Lewis and Clark College - Voyageur Yearbook (Portland, OR)

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or PROGRESS as many as fifty doing college work and it was 1925- 26 before students registering for college work num- bered as many as 100. The paying off of the college debt in its entirety was one of the great achievement of the Lee ad- ministration. The next president was Harry M. Crooks who served from 1905 to 1915 when he left to become president of Alma College, Alma, Michigan. One of Crooksa greatest services to Albany College was the building up of the endowment fund to $262,000, of which amount he had persuaded James J . Hill the great railroad magnate to give $50,000. Also, during Crooks7 administration the college acquired forty acres of land on the southern edge of the town of Albany as a new campus site. But it was not until 1926 that the move to the new campus was made. Ex-president Lee who had left in 1905 to become assistant pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Seattle, and later Dean of Whitworth College in Spokane, returned to Albany in 1914-15 and when President Crooks left, became acting president until January 1, 1920. Then Rev. Alfred Williams and Raymond J. Baker held the office for two and one year periods respectively. In 1923 Clarence W. Greene became president for a five-year period. His administration introduced the so-called Albany Self-Help plan-a plan more elabor- ate than anything that had been attempted before, and saw more construction work done than had been done in the first sixty years of the collegeis history. When the college moved to the Monteith campus in the summer of 1926, a new administra- tion building, the William Henry Gray Hall, had been erected, Tremont Hall had been moved to the new campus and transformed into a dormitory for women and renamed Woodward Hall, and funds for a new gymnasium had been secured under the terms of trustee Eric Hauserls will, which left an unre- stricted bequest of $100,000 to the college. The gym, however, was not erected until after Greene had left. In January, 1929, Thomas W. Bibb, Ph.D., be- came president and served until just before all the college work was moved to Portland in 1938. In 1930, the college had been accredited by the North- west Association of Secondary and Higher Schools and in the same year was admitted as a member of the Association of American Colleges, as a result of its high scholastic work, but the depression of the early 30,5 hit the college hard. Attendance fell off rapidly, morale was at a low ebb, faculty salaries were drastically cut and partially paid in notes signed by the Board of Trustees, and there was fric- tion in the faculty, with many of them leaving. In 1934 a Portland unit doing only junior college work was established, first in the old Allen School building at S. E. 12th and Salmon Streets, and later at S. W. 13th and Main Streets in what is now known as the KEX Broadcasting Studio and the other near- by buildings. The venture was so successful with the attendance far outstripping the attendance at Al- bany, that in the summer of 1938 the mother insti- tution closed its doors for good and all work was transferred to Portland. But the condition of the college was so poor and its future out-look so bleak that in April 1936 it lost the accreditation it had gained in 1930. From 1938 to 1942 all the college work was done in Portland and at an air base in Ontario, Oregon. Dr. Greene returned from Parsons College to take the helm again for a three-year period ending De- cember 5, 1941, when he was succeeded by Dean B. A. Thaxter who served as acting president until June 1942 when Dr. Morgan Odell came to lift the institution out of its slough of despondence. For three years Dr. Greene had labored valiantly to find a new campus home in Portland and put the faltering college back on its feet. But all to no avail. In J une, 1942 there was graduated the last and largest class yet to graduate from Albany College-31 in all. During this month, Dr. Odell by almost super-human efforts raised enough money to buy the beautiful Lloyde Frank estate on Palatine Hill for a new home for a brave new college; for in the fall, when all the work was moved to the new campus, Albany College changed its name to Lewis and Clark College. There were seven makeshift buildings and the Manor House on the sixty-five acre tract. Now, 16 years later, there are twenty-three buildings, a stadium, and an athletic field. Enrollment has grown from 123 to more than 1050, and the faculty from 20 to 70.

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Beginning in 1851 attempts had been made to establish a Presbyterian Academy in La Fayette, on Clatsop Plains, in Corvallis, and in Brownsville, but for one reason or another they all had come to naught. F inally in 1866 the college-minded citizens of Albany held a mass-meeting to take some action on the matter. Seven acres of land was donated for a campus by Walter and Thomas Monteith, and deeded over to the General Assembly of the Presby- terian Church for educational purposes. Eight thousand dollars was raised for the erection of a plain, frame building, 50 by 60 feet, with two stories surmounted by a tower. On February 2, 1867, the new school, to be officially known as the Albany Collegiate Institute was chartered by the Legislature of the State of Oreaon, and was opened in the fall of that same year. Sometimes the early records speak of it as a Collegiate Institute or Academy, and some- times as a College. But, as a matter of fact, primary courses were a part of the curriculum for a number of years, though a few standard college courses were offered. Most of the work, however, was done on the academy level. The twenty years between 1867 and 1887 were very difficult ones, full of struggle and hope and frustration. Administrations changed rapidly, there being ten presidents during this period. The first one was the Rev. W. J. Monteith, brother of the donors of the land, followed by the Rev. Henry Bushnell who served but one year. On January 29, 1869, the Rev. Edward R. Geary, the virtual father of the institution became its third president. After two years he resigned to be succeeded by Royal E. Warren, who left in 1876 to become the Superin- tendent of Schools in Portland. During Mr. Warrenis administration, on June 19, 1873, the first Gradua- tion exercises were held by the four young ladies of the graduating class, including Cora Irvine tStew- arU for whom our Stewart Hall was named. The Rev. Howard Stratton followed Warren and served as president for two years. During his ad- ministration the Young Ladies Societies petitioned the Board to build a fence around the college grounds. The Erodelphians contributed $50.00 toward the building of this fence. Stratton resigned in 1878 and was followed by David B. Rice, M. D., who served one year. In April, 1879, the Rev. Elbert N. Condit, a graduate of Princeton became the seventh president of the Institute in its twelve-year history. After six years, however, Condit resigned because of dissension in the faculty and was followed in rapid succession by the Rev. Joseph C. Cykoff, Earl Lockhard, and Edwin J. Thompson, D.D. But in 1887 Condit was again elected president and served until 1894 when he resigned to become presi- dent of Occidental College in California. In June, 1886, things looked so dark for the insti- tution that all plans were suspended, the faculty was dispersed, and it was thought the college would never again open; but in the fall work was resumed with Thompson serving as president for another year. Mr. Condit,s second administration was on the whole a successful one. The student body had in- creased in size, the faculty strengthened, and courses of study had been adopted for the college depart- ment that would compare favorably with those of- fered by some of the larger and well-known colleges of the East. It was at this time, too, that orange and black were adopted as the school colors. The fact that Condit was a Princeton man may have had some bearing on this choice of colors. Fredrick G. Young followed Condit with a one NINETY YEARS year term, to be succeeded by Wallace Howe Lee, one of Albany,s greatest presidents, who served in that capacity in the decade between 1895 and 1905. In 1896 the first Bachelor of Arts degrees were con- ferred by the college. Before that graduates of the College Department received Bachelor of Science degrees. In 1901 the Orphan,s Home building was purchased and moved to the campus the next year where it was known as Tremont Hall, a dormitory for women. It was in 1892 that the Institution became official- ly known as a College instead of an Academy but it was 1898 before the General Assembly,s committee definitely classified it as a standard college with a three year preparatory course. Actually enrollment in the College Department in 1893-4 was four stu- dents and in the College Preparatory Department, thirty. In 1895 the College Department had 19, with a total of 115 in all departments. In 1904 there were 34 in the College Department and 117 in the Acad- emy. Up to 1915 in only two years had there been

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PRESIDENTS OF THE COLLEGE Rev. William 1. Montieth, 1867-1868 Rev. Henry Bushnell, 1868-1869 Rev. Edward R. Geary, D.D., 1869-1871 Royal K. Warren, 1871-1876 Rev. Howard W. Stratton, 1876-1878 David B. Rice, M.D., 1878-1879 Rev. Elbert Neal Condit, A.M.,1879-1885 Rev. J oseph C. Wyckoff, A.M., 1885-1886 Rev. Earl T. Lockhard, April 1886-1une, 1886 Rev. Edwin J. Thompson, D.D., 1886-1887 Rev. Elbert Neal Condit, A.M., 1887-1894 Frederick George Young, A.M., 1894-1895 Rev. Wallace Howe Lee, A.M., 1895-1905 Harry Means Crooks, LL.D., 1905-1915 Rev. Wallace Howe Lee, A.M., D.D., 1915-1920 Rev. Alfred Melvin Williams, D.D., 1920-1922 Raymond J . Baker, A.B., 1922-1923 Clarence Wilson Greene, A.M., M.Pd., Ph.D., 1923-1928 Thomas William Bibb, A.M., Ph.D., 1929-1938 Cl-arence Wilson Greene, A.M., M.Pd., Ph.D., 1938-1941 Benjamin Augustus Thaxter, A.M., L.H.D., 1941-1942 WWQ $98. W 7195-pr 1 S E E 1 1m wannyw V-