DePaul University - Depaulian Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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ISMAL in its magnificence, melan- choly in its grave solitude, yet withal glorious and fascinating under the touch of naturds hand is this section of G0ch portion of the Greater De Paul. Page I6

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ing, painted a dull yellow, Changed to a duller brown by the smoke, the rain and the dust of the streets, at building which any passerby would take for a factory, stood at the corner of Webster Avenue and Osgood street in the summer of 1898. In the im- mediate neighbor- hood were a few homes and many lots, the barren descendants of rich truck gardens. In the late sum- mer Of 1898, the attention of the neighborhood resi- dents was caught by a legend over the door of the brick building which had once been a church. Some smiled in pleasure and some in doubt. The legend read : SAINT VINCENTtS COLLEGE. Within the walls of this bleak building, unblessed by a single architectural beauty, on September 5th, 1898, seven professors and sixty-nine students gathered to realize Archbishop Feehants dream of a college on the North Side. In June, 1901, the infant college sent into the world its first graduates. Those Who had smiled in doubt doubted no longer. q THREE story brick build- Yesterday-aToday-Tomorrow C. J. OSTHOFF, C. M., A. M. The first president of Saint Vincenfs College, Father Byrne, a man with a faith in the future so great that others smiled in pity, decided that the unsightly brick building must be torn down to make possible the erec- tion of another structure, archi- tecturally beauti- ful and adapted to educational pur- poses. In 1907, the large stone building, now de- voted to the Acad- emy and housing four times the total number of students then en- rolled, was Opened. With the old build- ing went the old name of Saint Vincentts College, and with the new building came the new name of DE PAUL UNIVERSITY. To say the least, it seemed odd to give the name of University to an institution with less than two hundred students, but Father Byrne was a man with a big faith in the future of the little college. De Paults era of greatest ex- pansion began with the coming of its third president, Father McCabe, who, in 1910, followed Father Martin, the successor of Father Byrne, who had been obliged on account of ill health to Page 18 i H mm