University of Washington - Tyee Yearbook (Seattle, WA)

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m Professor Johnson ' s Territorial title. Professor of Natural History, indicates some- what of the condition in those days. President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, during a visit, asked him what chair he held. When Professor Johnson told him the subjects he taught, President Eliot waved his hand and uttered his famous joke: Oh, I see. you occupy a settee instead of a chair. Tuition fees were twice as high then as those provided in the recent law. Thai was the only source of maintenance. The Territorial Legislatures made small appropria- tions but they were to be applied to pay the tuition of such free students as were appointed by the Governor, the three Judges and the members of the Legislature. I have a distinct recollection of those fees for I delivered milk about town and carried papers to earn the necessary money. I was relieved from the payment for a time when my bills were paid by Dexter Horton. But I did not learn who that good friend was until both he and President Anderson, who kept the secret, were dead. The curriculum in those days was not extensive but I have a firm conviction that much of the work was thoroughly intensive. Study and work was about all the students had to do. One week of our present social activities could not have been matched by the record of a whole college generation of four years then. I saw but one dress-suit in my college days. That was when Dr. Thomas T. Minor came to give us an evening address. I never before had seen a man so arrayed except in picture books. I have long since forgotten the subject of his discourse, but the fine figure of the speaker is one of the clear mental pictures of my boyhood. Our only gymnasium was in the yard. We had a small field for baseball and chose sides rather than having organized teams. We had one big round football and kicked it for distance until W. H. Whittlesey, from Princeton, showed the boys how to line up for a game. I think that was about 1887. We had one big iron dumb-bell and played all kinds of weight games vilh that. Charles L. Denny held the record of jumping with it. We had a pair of boxing gloves, but I don ' t care to tell what happened to me with them. About where the Henry Building now stands we had a trapeze, some rings and a horizontal bar. We thought we were having lots of fun, and some of my old classmates have not ceased to marvel over Washington ' s great change in the matter of athletics. The people of Washington Territor - had agitated the question for more than a dozen years before they attained statehood in 1 889. The changes wrought were rapid and remarkable. All the potential wealth of forest and field and sea were laid hold of vsnth vigor. The University shared the general impulse. The wooden buildings were deemed inadequate, the campus too small, the standards too provincial. In the second session of the State Legislature. 1891, and again in 1893. laws were enacted securing the new campus, erecting new buildings of stone, iron and brick. Tuition was made free and money was appropriated directly for maintenance. Of course the student body increased rapidly. The old settees wtre divided up into more comfortable chairs. A huge gymnasium was provided and an instructor was secured for the athletic work. The institution was moved to the new campus in September, 1895. Very soon thereafter the Faculty began to arrange the curriculum into groups. Schools and colleges emerged and the institution was a university in fact as well as in name. Measured by clocks and calendars, that time is not so very long ago, but I notice that my classmates are all growing gray. I must not acknowledge that we are growing old, for I have so much to do. Anyway, the University is still young and earnestly striving toward the highest ideals.

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m THE WINGED YEARS Henry Landes. Dean of College of Science. rTjTlT SEEMS but yesterday, so kind have been the winged years, that the telegram came I 1 1 announcing that we were to go to the University of Washington. From our house on li ' bn ' ' small hill, overlooking a most beautiful rock-bound bay on the coast of Maine, we ' ' took one last look at the deep-blue waters of the Atlantic, and never tarried until we had crossed the continent to our new home on the Pacific border. It was on an afternoon in September, 1895, that our train arrived in Seattle, and we alighted on a broad street near the water-front. 1 he low buildmgs, the general lack of paving, the hilly streets, and the straggling nature of the city afforded to our eastern eyes some strange contrasts with Boston and New ork. First street, then called Front street, had a most dilapidated plank pavement, over which cable-cars careened in such a way that a passenger could imagine he was a child again and engaged in a game of see-saw. Second avenue was paved for a short distance with brick, and so was a section of Pike street. Third street was planked but it abounded in hills and hollows and in profile resembled some letter w ' s placed side by side. It was on Third street that the University ca r-line ran — one of the six independent lines of the city — without transfers. The running time from Yesler Way to the University was fort ' -five minutes, if the car remained on the track, which was unusual. I will never forget with what absorbing interest I made my first trip to the University over that line. After we had rattled along for an interminable time we got out of the city into the woods and it required much reassurance on the part of the conductor to make me believe that the University was yet ahead of us. I remember that I counted the abrupt turns on the way and there were twenty-two of them. There was an occasional turn-out on the track, which was hardly necessary because there were but three cars operating at one time. A rambling trail led from the car-line, through the woods and among the big stumps, to Denny Hall. This was then called the Administration building, and was not yet finished, although occupied by teachers and students. The obser ator ' was com- pleted and the instrument mounted. (An observatory had been built because the Presi- dent at that time was an astronomer. He could not be censured for preferring to look at the stars rather than at the terrestral things around about him). Peering through the straggling trees, in the distance, one could see the outlines of the gymnasium. When I first saw it I thought it was a train-shed and I expected to see a smoking engine run out of it. It was then regarded as a mere makeshift — to stand only until something better could be had. To my knowledge it has had a new roof, new walls, a new foundation and new floors — and is today the same temporar ' structure. In those early days there were very few houses north of Lake Union and faculty and students in their places of living were widely scattered. Some students lived in shacks on the University grounds and in the neighboring woods. A few members of the faculty were brave enough to live nearby, and followed the devious and winding paths which centered at the University. The President, returning home one night from some function, fell over a cow that had grown weary at night-fall and had made her do Tiy couch athwart the trail that lead to Prexy ' s house. The embarrassment was mutual. (This was not the astronomer previously mentioned. We swapped Presidents might) ' fast in those days). 18