Occidental College - La Encina Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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passed. Little happened in actual progress, but to two more important minds, those of Pro- fessor John M. Coyner and Samuel D. Weller, D.D., the college became a molten incentive. And in January, 1887, eleven months later, a committee of the Presbyterian Union w as appointed to draft articles of incorporation for the proposed college. These were completed on February twenty-fifth and certified by the Secretary of State at Sacramento on April 20, 1887. Today this date is celebrated as Founders Day. From the minutes of that momentous board meeting which convened on February twenty-fifth, this exciting bit may be gleaned: Mr. E. S. Field suggested the name The University of the Occident — which was lost. Mr. W. C. Stevens the name The Occidental University of Los Angeles which was carried. On a motion of W. S. Young the last vote was reconsidered and the name The College of the Pacific suggested— which was lost. Then on motion of W. J. Chichester, the name of ITie Occidental University of Los Angeles, California was again proposed and carried. In regard to the quotation, it is of interest to note that while University was first used as a part of the official title for Occidental, this was changed upon the request of the trustees and through the action of the Los Angeles Supreme Court to College on July 2, 1892. For, Occidental never has been, nor probably ever will be, a university. September 20, 1887, a corner stone was laid to what the Los Angeles Times called one of the architectural beauties of the county, the original Occidental building, located in Boyle Heights. This single structure was to serve as hall of letters, administration building, women ' s dormitory, president ' s office, library, refectory, and chapel until it burned down on January 13, 1896. Hard task-master was this college in its infancy to first president, Samuel D. Weller, who saw his dreams for the growth and advancement almost tumble with times contemporary as Southern California rushed headlong from boom days into deep mire of depression. Yet it was in his four years of service that much of the stable foundations were laid upon which the college was to grow and eventually prosper. In 1888, the McPherron Academy was absorbed as a part of Occidental College. And it was this move of creating a preparatory school that was to help succor the college through its leanest years and give to the school some of its grandest alumni. Quite different was Occidental in the years of its genesis from its present composition and generation. Its terms were three, fall, winter, and spring. Monday instead of Saturday was the holiday so that the students would not be forced to travel from their homes on Sunday. Tuition for the year amounted to fifty dollars, and all expenses for the boarding collegiate came to three hundred dollars. And according to an early catalogue, there are no 10

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THE STORY OF OCCIDENTAL THEY WERE PROSPEROUS, RECKLESS, UNCERTAIN DAYS. Los Angeles, twenty years emerged from the chrysalis of a pueblo town, was surging through the greatest land boom and consequent chaos Southern California was ever to know. Prolific Los Angeles County mothered sixty mushroom cities, mostly hypothetical, offering to prospective eastern buvers some eighty thousand separate pieces of real estate. Three railroads were fighting for the supremacy of service to this ballyhooed Eldorado with a California Southern time table of 1 886 advertising rates of three dollars to Kansas City and seven dollars to Chicago, and the Southern Pacific meeting this with Kansas City, two dollars. Within that scene, however, were men with purpose far sterner than the gamble of their times. In one of these men, J. G. Bell, and in the failure of another collegiate institution. Sierra Madre College, Occidental found the impetus that was the seed of its origin. Devoted to his church, and foreseeing the failure of the Sierra Madre institution, }. G. Bell presented to Rev. William Stewart Young, minister of the Bovle Heights Presbyterian Church, the idea of establishing a liberal arts college under Presbyterian direction in Southern California. This was in the autumn of 1885. That the wheels of circumstance began almost immediately to move is to be gathered from a perusal of the minute books of the Board of Presbyterian Ministers of this city. In the winter of 1885 and 1886 the following ministers, viz.: Rev. John M. Bool, Rev. Wm. J. Chichester, Rev. Wm. C. Steven, Rev. Ira M. Condit, and Rev. W. S. Young and the Sessions of the Presbyterian churches then in the city, met and conferred as to the need of an institution for higher education under Presbyterian control. The result of the meetings which were held was embodied in the following resolution passed at the meeting in the First Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles on February 15, 1886. Moved, seconded and carried that it is the sense of this meeting that steps should be taken at once, looking towards the establishment of a Presbyterian institution of learning in the cit ' . Occidental College, un-named, unrealized, was nevertheless in the womb! Almost a year

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incidentals ... it is a mistake to give money to the student for indiscriminate use. All such money should be furnished through the President or some other member of the faculty. Each boarder will be furnished with a blank book in which to keep his or her personal account. The semester beginning October, 1888, opened with an enrollment of forty in the college and eighty-six in the academy. In 1894 the students for the institution totaled seventy-four. In i8gi President J. M. McPherron was installed in Dr. Weller ' s place only to resign three years later. It was a heavy burden, the presidency, in those days both on private purse and mind. Two years after succession to Professor McPherron in the office of president. Rev. C. N. Condit saw the physical wealth of his institution burned. A contemporary report is filled with the tragic completeness of the catastrophe: At 11:35 ' M-j a man driving toward the college across a field from the west, saw flames bursting from the roof of the tower adjoining the chimney. He whipped up his horse and gave the alarm to the inmates. Tliere was no fire apparatus about the place, but Professor Condit, assisted by members of the faculty, formed a bucket and pitcher line, but could not get water to the tower fast enough to check the flames, which spread rapidly south and east. Meanwhile a telephone message was sent to the city for aid from the Boyle Heights fire department, but the distance of the college from the city and the absence of water made it useless for the firemen to respond. It took but a few minutes to convince all that the building was doomed, so the little time remaining was devoted to removing furniture, clothing, etc. The dormitory was on the third floor, and a number of the students saved their effects by throwing them out of the windows. It being a school holiday, many were absent, and all their belongings they had left in their rooms were destroyed . . . The only students who looked cheerful were the young men of the football team who were fortunate enough to save their football-hair. Perhaps, the greatest single beneficence that grew out of the ashes of what had been Occidental College was the realization of the loyalty of the Young family to that school. To stranded students, the home of Dr. and Mrs. Wm. S. Young was thrown open as temporary haven. And for the remainder of the year classes were held in Dr. Young ' s Boyle Heights Presbyterian Church for the rental fee of 190 yards of three-ply ingrained carpet. To quote from Dr. Cleland ' s History oi Occidental College, Before the opening of the next semester, arrangements were made to lease a part of the building formerly occupied by St. Vincent ' s College, at 614 South Hill Street in Los Angeles. Here the college held its sessions until its removal to Highland Park in 1898. One wonders how many of the tens of thousands who now daily pass Seventh and Broadway realize that the alley which separates 11