Landmarks of Tompkins County, New York : including a history of Cornell University, Part 49

Author: Hewett, Waterman Thomas, 1846-1921; Selkreg, John H
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason
Number of Pages: 1194

USA > New York > Tompkins County > Landmarks of Tompkins County, New York : including a history of Cornell University > Part 49

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': The English examinations were held in one corner of the room, the examination in mathematics in another corner, the geography in another, and, when all the corners were filled, where there was light enough to write by, the lesser examinations were sandwiched in between. In these examinations all helped; a professor of chemistry had charge of the orthography. It might have been wise to have first examined the professor himself in that branch of English; indeed, the earliest records of the faculty present incontrovertible evidence that the spelling of at least one of its members was not altogether beyond criticism. But there was no time for any such test of the ability of the examiners to

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do the work assigned to them, and they had to be taken on trust. A professor appointed to teach in one of the departments of natural his- tory had, I believe, to look after the examination in algebra; and so one and another of us was temporarily drafted into this unanticipated service.

" The erudity of this arrangement for the entrance examinations, as compared with the present methods was no greater than the erudity of everything else in those days. Riekety barns, and slovenly barn-yards offended the senses where the extension of Sibley College is now going up; the second university building, now ealled White Hall, simply pro- truded out of an exeavation, the top of which reached nearly to the second-story windows at one end. The ventilation of the chemieal laboratory, in the basement of Morrill Hall, was partly into the library and reading room above it; readers there, not being chemists, did not find the ehemieal odors agreeable. An aneient Virginia rail fenee traversed the site of this building and its neighbor, Boardman Hall; the minutes of the faculty show that before the end of the first year the modest request was made of the founder of the university, that he per- mit said fence to be moved 150 feet further to the south, in order that there might be a sufficiently large piece of level ground adjoining the eampus for the military evolutions and for ball games.

" Bridges, side walks, and even a road between the one university building and Caseadilla, the one home where almost everybody eon- nected with the university lived, either did not exist at all, or were only partially completed. It was a long time before the multitude of foot- tracks was obliterated, made by the passing of teachers and students down and up the banks of the ravine north of the site of the gymnasium ; when snow, slush, and mud alternated with each other in November, even a professor sometimes forgot his dignity and slid down the bank, and by inadvertence not always all the way down on his fect either; the hearty sympathy bestowed upon sueh an unfortunate by student spectators ean be imagined, if not believed in.

"What those teachers and students would have done without Casca- dilla for shelter it would be hard to say; for the people of the town had apparently not then learned that there was money in taking boarders; nor were there hardly more than a dozen dwelling houses nearer the university than half-way up East Hill. So Cascadilla was full from basement to attic; and a professor who had not lived there at all was,

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in later times, hardly considered by his colleagues as having fully earned his right to be a professor in the university."

THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY.

The formal opening of the university may fitly be taken by the anna- list as the beginning of the Library's independent existence; but the principles which were to guide its formation and growth had been clearly laid down in the " report of the committee on organization," and, of necessity, much had to done in the way of collecting books before the Library could be said to have an existence. At the sixth meeting of the Board of Trustees, held September 26, 1867, an appro- priation of $7,500 for the purchase of books was made, which was in- crcased to $11,000 at the meeting of February 13, 1868. To all who were engaged in the preparations for establishing a fully equipped uni- versity on what had been till then a mere hillside farm, the summer of 1868 was an exceedingly busy season. One of the first purchases for the new university-the classical library of Charles Anthon, num- bering over six thousand volumes-had already been made. In the spring, President White had gone to Europe, armed with formidable lists of books and apparatus to be collected, and made large purchases of scientific and literary works, one of the most important of his acquisi- tions being the library of Franz Bopp, the famous philologist. Thus cases of books and apparatus began to arrive long before any place was prepared to receive them. A temporary shelter, however, was found for the books in the halls and attic rooms of the Cornell Library in this city.

At the opening day in October, the only university building under cover was Morrill Hall, better known to old Cornellians as the South Building. Of this building the middle section alone was available for library, lecture rooms and laboratories, both wings being wholly occupied as dormitories.

To the Library were assigned the two rooms on the ground floor, the present faculty room and the registrar's office. The walls of these rooms were lined with tall book-cases, extending to the ceiling. Some of these book-cases, it may be noted, had already done service in the library of the short-lived State Agricultural College at Ovid. These wall book-cases, however, were by no means adequate to contain all the books even then received, and when the university opened, thousands

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of volumes were still stored away in boxes. Nor was there immediate prospect of obtaining more shelf-room. Indeed, so great and so urgent was the demand for more class rooms, it was found necessary to hold lectures and recitations in the rooms occupied by the Library, much to the inconvenience of readers, who were thus, during the greater part of the day, deprived of the use of the books. This state of things con- tinued throughout the first two terms, and the greater part of the third. For though it was promised in January, 1869, that within a few weeks, at most, the new laboratory building would be completed, to which the lectures held in the library rooms would then be transferred, yet in this case, as in so many others, hopes proved delusive, and it was not until April that the laboratory building was ready for occupancy, and May was well advanced before the books were full in order on the shelves. Comparatively little use was made of the Library by the students in the first year.

In December, 1868, the librarian, Professor Fiske, arrived and took charge of the Library, which was under his direction from that time until his resignation in 1883. In the latter part of 1868, the British government presented to the Library a complete set of Patent Specifi- cations, and estimates were obtained of the cost of binding them; but as it was found that the binding would cost about $6,000, a sum which could not well be spared just then, they were ordered to be stored in London until a more convenient season. There they remained until 1880, when a special appropriation was made for binding them, and finally, in 1881, this great set, numbering over two thousand seven hundred volumes, was received and shelved in the tower of the McGraw building. From a memorandum of a count of the Library made about the first of January, 1869, including, evidently, only the books then upon the shelves in Morrill Hall, it appears that the number of volumes in the two rooms was fifteen thousand four hundred.

About this time Goldwin Smith generously offered to give to the university his valuable private library, comprising some three thousand four hundred volumes. It is needless to say that the offer was joyfully accepted, and instructions were at once sent to the Library's agent in London to remove the collection from Mortimer House, near Reading, where it then was, and forward it to Ithaca. Towards the end of March the books arrived, but the task of arranging them upon the shelves, was deferred until the summer vacation. This, it may be ob- served, was but the beginning of Goldwin Smith's benefactions to the

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Library. Later he gave two thousand five hundred dollars, and in June of 1870 one thousand dollars, to be spent in the purchase of books; in 1871 he gave a valuable collection of works on Canadian his- tory, and from time to time since then has presented many important works.

Meantime, in February, 1869, John McGraw, seeing how urgent was the need of more room for library purposes, had offered to erect a library building to cost fifty thousand dollars. Archimedes Russell, a Syracuse architect, was commissioned to prepare the plans, and in the spring the excavations for the foundations of the McGraw building were begun. At the first Commencement of the university, in June, 1869, the corner stone of the building was laid with Masonic ceremonies, and addresses were given by Stewart L. Woodford and John Stanton Gould.

At the opening of the second year, in September, 1869, the Library still occupied its first quarters in Morrill Hall. The present faculty room was then the reading room, to which the public entrance was at the west end of the central hall. Upon entering, the student found himself in a room about fifty feet in length by twenty-five in breadth, lighted by three windows at each end, the walls lined from floor to ceiling with books. The central portion of this room, a space about thirty- six feet long and twelve wide, was surrounded by pine tables, painted a dark chocolote color, and surmounted by a low railing. In front of these tables stood benches of the sort then used in all the lecture rooms, a few specimens of which may still be seen in some of the smaller class rooms in White Hall. These benches afforded seats for not more than forty readers at the most. It is therefore not sur- prising that frequent complaints were heard of lack of accommodations for readers.

In this room the encyclopædias, periodicals, and the works on arts and sciences, philosophy, theology and law were placed. In the cor- responding room on the south side of the hall were the books relating to philology, literature, history and geography. When, in 1870, Presi- dent White gave to the university his valuable collection of architect- ural works, with a sum of money for its increase, as there was no space available for its reception in either of these two rooms, the collection was placed in the small room at the southwest corner of Morrill Hall, now the treasurer's office. In this year, too, the pamphlets and unbound periodicals had become so numerous that the room now occu - pied by the business office was also taken possession of for library purposes.

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CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

In the spring of this year an effort, which was all but successful, was made to obtain for Cornell the mathematical library of W. Hillhouse of Hartford, but, owing to an unfortunate delay in transmitting the decision of our trustees to purchase the collection, it was secured by the Sheffield Scientific School. President White generously offered to subscribe for the acquisition of this library, and to give, in addition, his entire architectural library-at that time richer than the entire corre- sponding collections in the Astor, Yale and Harvard libraries. A little later in the year, however, William Kelly, of Rhinebeck, one of the trustees of the university, gave $2,250 for the purchase of mathematical works to make good this loss. With this fund over fifteen hundred volumes were obtained, to which the name of the Kelly . Mathematical Collection was given. For this collection a place was found in the room now used as the ladies' waiting room. In December, 1870, the Rever- end S. J. May, of Syracuse, an early and devoted champion of the abolition movement, presented to the university his collection of books and pamphlets relating to slavery. This was the beginning of what is now known as the. May Anti-slavery Collection. A few months later, it was largely increased by gifts from R. D. Webb, of Dublin, and Mrs. Elizabeth Pease Nichols, of Edinburgh, both well-known supporters of the anti-slavery cause in the mother country. Since then the collection has received many additions from persons who took active part in the great struggle against slavery in this country, and to-day it is one of the largest and most complete collections on the subject. For this, and the rapidly growing newspaper collection, temporary accommoda- tion was provided in the room now occupied by the Horticultural department, in the northwest corner of Morrill Hall.

In June, 1871, according to the report of the librarian, the number of volumes in the Library was twenty-seven thousand five hundred, and, notwithstanding the increased number of rooms which were occupied, the evils of overcrowding were keenly felt. Meanwhile the walls of the McGraw Building had been steadily rising, and by November it was so far advanced toward completion, that it became necessary to decide just what portion of it should be occupied by the Library, in order that the needful fittings might be prepared. The original intention seems to have been to lodge the Library on the second floor, in the space now oceupied by the museum, but wiser counsels prevailed, and it was finally decided that the large room on the ground floor, which had at first been intended for a great lecture hall, should be made the home

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of the Library, leaving the second floor with its galleries free for museum purposes.

At the beginning of 1872, thanks to the timely aid of Henry W. Sage, who advanced money for its purchase, the university fortunately suc- ceeded in securing the Spark's collection of American history, number- ing over five thousand volumes. In April the books began to arrive, but as the new quarters were not yet ready and there was no room to spare in the old, cheap accommodation was found in the south attic room of the new building and there the collection found temporary shelter. It is evident that the Library at this time was most inconven- iently situated, occupying, as it did, six widely separated and unsuit- able rooms in Morrill Hall, and one room in the upper story of the McGraw Building. It was hoped that the summer of 1872 would see these disjecta membra brought together, and the whole Library made readily accessible to students. But again our hopes were disappointed ; the summer passed and autumn was well advanced before the new quarters were ready for occupancy. At last, on the 5th of October, the task of moving the books was begun, and for several weeks the Library was closed to readers while the books were being transported from the old building to the new. The work was mainly performed by students, who carried the books in boxes from the various rooms in Morrill Hall to the new quarters, where they were speedily arranged and placed on the shelves in substantially the same order as at present. On Monday, November 18, the Library was opened to students in its second home, a large room, with alcoves on either side and reading tables in the central space. A memorandum of a count of the books made in June, 1873, shows that the number of volumes on the shelves was then thirty-four thousand and one hundred, exclusive of eight thousand pamphlets.

Up to this point in its history, the growth of the Library, though somewhat irregular and spasmodic, had been rapid, and its career pros- perous. But not long after its removal to the McGraw Building, the university entered upon a period of financial distress, and one of the first departments to feel the pinch of poverty was the Library. One after another, important periodicals and transactions were perforce suffered to fall into arrears, and purchases of new books became fewer and fewer. In 1873, the librarian made an appeal for a large appro- priation for immediate use, pointing out that though the acquisition of several collections had made the Library comparatively rich in some

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departments, it was deplorably weak in others, and urged the necessity of an annual appropriation of at least $10,000. In view of all the cir- cumstanees, it is not surprising that the appeal was made in vain. Nor · is it surprising that the Library should continue to fall behind, when we find that, from this time until 1880, the regular annual appropria- tion for the increase and maintenance of the Library was only $1,500. In 1877 the librarian reported that, during the past year, no orders for new books had been sent abroad; that the total number of volumes added during the year was only four hundred and forty-eight; that three hundred and seventy-six of these had been presented, so that only seventy-two volumes had been purchased; that of these seventy- two volumes, fifty-six were continuations of serial works, leaving six- teen as the number of new works purchased within the year. In 1878 and 1879 the same story is repeated with very slight variations in the numbers.

At last, in the autumn of 1880, a full and foreible statement of the lamentable condition of the Library, accompanied by an urgent appeal for relief, was presented to the trustees, and, coming at a more favor- able time than the former one, it met with greater sueeess. In Deeem- ber a special appropriation of twenty thousand dollars was made for the inerease of the library, of which five thousand dollars were avail- able for immediate use. Large orders for books were at once dis- patehed, and in the annual report of June, 1881, it is stated that eight hundred volumes of new books had already been received, and many arrcars eaneeled.

By the untimely and lamented death of Mrs. Jennie McGraw-Fiske, in September, 1881, the university became the recipient of a fund, which, it was estimated, would prove to be not less than a million dol- lars, the ineome of which, by the terms of Mrs. Fiske's will, was to be devoted to the support, increase, and maintenance of the University Library. With such an endowment the future of the Library seemed se- eure, and the hardships of the past few years were almost forgotten in glowing anticipations of the rapid development which was now to be- gin. In 1882 the first instalment of the fund, some seven hundred thousand dollars, was received, and for six months the Library enjoyed the ineome of this fund. In July, 1883, however, a suit contesting the will was begun, and pending the issue of the contest, 'he Library, deprived of all ineome from this source, had to rely upon annual ap- propriations from the general funds of the university. Happily these

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appropriations proved to be more nearly commensurate with its needs than those of former years had been.

Meantime, however, the bequest had already begun to bear fruit. One of the greatest defects of the Library had always been the lack of any satisfactory catalogue. Early in 1882 it was decided to begin at once a general card catalogue of the books, and after careful consider- ation of the various forms of catalogues in vogue, the dictionary sys- tem was chosen as being, on the whole, better adapted to the use of our students than a systematically classified catalogue, which would be chiefly of service to trained specialists.

In January, 1883, a statute was passed establishing a Library Coun- cil, composed of the president and the librarian, one member of the Board of Trustees, and four members of the faculty. To this council was entrusted the general supervision of the Library and the apportion- ment of the funds.

The removal of the architectural department to Morrill' Hall, in 1883, left vacant several rooms in the north wing of the McGraw building, and these were taken possession of by the Library. The former draughting room was fitted up as a seminary room and room for special study for members of the senior class. The two smaller rooms on the west side of the hall were given to the cataloguing department and the bibliographical collection. The increasing growth of the library, how- ever, called for still further extension of its quarters, and in 1884 plans were prepared and estimates obtained for the conversion of the present geological lecture room into a general reading room, and for the erec- tion of bookcases in the lighter portions of the existing reading room. In this way it would have been possible, at slight cost, to provide suit- ably for the accessions of the next ten years. At that time, however, it was firmly hoped that within two or three years the contest over Mrs. Fiske's will would be concluded, and that the Library would again be placed in the possession of its endowment. In that event it was de- signed to erect at once a fire-proof library building, and it was there- fore thought best to make no further changes in the present building. But once more our hopes were dupes. The three years reached seven before the final decision came, and for the last five years of this period the overcrowded condition of the Library was a source of constant in- convenience and discomfort to all who used it. Thousands of volumes had to be stored away in an attic room where they were almost inae- cessible; on many shelves the books were ranged in double rows; many

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of the larger volumes were piled upon the floor; and the attempt to preserve anything like a systematic arrangement of the books by sub- jects became almost hopeless.

In the autumn of 1884, Eugene Schuyler gave to the library a valu- able collection, numbering some six hundred volumes, chiefly relating to folklore, Russian literature and history. In January, 1886, the elec- tric light was introduced, and the library hours which, until then, had been from 8 A. M. to 5 P. M., were greatly lengthened. Since then the hours have been from 8 A. M. to 9:30 P. M. in term timc. In 1886 the purchase of the law library of Merritt King, numbering some four thou- sand volumes, made an admirable beginning of a library for the School of Law which was soon after established. In January, 1887, President White formally presented to the university his great historical library, containing over twenty thousand volumes, upon condition that a fire- proof room in the proposed library building should be provided for it, and suitable provision made for its increase. At that time the will suit was still undecided, and though it was determined to procure plans for a fire-proof library building, its erection secmed likely to be delayed for several years. In 1888, however, Henry W. Sage, recognizing the need for immediate action, generously offered to provide the funds for the construction of the building, on the single condition that should the final decision in the will suit be favorable to the university, the money advanced for this purpose should be repaid. Should, however, the de- cision be adverse, the building was to become the gift of Mr. Sage, who also declared his intention, in that event, to endow the library with a fund of three hundred thousand dollars for its increase. From the designs submitted to the trustees, that of W. H. Miller, an old Cornellian, was selected, and in the summer of 1888 work was begun upon the foundations. The first stone of the foundation walls was laid in place on September 27, 1888. The corner stone of the building was laid with public and formal ceremonies on October 30, 1889.

In May, 1890, a final decision in the will contest was given by the Supreme Court of the United States, and by it the Library was entirely deprived of the endowment bequeathed to it by Mrs. Fiskc. Happily Mr. Sage's generosity had provided for this contingency, and the Li- brary was henceforth indebted to him for its new building and the en- dowment for the purchase of books.

The general outlines of the library building are somewhat in the form of a cross, the bookstacks occupying the south and west arms, the

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reading rooms the central space and castern arm, while the northern provides accommodation for the offices of administration, the White Library and seven seminary rooms. In August, 1891, the removal of the books from McGraw Hall. to the new building was safely accom- plished. In September the books of the White Library were transferred to the actual custody of the university and shelved in the room provided for them. On October 7, the building and the endowment fund of three hundred thousand dollars were formally presented to the univer- sity by the donor, the Hon. Henry W. Sage, and at the same time President White made the formal presentation of his library. At this time the number of volumes in the library was over 105, 000.

In December, 1891, the Library received from Willard Fiske the gift of a remarkable collection of Rhaeto-Romanic literature numbering about one thousand volumes. In the spring of 1892, President White presented to the Library an interesting collection of Mormon literature. With the greater facilities for study afforded by the new reading room with its well equipped reference library, came a corresponding increase in the use of the library by students. it being estimated to be four times greater than in the previous year, while the seminary rooms offered cvery inducement for the prosecution of advanced study and research.

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Landmarks of Tompkins County, New York : including a history of Cornell University, Part 49

Author: Hewett, Waterman Thomas, 1846-1921; Selkreg, John H Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason Number of Pages: 1194

Author: Hewett, Waterman Thomas, 1846-1921; Selkreg, John H
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason
Number of Pages: 1194