Washington University Saint Louis - Hatchet Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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The Library in 1903 served as Dean for many years. This was a radical step and required initiative and foresight, for law was then learned in the law offices. In 1868 the buildings, library, and contents of the O’Fallon Polytechnic Institute were turned over to the Saint Louis Public schools under certain reciprocal condi¬ tions, for this was no longer a legitimate branch of University work. This pruning operation was promptly followed by the grafting on of a scientific department, recommended by President Eliot in 1870. The buildings were ready for occupancy in 1871. The department included courses in chemistry, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and mining and metallurgy. This department has since grown into Washington University’s widely known School of Engineering. In 1869 Chancellor Chauvenet resigned, after a period of illness. Dr. Eliot was made Acting Chancellor, and in 1871 was installed as Chancellor. He was formally saluted as the founder of the University by the Hon. Wayman Crow, who had secured the charter, and it may be udged that Dr. Eliot richly deserved the credit. He had done the financing, and he had assumed the burden of initiative in supervising the general plan. Dr. Eliot, himself the product of high cultivation, believed that the true province of a uni¬ versity is in the highest development of intellectual culture.’ He intended to devote his interests largely to a good education for the many,” but would concentrate fervidly on “the best education for the few. He wanted to make Washington University to Saint Louis what Harvard College is to Loston, or ' tale to New Haven. “We would found a university so widely acknowledged in its influence that Saint Louis and Missouri should be honored throughout the world for its being established here,” he said. In i ! 79 a School of Art and Design was established as a department of the University; and soon after W ayman Crow expended 55145,000 on a building and endowment for a Museum of fine Arts. I his last was built near the other University buildings of that time, on the northeast corner of Nineteenth and Locust Streets. 1 hen there was $15,000 from Marv Hemenway of Boston for a Department of American History, and about $100,000 which James Smith entrusted to Dr. Lliot at his death, and which founded Smith Academy, a preparatory school for boys as a department llIE FORMER DENTAL AND MEDICAL BUILDINGS Page Twenty

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tlie higher culture of the future republic? They knew of the hardships of such an undertaking, but the opportunity to do something big lay before them and they grasped it. And so, in 1857, when a non-sectarian provision was put in the charter, the legislature chartered the institution as “Washington University” instead of “Eliot Seminary.” In the same year an inauguration ceremony was held, and an advanced scientific class was organized. A year later they set up the college proper under Chancellor Joseph G. Hoyt, and the first class graduated in 1862. It has been said of the first students to labor their way through the curriculum that very few were of high school grade. The school was really a seminary with the most extravagant intentions of living up to the name it had assumed. But it can be shown from the records of those first few graduates that their training more than made up for their lack of prepara¬ tion, and that the quality of the entrants was steadily improving. The alumni took leading positions in the community, so that the townspeople came to look upon the fledgling as a university in fact as well as in name. It was none too early for the university to get its footing, for the Civil War followed close after the inauguration ceremony. Every year counted under the leadership of Dr. Eliot, however, and in i860 his report showed that the college had gained prestige, being highly regarded by St. Louisans. He proposed the immediate creation of a permanent endowment fund. This was moderately successful, some 80,000 being subscribed at the start by Dr. Eliot and the board of directors. But it required hard work to secure outside subscriptions. All appointments of professors and instructors in 1861 were made conditional on “ the continued ability of the directors to conduct the institution as heretofore,” and there was a general reduction of expenses. All was carefully arranged to live out the lean years of the Civil War, W ashington University’s crucial period. In 1862 Chancellor Hoyt died and was succeeded in the fall of the same year by William Chauvenet, a man whose field was education and whose broad culture fitted him well for his position as leader of a humanistic institution. He had demonstrated his ability in developing the Naval Academy at Annapolis before he was called to Saint Louis. Like Chancellor Hoyt, he had little sympathy with poor scholarship, and he did much to set the high standards which have been so vigorously maintained. The year 1867 saw a law school organized, chiefly sponsored by Mr. Henry Hitchcock who iiL.d M The original buildings as seen from Seventeenth and Washington Page Nineteen

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of the University. And so it went. Each year found the high hopes of the seventeen corporators a little more con¬ servative, until at last those intentions were expressed in the order of the day at Washington University. In 1885 Dr. Eliot gave a description of the various departments which shows very well what he had accomp¬ lished. The Art School was among the best in the United States. The Astronomy Department, though provided with an unpretentious observatory, was regulating the time of several railroad systems and supplying central time for cities all over the West. The undergraduate department had been thoroughly re-organized, and Dr. Eliot said he was willing to compare his graduates with those of any Eastern university. The beginning of the present great William Chauvenet library had been made. More than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars had been spent during Dr. Eliot’s Chancellorship. Because of his advancing years Chancellor Eliot asked to be permitted to resign in 1885. But he did not contemplate a passive resignation; he ended his rule as he had started it — with a drive for endowment. He said that at the time he took over the Chancellorship no one else of acknowl¬ edged prestige in education was willing, in spite of the hundred thousand dollar Chancellorship endowment of Hudson E. Bridge, to take the office because it was no better than “western grandilo- quism to call Washington University a university.” It had earned the respect of the citizens who knew the quality of its product, but it was not widely known. The University virtually marked time until the advent of another driving spirit ten years later. With the death of Chancellor Eliot in 1887 disappeared the dynamo which had driven Wash¬ ington University since its inception. The duties of the Chancellor were performed by the Dean of the College,Professor Marshall S. Snow, until October of 1891, when they were assumed by Professor Winfield Scott Chaplin, educator, engineer, and army officer. But the University’s funds dwindled; its old friends had disappeared. Then Robert S. Brookings stepped into the foreground. ith the same energy, enthusiasm, and capacity for organization that had distinguished him in the business world, he turned to the task of the reorganization of the University. Out of his own means, supplemented by contributions from new givers whom he inspired by his zeal, Mr. Brookings established magnificently the fabric which for a time had seemed tottering. The former fine arts and law buildings Page Twenty-one