enclosed on three sides with a fence of oak posts and hemlock boards. Subsequently the Trustees bought about four and a half acres adjoining the yard “for cultivation by the students and for building lots.”
No plans or descriptions of the interior exist but it is certain that the building was used both for classrooms and as a dormitory. Accommodations at the time of opening were ample since they were designed for forty students and only about thirty were registered. Seniors had rooms on the third and second floors, the “middle class” on the second, and juniors” on the first. As a means of encouraging donations for outfitting student rooms the Executive Committee agreed that any individual or group providing furniture worth $50.00 might give a name to the room. Articles contributed included chairs, tables, cots, candlesticks, snuffers, pitchers, sheets, pillow-cases, blankets, towels, shovels, tongs, brooms, and “save-alls.” The congregation of the “South Baptist Meeting House,” New York City, asked that the room they furnished be named for their pastor, Charles G. Sommers, who had been the first young man aided by the New York Baptist Theological Seminary. They also requested that it be occupied by Norman Bentley and Seth Smalley, both of the Class of 1826.
Only two years after the completion of the “stone academy,” enrollment had jumped to fifty. At a special meeting of the Board in August, 1825, called to discuss the overcrowding, the Trustees agreed that another building was needed and directed the Executive Committee and the agents to take measures for its erection “without interfering with the funds of the Society.” Perhaps the Board had in its mind Deacon Colgate, Gerrit Smith, or Nicholas Brown, the wealthy Baptist merchant of Providence, Rhode Island, when they further resolved that any person making a donation equal to the cost of a new building might select a name for it. At the request of the Executive Committee, Daniel Hascall prepared and presented a plan for a four-story structure, 100 feet long and 60 feet wide, to be completed in two years ‘at a cost of $6,500. His plan was accepted.
There is no evidence to show where the proposed building was to be placed though there is reason to believe it was to have been located near the “stone academy.” However, the Trustees may have had a different idea, for at a special meeting in February, 1826, they appointed Jonathan Olmstead, Seneca B. Burchard, and Samuel Payne “to enquire into the propriety of purchasing a farm to be