Harvard Boys High School - Review Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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l l Michigan at Iackson CBeiore the Firel Seoenlq eau WVHiCHHCAGQ AND THE HARVARD SCHOCL FOR BUYS 1865-l94O T was l8657 the Civil War was over. The city of Chicago, thirty years earlier a straggling village on the banks of a sluggish stream, now found itself an important center, the hub of the rapidly developing West. Ugly and untidy, but full of vitality and energy, it was the place of which Dickens Wrote: This is the first American city l have encountered. Having seen it once, I urgently desire never to see it again. lt is inhabited by savages. lts amazing growth, for already it had a population of one hundred seventy- nine thousand inhabitants, attracted young men from the East seeking wider opportunities. A large group, including young Marshall Field, came together from Vermont. The war had stimulated Chicago's industries, and it was too early to feel the inevitable backwash of war,-financial depression. The sprawling city of small frame houses spread far out to the West Side, then one of the fashionable sections, and stretched several miles north and south. lts imposing center of five and six story brick buildings clustered about what is now the Loop. Tree-lined Michigan Avenue, a wide and pleasant city PAGE 13

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residence street, resounded to the hoof beats of smartly-groomed horses taking their masters to work in surreys and landausy and on the outskirts near Con- gress Street, quiet Wabash Avenue had its hospitable homes set far back from the street in well tended lawns. Wealth was rapidly piling up, and many of the business men who came from New England intended to send their children to Eastern colleges: but educational facilities were not yet fully developed in Chicago. These condi- tions led Mr. Edward S. Waters, a scholarly Harvard man, to open a pre- paratory school for young men. lt was situated in a house at Congress and Wabash Avenues, and named the Harvard School for Boys in honor of his alma mater. The school struggled along: financial conditions were not so rosyp then came the Chicago fire and the depression resulting from it and the war. The population of Chicago had, however, more than doubled in ten years, it was over 400,000 in l875. lt was then that lohn I. Schobinger, a young Swiss graduate of the University of Zurich, came to the school as a teacher of natural science and remained to guide its destinies for the next fifty years. ln l875 the school, then at No. 21 Sixteenth Street, had sixteen pupils, in l878, thirtyffivep in l880, seventy-five: in l882, one hundred fifteen. ln spite of this apparently rapid development, the school labored under great financial strain during these early years. One year when final accounts were cast up, Mr. Schobinger found that he had earned just one dollar per day. ln fact, when summer came he had exactly nothing to live on for three months of vacation, and only the timely invitation of one of his pupils, Walter Grey, to spend the summer with his family in the country saved the day. Their country home was far out in Hyde Park, accessible only by rail. lt may be interesting to read the program of the commencement exercises of l882, which started at nine o'clock in the morning and lasted until four or 7' Congress Avenue at Wabash tBefore the Fire? PAGE 14