride to its first great teacher. But the bank building proved inade- quate for more than the normal, academic, and commercial departments. It became a question, therefore, whether or not to discontinue the grades. At this point an- other public-spirited gentleman came to the rescue. Mr. L. L. Jones had just com- pleted a new store on the site now occupied by the Piovo Meat Packing Co., and here the rest of the school found shelter? the intermediate departments below, the prim- ary and preparatory above. As is well known Dr. Maeser had not only to develop the school itself? he had The mgh school Buiming [11]

Page 18 text:

.Msda 1. j . X— aiUBiii iHa ' ' .»5 m i for it was here on the night of January 24, 1884, that the first home of our beloved institution caught fire and burned to the ground. But I anticipate my story. The owners had no sooner completed this excellent commercial block, than they discovered it to be the proverbial white elephant on their hands. It was by reason of this fact that Brigham Young found occasion to pur- chase the property. And so it happened that by a deed of trust, executed October 16, 1875, he found- ed the Brigham Young Academy. A pie- liminary session had already been held the previous year, with Messrs. Warren N. and Wilson H. Dusenberry, two young college- bred men recently from the East, as teach- ers; they were succeeded in the spring by Dr. Karl G. Maeser. But the academic year is reckoned from August 25, 1875, when the school was formally opened, the dedicatory prayer having been offered by President Daniel H. Wells. The enrollment increased so that during the fourth year the average attendance was about 250; but in the years following it grew to 350; and during one year to 400. This in- crease lead A. O. Smoot, President of the board, to build two additions, one on the north and one on the east, thus furnishing four new class rooms. The school had grown very rapidly, and was rejoicing in its new found opportunities, when the great fire came. That was a momentous episode, not only for the four hundred students in attendance, but for the entire city. About midnight of January 24, 1884, the flames burst through the roof, startling the neighborhood. The lurid glare lit up the snow for blocks around. The meeting house bell clamored out the terrifying news, and soon bucket brigades were formed; but the flames had gained too much headway, and fed by the keen frosty air, they made a most magnificent pyrotechnic display. Nor was there ever a more fascinated audience than that made up of the saddened faces upturned to this funeral pyre of their Alma Mater. [10] The Z. C. M. I. Building

Page 20 text:

12 J-||.-vi 1 1 i rt ,1 1 Y 1% 1 ' ' Il iiiii bb ' ■iaSAMBIIIBSifSii ifer.--;; . .■ vi : ? ; : : - ' ------ ■ The College Building also to create the faculty — both, be it said, o«t of very raw material. No doubt the venerable educator had been much and often pained by the rawness of his young assistants. To improve them in general scholarship, he arranged that each should teach as great a variety of branches as pos- sible — thus compelling self-improvement. Then, also, he contrived to give them an hour of his time after school on some high school study. It was thus that they got for instance, an elementary knowledge of the modern languages. By the time school was ready to open in the fall of 1884, the board had leased about three-fourths of the floor space of the Z. C. M. I. warehouse, near the depot, and partitioned off into rooms suitable to the wants of the school. This building like the Lewis Block, had proved to be a premature business venture; and so again the school found at hand a home fitted to its needs, with but little outlay of means. These quarters proved really more commodious than those in the first building had been; which fact accounts for the school remaining housed there for the next seven years and a half. To thousands of students now beset by the hard realities of life, the old warehouse will ever be associated with the dearest memories of youth; proving thereby that the power of a school in shaping character does not depend upon elaborate buildings, nor ornate fur- nishings, but rather upon the spiritual and intellectual atmosphere within its walls. To put it in the language of President Garfield in a tribute to the power of his own beloved teacher: Dr. Hopkins and a fallen log in the woods would, at any time or place, constitute a great university. As the years wore on. Dr. Maeser ' s system of Education was justified by such splendid results, that seminaries and stake academies were established everywhere throughout Zion, and he was himself chosen as General Superintendant of Church Schools; a position he held from the year 1890 until his death. Prof. Benj. Cluff succeeded him as president of the institution, the change occurring on the removal of the school to the new building, [12]