University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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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

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1787 1987 In the 1830s the trustees were pushing for reorganization and a new look. In 1835 they filled vacancies on the Board of Trustees with young replacements, and they appointed the Reverend Dr. Gilbert Morgan, given the new title of president, to replace Robert Bruce. In his inaugural address Morgan declared that a new motivation, which he called General Education, should be brought into the classroom “to perfect the entire character of the individual and of society itself.” However, Morgan’s term was short and unsuccessful; he could not manage an effective compromise in the eternal conflict between theoretical and practical education. With his departure, Bruce was reinstated to his former position. Bruce's second tenure was also shortlived, as he left due to international dissension. In the midst of this instability and change, catastrophe struck the city and the University on April 10, 1845. At around noon an untended backyard fire at Ferry and Second streets spread to an ice house and then to several frame houses. By nightfall twenty squares in the most valuable part of the city were in ruins. The University's hall at Third Street and Chery was destroyed, and with it all the Academy and University records, files, books, furniture, and scientific equipment. Some trustees wanted to cease operations. Others wanted to sell the valuable lot, and relocate on cheaper ground outside Pittsburgh. Luckily this plan was rejected. With the money received from insurance and the scale of the old property, a new building was erected on Duquesnc Way (on the site later occupied by Horne’s department store). In July 1849, only four years after the Great Fire, disaster struck again. In a fire in the lower part of town, the Duquesne Way building was destroyed with all its contents. This time the disheartened trustees voted to suspend operations. The Western University remained alive but dormant through many of the next six years. On September 2, 1854, the cornerstone for a new building was laid and contained a copy of each of the city's eleven newspapers and a list of those working on the building. To their names they appended an exhortation: God save the Union and abolish all slavery!” The decade to come would be dominated by the United States Civil War. After the fall of Fort Sumpter in April 1861 and President Lincoln's call for an army of volunteers, the College and the city changed in appearance and in spirit. The students were given the largest room in the building as a gymnasium, and an army officer was stationed there to instruct them in drill and military tactics. Pittsburgh was swarming with workmen throughout the war, for it was supplying the North with heavy cannon, small arms, armor plate, steamboats, steel pipe, steel and iron fabrication parts, and coal. The Fort Pitt Foundry alone furnished almost three thousand cannon, including the largest in the world, the fifteen-inch Columbiad, and 10 million pounds of shot and shell. When the Confederate command surrendered on April 9, 1865, Pittsburgh was admirably equipped to supply the industrial products needed to build cities and expand across a continent. Its forty-six iron foundries were producing two-thirds of the country’s iron; its blast furnaces and thirty-one rolling mills were turning out half its steel. A new industry had been born in 1859 in Titusville, 100 miles north of the city. Now, with fifty-eight oil refineries operating, it was searching for more efficient and new uses for its product. Accumulation of the first Pittsburgh fortunes began. During this time the Western University was busy reforming and upgrading its curriculum. In August 1867, Samuel Pierpont Langly was chosen director of Allegheny Observatory and professor of astromy and physics, in 1870, the engineering course was extended to four years, and an attempt was made to revive the Law School. The University received $25,000 in 1875 from the estate of Charles Avery, a progressive clergyman, to provide free tuition for black students. Once again, in 1882, a fire caused the Western University to move to a new location — across the river to Allegheny City. The University remained at this site for eight years before moving to Observatory Hill. In late 1890, the trustees elected as chancellor Dr. William Jacob Holland, a remarkable man with an extraordinary background, who was on the verge of becoming a nationally known writer, scientist, and personality. He was well equipped to gain the confidence of persons of influence and means, and he was not likely to accept easily their refusal to give when he asked them to give. In the administration of William Holland, the College was to become a university. Holland’s term as Chancellor was characterized by tremendous academic reform. First, he began a program of graduate studies that would result in postgraduate degrees. Second, he accepted two sisters, the Misses Margaret Lydia and Stella Mathilda Stein, into the College and, in what was called a momentous decision of supreme importance to the higher education of Pittsburgh and the vicinity, announced that the University would hereafter be coeducational. Third, he brought into the fold three already established commercial professional schools that had expressed a desire to become affiliated with the Western University. These were the Western Pennsylvania Medical College, which became part of the University in 1896. And in 1895 he contrived, finally, to establish a full-fledged school of law. These advances were aided by the increased financial support from such wealthy Pittsburghers as Andrew W. Mellon, George Westinghousc and Andrew Carnegie. 14 Bicentennial