Tag Archives: Old Gymnasium

Huntington Gym (p. 295)

Posted on June 21, 2012 by | Comments Off on Huntington Gym (p. 295)
austen-colgate_0

The first of the new buildings of the Cutten period was the dormitory, Andrews Hall, made possible by the bequest of Richard M. Colgate, supplemented by gifts from his brothers. Designed in “collegiate Tudor” by Frederick H. Gouge and William M. Ames of Utica, it was completed in 1923 and named for the late Newton Lloyd Andrews, beloved dean and Professor of Greek.

The gymnasium was the second of the new buildings. As early as 1911 “Doc” Huntington had pointed out that the rapidly expanding enrollment had made the old gymnasium most inadequate and soon plans were underway to replace it. Actual construction, however, had to wait until 1924 when alumni and students, led by George W. Cobb, ’94, President of the Alumni Corporation, and Clarence J. Myers, ’20, staged an enthusiastic and successful drive to raise the necessary funds to supplement those already pledged and those contributed in the 1920 financial campaigns. Under the direction of Franklin B. Ware, architect of New York, the building, including the swimming pool, the gift of James C. Colgate, was completed in 1926. Named in tribute to the beloved Dr. Ellery Channing Huntington, the “grand old man of Colgate athletics,” it proved admirably suited to the University’s needs. The old gymnasium which it was planned to convert into a student union and Y building, was destroyed by fire only a few weeks before its successor was ready for occupancy.

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p. 228 – Colgate in the 1890’s

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 228 – Colgate in the 1890’s

that the teacher of English literature should stress appreciation rather than scientific critical analysis and that he should not rest satisfied until his students began to love and appreciate the best the writers have to offer. Much of his approach he explained in his little book, The Interpretation of Literature (1896).

Professor Thomas had been appointed Registrar and Librarian in 1892 and continued in those positions after assuming his teaching duties a year later. An alumnus of Madison in the Class of 1883, he had taught at the Albany Academy while studying law and being admitted to the bar; subsequently he took graduate work in English at Columbia and returned to Albany as Chief Regents Examiner in English for the University of the State of New York. His instruction in public speaking was most effective and won wide commendation.

Professor Terry introduced a rich variety of offerings in history and they were continued under his successors, George W. Smith and Charles W. Spencer. Professor Spencer was in effect the spiritual ancestor of the modern Social Science Division, having taught all but one of its disciplines, i.e., education, and having instituted three: economics, political science, and sociology. By training a historian, he was a graduate of Colby College and had studied at Chicago and Columbia, where he was to take a Ph.D. in American Colonial History in 1905.

The Department of Philosophy emerges as an entity in 1890 with Professors Andrews, Beebee, and Burnham giving instruction, part of which had been in the province of the late Dr. Dodge. Two years later the first “Professor of Philosophy” was appointed, Ferdinand C. French, a Brown alumnus and a Cornell Ph. D. During his brief two-year tenure (he was to return for two subsequent periods) he introduced a course in the history of modern philosophy. French’s successor was Melbourne S. Read, a graduate of Acadia College, Nova Scotia, and also a Ph.D. from Cornell. In addition to philosophy he taught psychology and education.

With the completion of the gymnasium required academic courses in physiology and hygiene consisting of textbook reading and lectures were instituted. The instructor, George W. Banning, first Director of the Gymnasium, had studied at the YMCA College in Springfield, Mass., and had an M.D. from Columbia. His experience included appointments as director of gymnasiums and athletic programs and as baseball and football coach for city YMCAs and two large New York

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p. 222 – Colgate in the 1890’s

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 222 – Colgate in the 1890’s

Colgate and his son made them up, quietly sending the Treasurer the sums required and having them credited on the books as from the Executive Committee. These deficiencies are explained by increased expenditures for improvements, new equipment, and new instruction. After the Compact of 1893 had been signed the University’s accounts included those of the Education Society and hence comparative statistics for total income and expenditure for 1890′ and 1899 give a somewhat distorted view. It is useful to note, however, that in 1899 real estate and equipment were valued at $700,000 and endowment, including the Dodge Fund, at $1,718,202.

At no time in the ’90’s did the payments from the Dodge Fund exceed $20,000 and in 1895 the figure reached a low of $11,800. Income from other sources declined also. When a Trustee Committee attempted to raise $10,000-among some 1,000 living alumni for a gymnasium and other improvements, they met with apathy and failure. It seemed clear that few alumni or Trustees felt any obligation to contribute. Many of the former, because their low salaries as pastors gave them little surplus, were unable to do so, but one suspects there was a general disposition to let the financial load rest on the Colgates alone. Raising tuition from $30.000 to $45.00 in 1892 and to $60.00 in 1896 and also tightening up on scholarship grants helped in some degree to reduce deficits.

Landscaping made a notable advance in 1891 with the hiring of Ernest W. Bowditch, landscape architect and engineer of Boston. He at once proceeded to make a detailed and meticulous survey of the entire campus which was to serve as the basis for all future plans. A major part of its cost the citizens of Hamilton contributed as an expression of their interest in the University. Under the direction of Professor James M. Taylor, Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, a long-term program of grading, planting, and building new roads was begun and carried out, principally by his crew of Irish groundsmen. In 1893 a sewer system connecting all the buildings was constructed though it was not until 1895 and 1896 that electricity and water from the village began to be available in one building at a time.

The major building erected in the ’90’s was the long-desired gymnasium. Funds accumulated slowly and F. H. Gouge, a Utica architect, drew up plans for a three-story structure in a modified Romanesque style, which echoed the lines of the Library. Amid great

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p. 213 – Student Life, 1869-1890

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dents accustomed to manual labor, as most of them were, many having come from farms, lack of exercise often led to impaired health. An adequate gymnasium, a required physical education program and a competent teacher should be provided, the editors asserted. The faculty and trustees acknowledged the validity of these points but action had to wait until the 1890’s.

To be sure, there was a dilapidated wooden gymnasium, so called, of an earlier time which, despite occasional repairs, was little more than a barn. President Dodge in 1886 became genuinely interested in seeing it replaced with a suitable structure and the undergraduates, themselves, launched subscription campaigns for a building fund which were to bear fruit in 1894.

Madison students, like those in other colleges, believed that physical exercise should be made a pleasurable experience in the form of athletics. In 1880 they formed the Madison University Athletic Association to promote various campus sports and intercollegiate competition. Interest in athletics, however, was intermittent, a condition which critics felt a new gymnasium would remedy.

The most popular of the sports was baseball which had been played on an organized basis since 1863 though support for it had fluctuated. In the 1870’s the players had difficulty in finding a suitable spot for the diamond. One location, north of the present Huntington Gymnasium, was plowed up in the spring of 1875, despite their objections. In retaliation, students made an evening’s escapade of turning the sod back into the furrows and thus ruining the field for immediate replowing and planting. They also put the plow on the roof of Alumni Hall and the harrow on the roof of East Hall, emptied a manure wagon on village gardens and dismembered its parts which they distributed on the village green and the “Ham Fern Sem” grounds.

A revival of interest in baseball occurred in the spring of 1880, seemingly inspired by Henry C. Wright, a senior who was the pitcher and the first student to be designated “captain” of a team of any kind. The recently formed Athletic Association sent delegates to Syracuse to join those from Union, Hamilton, Cornell, Syracuse and Rochester in establishing the New York Intercollegiate Baseball Association. This group worked out an elaborate schedule of thirty games to be played in less than a month which was not a success since many games were canceled. All the members of the Association were criticized for hiring

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p. 152 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 152 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

But by the late ’50’s, the long-time student interest in maintaining buildings and grounds seems to have given way to an enthusiasm for gymnastic exercises. Through their own endeavors they built a gymnasium in 1858 and equipped it with a trapeze, ropes and rings, and other apparatus. The next year the Trustees hired a janitor to keep the classrooms clean, shovel paths in winter and do other jobs students had usually done.

The need for an auditorium larger than the chapel in West Hall led to the construction of the Hall of Alumni and Friends. In 1858 Henry C. Vogell, Class of 1827, a University Trustee and pastor at Rome, New York, began soliciting subscriptions for a $20,000 building fund. The laying of the cornerstone took place the next year at commencement, with the presidents of Brown and Hamilton as honored guests. Since the Trustees had been unable to agree on a site, three having been considered, the ceremony took place on the north side of East and West Halls. Immediately afterward, however, they chose a location west of these structures. The Cottage Edifice which stood on part of the site was razed and by the following August the new three-story building, 107 feet by 75 feet, was nearly ready for the roof. Observers viewed with great interest the aerial tramway, suggested by Washington A. Roebling who later designed the Brooklyn Bridge, which conveyed the stone for the walls from the University quarry on the Hill above to the workmen below; as the staging was raised the lower end of the tramway was elevated.

One cornerstone, whether the original or not is unknown, carries the proud inscription: “Quod conamur perficimus“ (“We complete what we attempt”). These were brave words, for only the chapel, which occupied the entire third floor, was finished by August 1861. Vogell’s accounts had not balanced and the Trustees were obliged to borrow additional funds. Nonetheless, dedication exercises were held the day before commencement. The choir and congregation sang two original hymns by Samuel F. Smith, the author of “America.” The following stanza from the second was eminently fitting for the occasion:

 

Here may no Science, falsely named,
Thy sacred Word deny –
May error here be shunned and shamed,
In knowledge from on high.

 

The night prior to the exercises prankster students built a huge

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