The history of Colby College, Part 50

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716

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If Taylor did not already know it, Libby's students could have told him that the Latin professor now confronted a man who would not take No for answer. Whether by sheer importunity or by means not clear even to Libby himself, Tay- lor was finally won over. So down to City Hall they sped, and there, amidst thunderous applause, the aged professor stepped forward and told his fellow citizens that he would donate a piece of land in the South End of Waterville as his personal contribution to keep the College in the city.

Of course no college could be built in that gravel pit, nor on the few acres immediately surrounding it, but at the time that fact was not important. A venerable gentleman who had taught on the old campus for sixty years cared enough about retaining the College in Waterville to give a piece of land for that cause. It was the electrifying spark so badly needed by the Citizens Committee. People were at last truly aroused for the campaign. It was the critical moment in the whole story of Colby's choice of a new site. Never afterward was there any serious danger that the College would be established in another town.

On September 23, 1930, Dr. Taylor did what Libby had asked him to do in the first place. He submitted to the Trustee Committee this document:

At the suggestion of President Johnson, I now put in writing a proposi- tion already made to him in personal interview. If the site in Water- ville known as the Kennebec-Messalonskee site, owned by Dr. James Poulin, and covering about three hundred acres, will be accepted by the Trustees as the future site of the College, I will purchase the same from its present owner and offer it as a gift to the College to be its home hereafter and I hope forever.

Alumnae Building (top); and Foss Hall on College Avenue.

Mary Low Carver

Florence E. Dunn

Louise Helen Coburn

Eleanora Woodman

Dean Ninetta Runnals with President Bixler at dedication of the Runnals Union

Dedication of Woodman Hall

Women's Activities

The old Gymnasium

Cheerleaders calling alumni for Colby Night march to old campus

The old field house

COLBY - BATES FOOT BALL GAME Nov. 12,1923.

Football, Old and New

Hockey

NORWICH 5

Basketball

Track

Baseball on the old campus

Dedication of Coombs Field; Eddie Roundy congratulating Jack Coombs, with Dr. Bixler.

Baseball on Mayflower Hill

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MAYFLOWER HILL

When the Trustees assembled for their fall meeting on November 21, 1930, all interested persons knew that the time for decision had come. Twenty-one members of the Board attended that meeting. The committee presented two reports: a minority recommendation that the Gannett offer be accepted, and a majority insistence that the College remain in Waterville. The final vote was sixteen to five to accept the majority report, whereupon a member of the minority moved to make the decision unanimous, and that was done. The actual vote was worded, "The location of the College shall remain in Waterville, provided the City of Waterville and its citizens fulfill the conditions submitted to the Trustees by the Waterville Citizens Committee." That meant that Waterville must raise $100,000 to make valid the Trustees' decision to select the new site there.

At the same meeting the Trustees appointed a committee of seven (Johnson, Wadsworth, Wyman, Padelford, Smith, Seaverns, and Hilton) to draw up plans for future procedure, to definitely select a site in Waterville, to develop a com- plete plan of organization for the removal to the selected site and for financing the same, and accorded the committee authority to expend such money as might be necessary to that end, including the right to purchase land and to accept gifts. Authorization was also given to engage such assistance, including architects and engineers, as the committee should consider advisable.

Three sites had been proposed and surveyed for selection as the new Water- ville home of Colby College: the Peninsula (Taylor) site at the confluence of the Messalonskee and the Kennebec; the Mountain Farm site, on the highest land in Waterville, the ridge between the city and Fairfield Center; and the Mayflower Hill site, where land options had been taken by Walter Wyman. After consultation with several architects and after lengthy discussion, the com- mittee decided upon the Mayflower Hill site, which Editor Libby thus described in the Alumnus:

Mayflower Hill and Beefsteak Grove are landmarks familiar to most Colby students. I have visited Bunker Hill and climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty, but not until recently, although a resident of Waterville for forty-six years, had I visited these old landmarks that stand out so prominently overlooking the city. From this elevation can be seen the Camden mountains, the Dixmont Hills, old Saddleback and Mount Bigelow. The Canadian border range to the north and Mount Washington to the west are visible on a clear day. The pro- posed site has an area of 600 acres sloping gently eastward to the Messalonskee. The extension of Gilman Street in a straight line leads one to the very top of the height.

The Waterville community enthusiastically accepted the challenge of the Colby Trustees. Five pledges of $5,000 each were at once secured, but there remained the onerous task of raising the balance of $75,000 in small gifts. Be- fore the Colby Trustees convened for their spring meeting in April, 1931, the job had been done. The Waterville Committee announced total pledges of $107,270 to purchase and start the facilities on the Mayflower Hill site. The Trustees were therefore pleased to spread on their records the following resolution:

The Trustees of Colby congratulate her on the atmosphere of friend- ship and helpfulness that pervades the city where the College was born and where it has elected to remain. To raise $100,000 during the sea- son just passed seemed well-nigh impossible. It has been done; the

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lands are bought, the deeds delivered. That more than six hundred persons joined in the purchase is a happy augury for the future. It is therefore unanimously voted to convey to the Waterville Citizens Com- mittee the appreciation and thanks, not only of the officials and execu- tives of the College, but also of her great body of alumni. This we do, expressing thereby our warmest appreciation of Waterville's gener- osity.

Colby College now had a new site, but not a single building, not even a roadway, on it. As one trustee put it, "Come Hell or high water, we're com- mitted now to Mayflower Hill." Little did he or anyone else realize that, before Frank Johnson's dream could come true, both the Hell of war and the high water of financial panic would have to be met and subdued. The task of moving the hundred year old College to the hill of the mayflowers had only begun.

CHAPTER XXXVII

New Clothes For Alma Mater

T HE new plant of Colby College on Mayflower Hill, which in 1960 con- sisted of thirty-one buildings of Georgian colonial design, was not the result of a single effort, but rather of a series of carefully planned and skillfully conducted campaigns. In 1929, the original plan to build a new gymnasium had been expanded into a Development Fund drive for half a million dollars. When May- flower Hill was selected as the new site, the Development Fund campaign became the Mayflower Hill campaign. Heading the solicitation for three million dollars was Walter S. Wyman, President of the Central Maine Power Company. Vice- Chairman was Herbert Wadsworth, head of the college trustees. Wyman realized that, since the disastrous crash of the stock market in October, 1929, the time had not been propitious for raising money, but like Johnson he was determined to go ahead. "I shall be glad," he said, "to do my share of the hard work involved in securing this necessary sum of money."

The campaign received a splendid start with a pledge from Professor Julian Taylor. On Colby Night, October 30, 1931, assembled alumni in the old gym- nasium heard the thrilling announcement that Taylor had promised a princely gift of $250,000. Though the pledge could not be fulfilled, as we shall presently see, it was made in good faith.

An anonymous member of the Class of 1880 gave $15,000 in 1931, so that work could start at once on clearing the site. J. Fredrick Larson, consulting architect of the Association of American Colleges, was engaged as architect of the new Colby, and the firm of Marts and Lundy was employed to conduct the financial campaign. The expenses of this solicitation for three million dollars were underwritten by the Northern Baptist Convention, thus enabling every dollar given by alumni and friends to go directly toward the project.

It was in connection with publicity for the campaign that Joseph Coburn Smith began a distinguished career as a member of the college staff. Because there was not a foot of office space available on the old campus, Joe, as well as the representatives of Marts and Lundy, had to establish offices in the build- ing of the Waterville Savings Bank. A member of the Coburn family, asso- ciated with the College since its founding, Joe Smith was the son of Trustee George Otis Smith and Grace Coburn Smith, both of the Class of 1893. As an undergraduate, Joe had been one of the most efficient and best remembered edi- tors of the Colby Echo. A member of the Class of 1924, he had kept in close touch with the College, and now turned his talents toward the production of dig- nified, attractive, and effective publications to promote the Mayflower Hill cam- paign.

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HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

In the summer of 1931 the prominent New York firm of Hegeman-Harris was engaged as general contractor for the new plant. Besides participating in the erection of Rockefeller Center, the company had enjoyed wide experience in college construction. It had put up the entire plant of the Harvard Business School, had erected buildings at Yale, Columbia, Vanderbilt and Dartmouth, and had recently signed contracts for the new American Embassy in Paris and for the approach to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington.

By the spring of 1932, although more than $25,000 had already been ex- pended on roads and other facilities, it had become apparent that prosperity was not just around the corner. Great as was the disappointment, there was no dissenting voice among the Trustees when it was voted to postpone indefinitely any further solicitation of funds. Johnson assured the Trustees that the project was by no means abandoned and that architect Larson was being retained on a reduced schedule.

The whole story of Colby's move to Mayflower Hill, despite its eventual spectacular success, seems to have been just one frustration after another. First came the depression itself, necessitating postponement of the campaign. On October 13, 1932, Professor Taylor died. Instead of getting the promised $250,000 from his estate, the College found the estate hopelessly involved, and only after twenty years of painful investigation, negotiation, and litigation did Dr. Taylor's beloved alma mater receive anything at all.

It had been Taylor's intention that, in addition to the promised $250,000 for Mayflower Hill, the College, as residuary legatee under his will, would re- ceive at least $100,000, with which to endow the Taylor Professorship of Latin, which the Trustees had already named in his honor.

All who knew the venerable teacher of Latin believed him to be a wealthy man. He had long been an officer of the Ticonic National Bank, and he was considered one of Waterville's shrewdest investors. He himself considered his holdings worth more than half a million. Had the estate been settled in 1928, a year before our nation's worst depression had hit all finances, the half mil- lion estimate might probably have been realized. But it turned out that the Taylor investments were chiefly of a kind hardest hit by financial panic, and the intent of that good man who had taught in the College for 63 long years, and who loved it as few others had ever done, could not be carried out.

Professor Taylor's will, drawn in 1925, after naming a few family bequests, made the College the residuary legatee, provided the College would accept the obligation to pay an annuity of $2,000 a year to a Taylor niece, and after her death $500 a year to her son. A second provision required that, at the termina- tion of the annuities, the sum of one hundred thousand dollars should be set aside to endow the Taylor Professorship of Latin.

It soon became clear that the aged professor had not known how hard the depression had hit his substantial holdings. The executor could not, in 1936, find the money even to pay the designated personal legacies of $27,000. Securi- ties were held by banks as collateral for notes endorsed by Taylor. The remain- ing estate was in real estate and real estate mortgages for which there was no ready sale.

It should be remembered that many persons far richer than Professor Tay- lor had been wiped out by the depression. The professor was not "playing the market." His major investments were in what he considered to be sound real estate mortgages. Three things led to the collapse of his fortune: depressed

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real estate values generally, the bursting of the Florida boom, and his generous assistance to local associates hard pressed by the times.

As early as 1934, President Johnson saw that the Taylor estate was almost hopelessly involved. He reported to the Trustees:

The estate is in a most confusing and unsatisfactory condition. The in- ventory revealed some substantial assets, but the holdings which the testator regarded as most valuable, if liquidated at this time, would yield little, if anything. Some hundred parcels of real estate in Florida has brought us nothing but tax bills. The sale of certain timber and

. turpentine rights has enabled us to realize enough to pay the taxes. Beyond that, it is doubtful if the Florida property will ever yield a dollar.

Certain timber rights in British Columbia, for which the Professor had paid a substantial fee annually, gave him the privilege of cutting and marketing timber, upon payment of a percentage of the proceeds to the Canadian government. The testator regarded those rights as very valu- able. The best advice we can secure leads us to the conclusion that they have, at present, no value whatever.

Real estate in Superior, Wisconsin, representing an investment of $60,000, does not yield returns sufficient to pay taxes and the interest on a mortgage of $25,000.

We have also come into possession of a brickyard and other pieces of real estate in Waterville, so involved as to yield nothing but perplexing problems. Bank notes, endorsed by Professor Taylor, will still further reduce the estate. It is probable that final settlement, long deferred, will yield not much more than is necessary to maintain the annuity to the niece.

It was 1952 before all was settled, when the College sold about twenty remaining Florida lots for two thousand dollars. The niece died in 1956, and her son had meanwhile reached the age of thirty. During twenty-four years the College faithfully paid the promised annuity. In 1956 it could fulfill the second provision of the Taylor will, to set up an endowment for the professorship of Latin. But the amount was far short of what Professor Taylor had intended. In 1959 the endowment for the Taylor Professorship stood on the Treasurer's books at $38,844. As for the promised $250,000 for Mayflower Hill, not a penny was ever received. Dr. Julian Taylor once told the Colby students in a chapel talk that only two things are necessary to accumulate a fortune: foresight and patience. Patience the professor had in great abundance, but in respect to foresight he had the same fallibility as many of his contemporaries. Professor Taylor was no prodigal son, but like that biblical character he could not foresee the famine in the far country. He could not conceive that a depression would be so sweeping and so prolonged that it would reduce the residue of his big estate to less than forty thousand dollars.

When the decision was made to move to Mayflower Hill, there was no longer talk of turning the Women's Division into a separate College for women. As Joe Smith put it in an article in the Alumnus:

Colby College is committed to the principle of education of both sexes. Women today do not live in cloistered insulation from the world.

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HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

They expect to work with men and compete with men in an increas- ing number of vocational fields. On the new campus the women's group will consist of a social union and two dormitories. One large section of the Union will be a gymnasium with lockers, showers, cor- rective rooms, and offices. Each sorority will have its chapter hall in the building, and there will be social rooms for various purposes. The two dormitories, housing 300 girls, will each be made up of two units con- nected by a common kitchen.1

The development of fraternities on the new campus will be more fully dis- cussed in the chapter on Fraternities. At this point it is only necessary to say that long and careful consideration was given to the question of fraternity houses on the Hill. A large committee under the chairmanship of Dr. George Otis Smith, and on which the present historian served as local vice-chairman, made an ex- haustive study of the problem. Trustees, administration, alumni, and students were fully represented on the committee. Their recommendation, with only two dissenting votes out of twenty-one, was for the continuance of fraternities, but for the houses to be built on college land, thus assuring virtual college owner- ship. There were to be no fraternity dining rooms, a resident house-mother must be employed in each fraternity house, and operative control would be exercised by a prudential committee for each house, consisting of representatives of alumni, students, and the administration. Arrangements were made for the College to loan to each fraternity corporation one-half the cost of building the house, on long-term amortization.

At the Trustees' annual meeting in June, 1934, President Johnson reported that, with Federal assistance, a road had been built from the County Road, near where it crossed the Messalonskee, to the new campus, and a railroad bridge had been built to cross the new road by overhead pass, at an expense of $65,000.

Although progress was indeed made on clearing the land and building roads, no active solicitation of funds took place during four of the deepest depression years, 1932 through 1935. In November, 1935, feeling that the financial skies were brightening, the Trustees voted that "partial resumption of financial efforts may reasonably and confidently be made to assemble funds for the new buildings, and $10,000 is appropriated to carry out these efforts by the employment of a field man from Marts and Lundy, by preparation of subscription agreements, and by public announcement."

In February, 1936, a campaign was launched among the alumni for a men's union to be a lasting memorial to President Arthur Roberts. Then in March, 1937, came the exciting news that George Horace Lorimer, 1898, Editor of the Saturday Evening Post, had agreed to pay the entire cost of a new chapel, to be named in honor of Lorimer's distinguished father, at one time pastor of Boston's Tremont Temple.

The first building for which ground was broken on Mayflower Hill was the Lorimer Chapel. At those exercises on August 18, 1937, President Johnson said, "Today the initial step in the building of our new campus is the breaking of ground for the erection not of a science hall, not of library, stadium or dor- mitory, but of a chapel-to house the spirit, shelter the flame, and be the rally- ing point of all our labors and aspirations."2 The cornerstone was laid by Mr. Lorimer's two sons on October 21, 1938.

In that summer of 1937, Johnson summed up the accomplishments on the Mayflower Hill project. "During the past five years the City of Waterville, with

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substantial assistance from federal agencies and from the College, has spent more than $250,000 in building the Thayer bridge, public roads and sewer lines, all of which are essential to eventual buildings on the new campus. From the widow of James King, 1889, has come $150,000 for a wing of the new library. Pledges for new buildings have been made by Merton Miller, 1890; by Dr. and Mrs. George Averill, as well as by Mr. Lorimer. Last June the alumni successfully completed the raising of $300,000 to build a men's union as a memorial to Presi- dent Roberts. Today we celebrate the actual beginning of construction on this site."3

Ground was broken for the Roberts Union on October 25, 1937. That building would contain not only recreational rooms, offices for student organiza- tions, and guest rooms, but would also house a central dining service for all the men students. Meanwhile a vigorous campaign among the alumnae for the women's union had passed the half-way mark.

As construction at last got underway, there was much talk about "a func- tionally planned campus." What did those words mean? In its issue of April, 1938, the Alumnus answered the question.

A functionally planned campus is one where the layout of buildings has not been determined by a process of haphazard accretion, but thoughtfully worked out from every angle before the first spadeful of earth is turned; a campus where every building is carefully located and designed to carry on its function in the educational scheme as efficiently as possible. The arrangement of the main campus is on three sides of a quadrangle, with the open end facing the city. The academic buildings are placed in accordance with the great divisions of learning, with the library at the focal point of both axes. Fraternity houses and dormitories are so placed that fraternity and non-fraternity men will naturally mingle together. The natural slopes are utilized so that each building has direct entrances on two floors. Each building has been planned around its needs, rather than first deciding on its size and shape. The academic buildings are not mere space units for classes, but are dynamic working factors in the educational process.4

At the meeting of the Trustees in November, 1937, President Johnson had reported that over a million dollars had already been raised among alumni and trustees; that the foundations of the Lorimer chapel had been completed; that the main section of the Library foundation would be finished within a few weeks; that the drainage pipes of the athletic field had been laid through the generosity of Charles Seaverns; and that during the winter the sewer system and the campus roads would be finished with WPA funds. At the same meeting the Trustees appropriated $5,000 for construction of a model of the Mayflower Hill develop- ment. A glimpse of that model, which still stands encased on the top floor of the Library's north wing, reveals both the similarity and the difference between the original design and the completed plant, as it stood in 1960. The fundamental design is the same: Miller Library at the center, equidistant between Lorimer Chapel and Roberts Union on the horizontal axis, with the Library's main en- trance facing the city across terraced lawns, and the dormitories arranged in a symmetrical arc behind it. But some of the other buildings are on quite dif- ferent sites than those suggested by the model. As construction developed, con- ditions dictated those changes, all of them for the better.

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HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

In 1937 the College launched what was called the Maine Million campaign, an attempt to raise a million dollars from the permanent and summer residents of Maine for the purpose of erecting dormitories for men and for women. Started on August 18, on the occasion of breaking ground for the Lorimer Chapel, the campaign gained rapid momentum, giving the Trustees confidence to authorize the laying of further foundations. When college opened in the fall of 1938, President Johnson stated: "We have laid the foundations of four buildings and have excavated for others, as well as erecting the superstructure of the Lorimer Chapel." The nine buildings to which Johnson thus referred were the Lorimer Chapel, the Roberts Union, the Library, the two units forming the Women's Union and the Women's Gymnasium, Mary Low and Louise Coburn Halls, and the East and West dormitories for men. At that time none except the Chapel had been constructed above the foundation; the foundations were in for Roberts Union, Library, Women's Union and Women's Gymnasium. For the other four buildings there were as yet only excavations.

The next task was to provide for the dormitories, and to that end the Maine Million was directed. Except for the campaign chairman, George Otis Smith, the committee was composed of Maine people who were not Colby alumni or trustees. It was a venture of faith in the new Colby, endorsed liberally by both permanent and summer residents. The presidents of Bates, Bowdoin, and the University of Maine accepted places on the committee, as did such leading public figures as Carl E. Milliken, Ralph Owen Brewster, William Tudor Gardiner, Robert Hale, William R. Pattangall, Wallace H. White, and Guy P. Gannett. The committee contained persons of prominence in many fields: the novelists Booth Tarkington and Kenneth Roberts; the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay; the teacher and writer, Mary Ellen Chase; the musician Walter Damrosch; America's great preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick; the famous Quaker leader, Rufus Jones; magazine editor Gertrude B. Lane; Mrs. Dwight Morrow; and the cancer research specialist, Dr. Clarence Little.

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The history of Colby College, Part 50

Author: Colby College Publication date: 1963 Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press Number of Pages: 716

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716