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Page 17 text:
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Chapter One LEHIGH HISTORY ♦ ♦ HE FOUNDING of Lehigh was the outcome of a movement inaugurated in 1865 hy the Hon- orahle Asa Packer of Mauch Chunk, with the purpose of affording education in the learned professions as then recognized and training in technical hranches, the importance of which was then hecoming ap- pare nt in the economic readjustment following the close of the Civil War. Judge Packer was a pioneer in a most significant phase of industrial development, the transportation of coal from the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania to tidewater. He hecame the recognized master of canal hoat transportation. Then, foreseeing the supplanting of lioat ])y train as a carrier of coal, he huilt the Lehigh Valley Railroad from Mauch Chunk to Easton, later extending it to the port of Perth Amboy and deeper into the coal region of the Wyoming Valley and into New York State. The crowning work of the life of this great industrial leader whom President McCrea of the Pennsylvania Railroad once termed conspicuous among great men and public benefactors was his conception of a university in the Lehigh Valley which would provide for ' ' a complete professional educa- tion. His purpose, as set forth in the first Register of Lehigh LTniversity, included this statement: While such an institution promises to be of peculiar benefit to the Lehigh Vallev, and to the numerous other districts of Pennsylvania which are rich in mineral resources of many kinds, its usefulness will not be thus limited. It is intended for the benefit of the whole country; the instruction which it imparts will enable its graduates to play intelligent parts in exploring and developing the resources of all portions of the LTnited States. Lehigh ' s first trustees were, with few exceptions, practical men whose busi- ness lay in railroading and mining in the Lehigh Valley with the result that the technical branches of the LTniversity developed most quickly. Packer, how- ever, did not have in mind a purely technical school, as is evidenced by his refusal of a petition l)rought to him in 1878 by a body of Alumni, who wished to make Lehigh exclusively an engineering institution. William Bacon Stevens, Bishop of Pennsylvania, to whom Judge Packer had first confided his intentions of founding the University, was made President of the Board of Trustees. He proceeded to map out upon the fifty acres included in the founder ' s donation the ground scheme of the University. At his sugges- 13
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Page 18 text:
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tion Henry Coppee was J)rou«ht from the chair of Belles Lettres at the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania to he President of Lehigh. Dr. Coppee, a graduate of Yale and West Point, had served in the Mexican War, after which he taught at West Point and the University of Pennsylvania. Lehigh ' s original complement numhered five professors, 40 students, and one janitor. The first session was held in Christmas Hall, the only building on the campus. The Moravians had erected this structure to serve as a church for their members in South Bethlehem, but before they could make use of it Asa Packer bought it for his new institution. When the professors took up their duties they had in charge forty students and a plan of studies which called for two years devoted to those elementary branches in which every young man should be instructed , after which the student could direct his studies and efforts to some special course of his own choosing. The educational divisions of the University were Civil Engineering,, Mechanical Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Analytical Chemistry, and a School of General Literature. These Special Schools were opened in the fall of 1867, graduates of other schools being received without preliminary examina- tion, and the students who comprised them were known as Junior and Senior Schoolmen. In 1868 Sayre Observatory was donated by Robert H. Sayre, Esq., and Packer Hall was occupied for the first time, its facilities being ample to accommodate the special courses. Saucon Hall was built in 1874 to supply the need for more space for the various departments, some of its rooms being used for dormi- tories. Then came the Gymnasium, now Coppee Hall, the Chemical Laboratory, and Packer Memorial Church. With Dr. Lamberton ' s inauguration as University President in 1880 there began to flow into the LIniversity an insistent and ever increasing volume of students which broke down many of the early customs. A serious accident which occurred at a rush between sophomore and freshman classes caused the students to vote the abolition of the ' cane rush and to sulistitute for it an annual contest on Founder ' s Day. No history of Lehigh is complete without an account of Richard Harding Davis. Davis, who is credited with doing more for undergraduate life than any other student, founded Arcadia, now the student governing body, as a protest against social fraternities. He wrote for the Burr, then a news publication rather than the comic monthly which it became in later years, and wrote the ♦ ♦ PICTURE: President Martin D. Whitaker at his desk in the Alumni Memorial Building. 14
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