DePaul University - Depaulian Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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..'. '1 resign in 1909. Under Father McCabe,s administration, De Paul grew and expanded in every direction. Departments of Law, Music and Commerce were added to the University. The faculty was increased and strengthened. The enrollment took immense 1e a p s . Tradition had barred the doors of Catholic col- leges, under the direction of priests, against women. With splendid courage, braving criticism a n d opposition, Father McCabe pried off the bars and opened the doors of De Paul to women in both extension and regular courses. Portions of the University were transferred from the North Side into the Loop. When F ather McCabe, in April, 1920, relinquished the adminis- tration of the University to the president of today, Father Levan, it was after he had seen De Paul grow from one building to three and from less than two hundred men students to over two thou- sand men and women students. During the last four years the en- rollment has continued to increase until today the seven professors and sixty-nine students of 1898 have given place to more than one hundred professors and in- structors and three thousand students. We leave to prophets and to poets to tell the story of tomor- row. We walked through the old- fashioned hall- ways and sat in the makeshift classrooms of the barn-like building that was Saint Vincentts College. From the evi- dences of that yes- terday we could never have fore- told the splendor that is the fact of today. In its twenty-five years D e P a u l h a s achieved greater things than its founders dared hope or even dream. Today we walk through the corridors of its newest build- ing and sit in classrooms that are a scholarts delight. Surely we shall be pardoned, if we dream- dream of the old brick building and the college that were, and dream of what tomorrow may hold for De Paul. But the story of tomorrow we leave to another hand.

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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

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I m h...- l- thHAT THE BIRDS of tomorrow Will see as they Hit on their way through the sky, but only those Who enter the doors Will ever learn to appreciate the meaning of the Greater De Paul. y, M ? It;