Concordia College - White and Blue Yearbook (Milwaukee, WI)

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Tm WLM e CQme'En Q 4:? WM X INTRODUCTION HIS portal stands for progress, insofar as its erection marked the out- set of a fresh movement on- ward. To us, the class of 1928, it has also been the front door to a home in which we have dwelt together as one great family. . .. We wish to lead you through all parts of this book by l T, way of it. :-d e

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The F irst Nineteen Years ONCORDIA College of Milwaukee has grown, is growing, and under the fa- vorable conditions of the present there is every reason to believe that it will long continue to grow. It has steadily emerged from a bare handful of stu- dents gathered in a corner of a parochial school and taught by a single in- structor, to an institution with an enrollment of about three hundred students instructed by almost a score of professors, and with buildings scattered over three city blocks. When in the seventies of the last century the huge waves of Lutheran immigrants rolled westward and gradually subsided, it became evident that the several schools bearing the common name Concordia could not sponge up the overly great number of youngsters who sought admittance into their walls. Some far-visioned Lutherans in Wisconsin and nor- thern Illinois immediately set about, therefore, to consider creating a new college of the Concordian type. Men highly prominent in this movement were Pastor Wunder of Chicago and Pastor Loeber of Milwaukee. A proposal for the much-needed college was presented to the Delegate Synod at Ft. Wayne, and was forthwith adopted. And now the dream of the greatly-to-be-wished-for preparatory college began to take on tangible outlines when a. spirited delegation of Lutherans of the Northwest declared themselves wholly in favor of the Cream City as the ideal location for the seedling Concordia. Now that the college had been granted and the place of its establishment had been chosen, matters started to move ahead at a lively rate. In the month of July, 1881, the first board of directors of Concordia College, consisting of Rev. H. WunderY Rev. C. StrasenY Rev. Chr. Loeber, and Messrs. C. Eisfeldt and J. Pritzlaff of Milwaukee, called a young graduate from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, to fill the first professorship. At the same time, the Lutherans of Milwaukee showed themselves to be more than pleased with the decision to found the new college in their city. To proceed afield: the three dis- tricts of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota were also highly enthusiastic over the found- ing of the new Concordia. They decided to prove in an inspiriting manner how they felt about it when they clicked open their pocketbooks to pile up the then fat sum of $25,000 to give the launching of the institution financial assistance. Several outstanding donations were made by Messrs. Koch, Eisfeldt, and Wollaeger. The initial opening of the college was not to be delayed unnecessarily by the usual slowness of building operations, since a room in the Trinity Lutheran Day School, which still stands on the corner of Eighth and Highland Streets, was encouragingly turned over to the Board of Control to be used as a classroom until Concordia could speak of a roof of its own. The heartful willingness of the Cream City Lutherans to render the college their services was especially noticeable when families in the vicinity of the Trinity School readily agreed to harbor the students for over a year, in parental fashion, and for a feeble fee. Announcements to the clerically ambitious were then made in the Lutheraner, where- upon thirteen lucky boys were enrolled.