University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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This year the University of Pittsburgh celebrates its 200th birthday. Two cen- turies of tradition, innovation and excellence have passed. The many years of history have shaped Pitt into a vibrant university that looks to the challenge of the future and embraces it. Two hundred years have led us to the threshold of one of the most exciting points in the University’s existence. Already prominent in the areas of medicine, philosophy, business and engineering, Pitt is on the verge of realizing the goal which has eluded its grasp throughout its history. As we bring to a close our second century of excellence, Pitt is poised to become one of the world’s leading institutions of research and academics. In this moment of celebration of what we have become, we must pause to recognize how we have arrived here. Thanks to the relentless research and skillful writing of Robert C. Alberts, we now embark on a brief journey through 200 years of Pitt: The Story of the University of Pittsburgh.

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Two Centuries John Bninugc photo 10 Bicentennial

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1787 1987 1936 depiction of the first building of Pittsburgh Academy. Righto Pittsburgh in the early 1840s. It all began with one man's vision. Hugh Henry Brackenritlge chose to travel 320 miles to the west, across seven ridges of mountains, to take up residence in Pittsburgh. The War for Independence was still being fought on the western frontier, and communities there were being brutally assaulted by Indian raiding parties led by British officers. He found a trading post and garrison town surrounded by wild country. It had fewer than 400 inhabitants, most of them Scots (like himself), Scots-Irish, and German, living in a town, he said, not distinguishable by house or street. Brackenridge had many noble goals for his new home. He intended to plant the values of Enlightenment in the life of the frontier town. He would adapt the place to his own personality — that is, he would civilize and educate it, improve its cultural life, and correct the morals of its people. In December of 1786, Brackenridge faced the first session of the Pennsylvania eleventh general assembly. He read aloud and entered a petition, written by himself, to charter an academy of learning in Pittsburgh. Brackenridge used Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Academy, as a model for his western academy, in that it was to receive some-support from the state government but would be governed by an independent board of trustees. The bill that founded an academy of learning in Pittsburgh was passed by the assembly on February 28, 1787. Although the Pittsburgh Academy’s charter was granted in 1787 and land was obtained, formal instruction did not begin for two years. The story that the first school building was a log house has persisted. On March 12, 1789, the trustees elected George Welch as principal and gave notice that the curriculum would include the Learned Languages, English, and the Mathematicks.” In the 1790s with the help of a public subscription and a $5,000 grant from the legislature, the trustees erected a brick building for the Pittsburgh Academy. But Pittsburgh had no true college. The trustees recognized that the Academy was inadequate to the accommodation and complete education of the students,” and they lamented that young people had to travel several hundred miles to the east to receive a higher education. By the early 1800s the trustees of the Pittsburgh Academy were making plans to develop a prestigious institution of a higher learning for the young academy graduates. Accordingly, late in 1818 they petitioned the legislature for a charter for the Western University of Pennsylvania. The charter was approved on February 18, 1819. The trustees chose as the first principal of the University the Reverend Robert Bruce, born in Scotland, a student at the University of Edinburgh, professor of natural history, chemistry, and mathematics, a remarkable man and a fine scholar. He had four other professors on his faculty. All five men belonged to different religious denominations. The full course of study at this time lasted seven years: four of preparatory work, called the classical section, and three years called the collegiate. Tuition for the classical course was twenty-five dollars a year, for the collegiate, thirty, one-half payable in advance. Boarding” ran from one dollar to two dollars a week. The first class, graduated in 1823, had three members, all destined to be clergymen. The University in 1830 moved into a new building fronting on Third Street near Cherry, built with savings, private-gifts, and an 1826 grant from the Commonwealth. (This was the last aid the state was to give for the next half-century.) By this time, public sentiment was shifting to favor useful learning,” which meant placing more emphasis on the new practical arts and sciences needed to build roads, bridges, dams, and canals, to invent and discover and develop, to administer institutions and public affairs. It was during this fledgling period of the University that one of its most influential alumni was graduated. Thomas A. Mellon, founder of the banking family in Pittsburgh, entered the Western University in 1834 at the age of twenty-one. Upon his first visit to the University, Mellon called it, just the place I had been looking for. 12 Biwnlcnnial