The University of Michigan Part 16

The University Museum was erected in 1881 and stands between University Hall and Alumni Memorial Hall. It is far from being the most successful of the University Buildings architecturally, and as it has been for some time entirely inadequate for the collections it houses, it will not be many years before the need for a new museum will be presented to the Legislature. In addition to the offices of the Curator, Professor A.G.

Ruthven, Morningside, '03, and his staff, the building contains the University's zoological and anthropological collections, very popular with casual visitors to the Campus. The former includes a fine exhibit of mounted mammals and some 1,600 birds, as well as reptiles, fishes, mollusks and insects, in all of which particular effort has been made to show forms native to the State. The Anthropological Collection includes the entire exhibit of the Chinese Government at the New Orleans Exposition in 1885, as well as many items from China and the Philippines, collected by the Beal-Steere Expedition. The collections in geology, mineralogy, botany, materia medica, chemistry, the industrial arts, and the fine arts are to be found in the Natural Science Building and other buildings devoted to these special subjects.

For many years the original forty acres of the Rumsey farm were more than ample for the needs of the University. The Observatory, the first building to find a place apart from the Campus, was set upon its hilltop some distance northeast, because of the need of clear air and quiet; advantages now almost lost in the proximity of the hospitals, heating plant, and railroads that portends an eventual change in location. The Observatory has grown rapidly since its establishment by Dr. Tappan in 1852. The building was last remodeled and enlarged in 1911 when a reflecting telescope, with a 37-5/8 inch parabolic mirror, largely made in the shops of the University, was installed. In light gathering power this instrument is in a cla.s.s with the Lick and Yerkes refractors, and it is at least as effective in astronomical photography, the purpose for which it was designed. The new brick tower, with its copper-covered dome, rises sixty feet above the bas.e.m.e.nt and is forty feet in diameter.

Just beyond the Observatory, on the crest of the hills defining the Huron valley, is the largest group of university buildings off the Campus, the old University Hospitals, which are to be replaced in 1922 by the new Hospital, ground for which was broken in September, 1919.

Following the erection of the first building in 1891 an office building was added in 1896 to be followed rapidly by other sections, including a children's pavilion erected in 1901, known as the Palmer Ward, the bequest of the widow of Dr. Alonzo B. Palmer, who also left $15,000 for the maintenance of free beds in it. The entire group of buildings numbers ten, including the State Psychopathic Hospital.

The new Hospital is to be one of the largest and most completely equipped in America. It is composed of a series of wings taking the general form of a double letter "Y" connected at the stems, with a smaller office building in front and a larger wing containing laboratories, operating and cla.s.s rooms at the rear. The building is 420 feet long and six stories high with provision for an additional three stories at some future time. It is built of reinforced concrete upon regularly s.p.a.ced piers, and is similar in construction to the Natural Science Building.

The work of the Homeopathic Department is centered in its fine Hospital building with an adjacent Children's Ward and Nurses' Home just off the northeast corner of the Campus. The Dental Building, erected in 1908, is situated to the west, just across the street from the Gymnasium. It contains many laboratories and lecture rooms, as well as an operating room fitted with eighty dental chairs.

Of the other buildings off the Campus, the new Union, Hill Auditorium and the three dormitories for women are the most conspicuous. The Union, with its magnificent tower and imposing yet withal beautifully proportioned ma.s.ses, has been mentioned as the dominant architectural feature of State Street. Hill Auditorium, which was made possible by a bequest of $200,000 left by Regent Arthur Hill, '65_e_, of Saginaw upon his death in 1909, forms one of the unique features of the University's equipment. Despite its seating capacity, with the stage, of over 5,000, it has almost perfect acoustic properties, so that a whisper from the stage can be heard in any portion of this great hall. Its completion in 1913 enabled the University at last to bring the great part of the students together under one roof upon such occasions as the annual convocation, the official opening of the University in the fall. The problem connected with the admission of relatives and friends of the graduating cla.s.ses to the Commencement exercises, which had proved exceedingly troublesome for many years, was also at last ended; while the musical interests of Ann Arbor, particularly the annual May Festival, immediately found an opportunity for further expansion in this hall, whose advantages as a concert hall were praised by every visiting musician. The building, which is finished in tapestry brick and terra cotta, stands opposite the Natural Science Building on North University Avenue. In addition to the great auditorium, it contains offices and cla.s.s rooms, a dressing-room for choruses, and a great foyer across the front of the second floor, where the Stearns collection of musical instruments, one of the finest in America, is installed. The great organ from the Chicago World's Fair is also placed in this building as a memorial to Professor Henry S. Frieze, the pioneer in Michigan's development as a musical center.

The University now has four dormitories or halls of residence for women.

Two of them were completed in 1916; the Martha Cook Building on South University Avenue, given by the Cook family of Hillsdale, in memory of their mother, and the Newberry Hall of Residence on State Street, a memorial to Helen Handy Newberry, the wife of John S. Newberry, '47, given by her children. The Martha Cook Building is probably the most sumptuous and complete college dormitory in America and cost something over $500,000. It is an unusually beautiful example of Tudor Gothic, always a favorite style for college buildings. Simple in its main lines it reveals an extraordinary perfection in detail as well as comfort in its appointments and a richness in decoration which cannot but have its happy influence on the one hundred and seventeen fortunate women who live there. Less elaborate but equally attractive as a home for the seventy-five girls it is built to accommodate is the Newberry Building, which, though smaller and simpler in its architecture, embodies every essential found in the larger building. It is of hollow tile and stucco and cost about $100,000. Similar in general plan and appointments, though built of brick, is the adjacent Betsy Barbour Dormitory, which was completed in 1920, the gift of Ex-Regent Levi L. Barbour, '63, '65_l_, of Detroit. It stands on the site of the old ward school building on State Street, used for many years by the University as a recitation building, and soon to be razed now the new dormitory, just to the rear, is completed. Alumnae House, the fourth girls' residence hall, was, as the name implies, furnished by the alumnae of the University. It was made over from a quaint old dwelling on Washtenaw Avenue at a cost of about $18,000, and accommodates sixteen self-supporting students.

A final group of buildings, very necessary in an inst.i.tution so large as the University, is composed of the heating and lighting plant, the nearby laundry in the one-time ravine at the east of the old "Cat-hole,"

and the University shops and storehouse a little distance south. The old power house near the Engineering Building was abandoned in 1914 when the new plant, situated on a lower level than the Campus and reached by a spur from the railroad, was ready for service. It cost approximately a third of a million dollars, and furnishes heat, compressed air, electrical energy, and hot water to the Campus and adjacent buildings through a series of tunnels nearly ten feet high which extend as far as the Union, half a mile across the Campus.

Aside from the smaller and the more temporary buildings and the many dwelling houses on property recently acquired, the buildings of the University number about forty. This does not include the buildings occupied by the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A., or the Psychopathic Hospital, the t.i.tles to which do not rest with the Board of Regents.

Though the buildings on the Campus have not, until very recently, been placed with any careful relationship to a general scheme, and exhibit a very unfortunate lack of architectural harmony, in certain features the Campus gives promise of better things in the future. Some of the buildings have real beauty, though it is too often lost in an unfavorable environment. Charming details are to be found here and there, while the green canopy of the elms and maples planted sixty years ago helps to give our academic field a real distinction. Fortunately the center of the Campus has been left comparatively free of buildings, save for the rambling old Chemistry Building, now used by the departments of Physiology and Economics, and the plain but imposing bulk of the new Library Building, a fitting center whence paths diverge in every direction to the halls and laboratories along the avenues that mark the outer confines of the Campus. Lack of funds and the imperative need of room, and yet more room, for the thousands of new students, has severely limited the Regents in the matter of adornment of the buildings erected in recent years, which have all tended to conform to one type, simple, dignified in their very rectangular bulk, and relieved only by patterns in tapestry brick and terra cotta tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs.

Within recent years, too, the new buildings have been carefully placed, not only with reference to the present Campus, but also the inevitable northeastward growth of the University toward the hills lining the river. For some time the Regents have been acquiring scattered parcels of property as occasion presented, and now own a good share of the land in the triangle bounded roughly by Hill Auditorium, the University Hospitals and Palmer Field, an area twice as large as the present Campus. In addition there is the University Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, a large area south and east of Forest Hill Cemetery, which is now linked up by boulevards with the rapidly growing system of city parks.

A formal entrance to the Campus in the form of a double driveway, laid out in accordance with a plan prepared in 1906 by Professor Emil Lorch of the Department of Architecture, and known as the Mall, pa.s.ses between the Chemistry and Natural Science Buildings. This forms practically a continuation of Ingalls Street between Hill Auditorium and a future companion, possibly a new Museum, which will eventually be built to the east on the other corner. The impressive vista thus formed leads the eye to the ma.s.sive facade of the new Library, though the Campus flagstaff, some distance in front, now marks the actual end of the new driveway.

The architectural emphasis of the Campus is thus being turned to the north, but the western, or State Street side still remains the accepted front, dominated by the old-fashioned but nevertheless stately bulk of old University Hall. Within a short time State Street has become, through the fortunate removal of several unsightly old survivals of earlier days, one of the most beautiful of academic avenues, flanked on one side by the Campus, with its trees, broad s.p.a.ces and dignified buildings, and by a row of public buildings on the western side, which, though sadly lacking in uniformity, are yet for the most part impressive and substantial. These include the Congregational Church, the two halls of residence for women, the older Newberry Hall, a number of fraternity houses, and particularly the commanding beauty of the Michigan Union.

It is fortunate for the University and the community that the problem of the future development of the inst.i.tution in relation to the city is being carefully considered. The expansion of the Campus to the north and northeast is now established, and it is probable that at some future period the Mall, lined with monumental buildings, and laid out in co-operation with the city, will extend to the river. Ann Arbor has already taken far-sighted measures in establishing a series of boulevards and parks along the river with connecting links which will eventually encircle the town. The extensive University properties in the Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, which cover the hills defining the ravine extending from the river to Geddes Avenue, and join the present enlarged University grounds at the Observatory, form part of this system. Plans are now under consideration for a rearrangement of streets, which will afford easier access from the Campus to the Hospitals and the boulevards and river drives. These will give to this portion of the future University grounds an irregularity and picturesqueness wholly lacking on the flat hilltop occupied by the present Campus. One of the difficulties in this plan is the old "Cat-hole," the end of a ravine, whose steep hillsides extend from the river practically to the northeast corner of the Campus. Though this unsightly boghole has been gradually filled in, it still forms a blot on the landscape which might, nevertheless, with a little effort and comparatively small expense, be transformed into a charming open air theater. This in fact has been recommended by Mr. Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect, who has made an extensive study of the whole problem for the city and the University.

It is fortunate for the University that this plan for the future, tentative though it may be at present, is actually a part of a large scheme for the improvement of the city, suggested by Mr. Olmstead. Ann Arbor is fast becoming one of the most beautiful little cities in the country, with winding streets, shaded by n.o.ble maples and elms and many of the original forest oaks, and lined by substantial homes, charming in their simple architecture and setting. This development came at first, as was natural, largely from the Faculty, but an increasing number of families from Detroit and elsewhere have of late come to make Ann Arbor their permanent residence, attracted by the unusual beauty of the city and the advantages afforded by the University. The sightly range of hills along the Huron between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti and about the new Barton Pond, two miles to the north and west of the city, recently developed as a water-power site, are soon to be dotted here and there with comfortable and attractive country homes, which promise to change the entire character of Ann Arbor's environs. The little country town of the past is fast disappearing.

With these plans rapidly evolving there is every reason to hope that, at no distant period, the University may find an imposing physical setting more in keeping with her standing among American universities. The present is an era of transition; as yet she has hardly had time to adjust herself to the extraordinary growth of the last ten years; still less to realize all the problems it involves. But it requires no great vision to see the University of the future occupying at last the heights overlooking the Huron valley which that unfortunate decision at the first meeting of the Regents denied to her in 1837.

CHAPTER XIII

THE UNIVERSITY IN WAR TIMES

Michigan has had a most honorable record in the three wars in which the country has been engaged since the first cla.s.s was graduated. Though two of her early graduates were veterans of the Mexican War, it was not until the Civil War that the opportunity came to show what kind of citizens of the Republic were in the making in this pioneer State University. The catalogue of 1864 lists only 999 graduates. Yet the number of Michigan men who served in the Civil War was within a few of 2,000. This number of course includes many students who left never to return and many who entered the University, particularly the professional schools, in the years immediately after the war.

Practically half of the members of the cla.s.ses of '59, '60, '61, and '62 served in the war, and '62 alone lost seven members out of twenty-two in service. The college men of the sixties were no less ready than their grandsons in 1917.

Feeling ran high in the University during the period just before the Civil War. The students were nearly all strong and vigorous products of pioneer life, good hunters and rifle shots, with a love of individual liberty and free speech. Many were studying for the ministry.

Anti-slavery sentiment was all but unanimous, except for the one or two students from the South, but few could be called out and out abolitionists. It is difficult nowadays to understand the sentiment which led to the mobbing of an abolitionist speaker, Parker Pillsbury, some months before war was declared. He knew from personal experience that the South was arming and came to urge the citizens of the North to prepare for the struggle. Yet when he attempted to speak in Ann Arbor a mob collected and would have none of his advice; they stormed the little Free Church on North State Street, driving audience and speaker out of the rear windows and gutting the building. Similar troubles were threatened when Wendell Phillips was advertised to speak on abolition a month or so later. In view of the first experience, there was great difficulty in finding a hall, but finally the trustees of the old Congregational Church decided that if the building "must be razed to the ground, let it go down in behalf of free speech and the great cause of liberty." The cla.s.s of '61 also decided that free speech must be protected, and on the appointed evening was present in force with hickory clubs, twelve members in front and more scattered about inside.

While the church was packed there was no demonstration, though the mob "howled outside."

Most of the students who heard Phillips that night left confirmed abolitionists, and some were among the first to take up arms. To us, nowadays, the state of public opinion at that time seems almost incomprehensible. Few of the individual members of those mobs were in real sympathy with the South, but party affiliations were strong and, in the words of Judge Cheever, '63, who describes these troubles, they were held back from openly showing abolitionist principles by "their fear that an open contest would lead to the destruction of the government."

Within a year a good part of the rioters were in the Union Army.

Throughout the troubled period preceding the actual outbreak of war, President Tappan was circ.u.mspect in his public utterances, and was considered conservative on the slavery question though he presided at the Wendell Phillips meeting. The professorial radical of those days was the young Andrew D. White. He was in closer touch with the students than his colleagues, and his personal influence and brilliant lectures on modern history swept his students on into bold opinions and resolute action.

When Sumter was fired upon the University was aflame at once. Although it was Sunday when the news of the surrender came, there was no thought of services. A platform of boxes and planks was raised on the Court House Square and Dr. Tappan was sent for. Upon his arrival, Bible in hand, he found a large and a serious gathering awaiting him. Heretofore President Tappan had permitted himself to say little, though his students were thrilled occasionally by some remark which showed how keenly alive he was to the great issues of the time. Now he could speak.

After reading some heroic pa.s.sages from the Old Testament, he spoke, in the words of Gen. W.H.H. Beadle, '61,--

With mind and heart and soul in heroic agony, as if long-formed opinions and long silenced feelings now burst into utterance.... In all Michigan's history this was the great historic occasion.

The contemporaries of Dr. Tappan are unanimous in their judgment of his extraordinary ability as a speaker, to which a majestic figure and magnificent voice no less than his logic and apt ill.u.s.trations contributed. But on this day he made the effort of his career. From that time the University was whole-heartedly for the Union and the war.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CAPTAINS OF THE THREE STUDENT COMPANIES IN 1861 Charles Kendall Adams, '61. Captain of the University Guards Isaac H.

Elliott, '61. Captain of the Chancellor Greys Albert Nye, '62. Captain of the Ellsworth Zouaves]

Student companies were organized at once; and the Tappan Guards under Charles Kendall Adams, '61, the Chancellor Greys, under Isaac H. Elliot, '62, and the Ellsworth Zouaves, under Albert Nye, '62, who died at Murfreesboro in 1862, formed a University Battalion which enrolled practically every student in the University. This was not the first effort of the sort, however, for five years before Professor W.P.

Trowbridge, a graduate of West Point, had organized the first University Battalion, with uniforms and arms furnished by the Government, and had managed to have a small building erected as an armory, which was later to become the first gymnasium. This experiment was short-lived and came to an end when Professor Trowbridge resigned the following year. With the organization of the new battalion the duty of drill master fell upon Joseph H. Vance, the steward of the University, who was also a.s.sistant librarian. The President set apart a room at the south end of the south College, and there the students, in sections of fifty, drilled for an hour each day. The old muskets had been called in by the Government some time before, and sticks were perforce the ordinary armament. This drill continued for the rest of the year and for most of 1862. The men who thus received their preliminary training were to be found later in practically every corps and division of the Union Army.

These military efforts, however, did not satisfy the more restless spirits and many left the University immediately, few of whom ever returned to finish their course. Of the fifty-four who graduated with the "war cla.s.s" of '61, twenty-four entered the service, in addition to eight who did not stay to finish their work, in all thirty-two out of sixty-two. The students in the two professional departments were no less eager for service, as is shown by the remarkable record of the medical cla.s.s of '61, thirty of whose forty-four graduates saw active service.

Among the Michigan men in the Civil War at least twelve, eight of whom held degrees, rose to the rank of brigadier-general, three of them from the cla.s.s of '61. Of this number apparently only one, Elon Farnsworth, '55-'58, actually commanded a brigade in battle. He was killed while bravely leading a hopeless charge at Gettysburg.

Michigan's war records are full of stories of brave deeds, but few surpa.s.s the heroism of William Longshaw, '59_m_, an a.s.sistant surgeon in the Navy, who undertook to carry a line from his ship, the _Nahant_, to the _Lehigh_, which had run aground in the attack on Fort Moultrie.

Twice he was successful but the intense fire directed on his little boat by the batteries on sh.o.r.e cut the line each time. By this time Longshaw found the wounded needing his attention and he gave over the task to another who made a third and successful trip. For this exploit Longshaw was cited in general orders read from every quarter-deck in the fleet.

He was killed while attending a wounded marine under equally heroic circ.u.mstances during the attack on Fort Fisher.

While Michigan men entered service from every Union State, the largest number, naturally, were in the Michigan regiments, particularly the Twentieth Michigan Infantry, in which a large number of officers, including every one in the two Ann Arbor companies, were University men.

In one year, November, 1863, to November, 1864, 537 of the Regiment's total enrolment of 1,157 were killed, wounded, or prisoners, while three times it lost almost fifty percent of all the men engaged, at Spottsylvania, at Petersburg, and finally at the a.s.sault on the Crater, after which there were only eighty men and four officers left for duty.

In another Michigan regiment, the Seventh, was Capt. Allan H. Zacharias of the cla.s.s of '60 whose last letter, written on an old envelope and clutched in his dead hand, forms an imperishable portion of Michigan's annals:

Dear Parent, Brothers and Sisters: I am wounded, mortally I think.

The fight rages round me. I have done my duty. This is my consolation. I hope to meet you all again. I left not the line until all had fallen and colors gone. I am getting weak. My arms are free but below my chest all is numb. The enemy trotting over me. The numbness up to my heart. Good-bye all.

Your son Allen.

Within a year after peace was declared a plan was under way for a Memorial Building in memory of the graduates of the University who had fallen in the war. A committee appointed by the Alumni a.s.sociation presented the matter to the Board of Regents, but they were unable to take any action. The project was never forgotten, however, and was brought up year after year in alumni gatherings until in 1903 a committee under the Chairmanship of Judge C.B. Grant, '59, a former Colonel of the Twentieth Michigan, was appointed. This committee was so successful in its efforts that the Memorial Building was eventually dedicated in May, 1910. A large tablet by the sculptor A.A. Weinman bearing the inscription given on the following page, was placed, in June, 1914, on the right wall just inside the entrance.

A further investigation of the war records of the graduates of the University revealed many more names than were known when the tablet was designed, so that now the total in the morocco bound volume which is conspicuously placed in the building carries the records of 2,424 who served in the three wars.

THIS HALL ERECTED ANNO DOMINI 1909-1910 UNDER DIRECTION OF THE ALUMNI a.s.sOCIATION BY THE ALUMNI AND FRIENDS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF HER PATRIOTIC SONS WHO SERVED IN

THREE OF HER COUNTRY'S WARS NAMELY TWO IN THE MEXICAN WAR A.D. 1847 ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED FOURTEEN IN THE CIVIL WAR A.D. 1861-1865

FOUR HUNDRED TWENTY SIX IN THE SPANISH WAR A.D. 1898 A RECORD OF THEIR NAMES AND MILITARY HISTORY IS DEPOSITED IN THE ARCHIVES OF THE ALUMNI a.s.sOCIATION

THE WORLD WILL LITTLE NOTE NOR LONG REMEMBER WHAT WE SAY HERE BUT IT CAN NEVER FORGET WHAT THEY DID HERE-- LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG

Though the number of Michigan men in the Spanish-American War was naturally much smaller, the total mounted to very nearly four hundred, of whom eight lost their lives, including one member of the Rough Riders, Oliver B. Norton, '01_m_, killed by a sh.e.l.l at San Juan Hill. The contingents from at least fifteen states included Michigan graduates, but the greater number were to be found in the five Michigan volunteer regiments, particularly the 31st and 32nd, though there were a number in the 33rd and 34th that formed with the 9th Ma.s.sachusetts the Brigade commanded by Brigadier-General Henry M. Duffield, '58-'59, which was one of the few volunteer units to see active service in Cuba.