Landmarks of Tompkins County, New York : including a history of Cornell University, Part 65

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 65

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

This work has not been without its influence in preparing the public mind for the appreciation and fostering of veterinary science and especially of veterinary sanitary science. The extinction of one animal plague has demontrated the possibility and economy of stamping out other animal plagues dependent like that on a pure parasitic infection. The work of Pasteur and his followers in producing germs of dimin- ished potency, capable of producing non-fatal forms of a given plague, giving immunity from the more destructive forms, has shown how science may abolish the mortality of diseases which still continue to exist. The still more important fact, to which the Cornell veterinary professor has contributed by his experiments with swine plaguc, anthrax and rabies, that the sterilized chemical poisons, produced by the microbes of a self-limiting disease, can be used on the susceptible animal to produce immunity from that disease, opens a way to do away with the mortality of a disease, though the germs still exist in the locality. The use of antitoxins, produced in the system of an immunized animal, of protective serums, and of protective extracts of different organs to cure an infected subject or immunize a susceptible one, though less familiar to the general public, is becoming so with the ad- vanced members of the medical fraternity, and through them tends to reach the people at large. The use of the chemical products of the germs as a means of diagnosis of occult forms of disease (tuberculosis, glanders) opens a way for the discovery and extinction of cases of disease which would herctofore have escaped the most skillful inspection. The source of tuberculosis in our herds may be completely removed, by the aid of such means of diagnosis, and the production of a safe and efficient product for such diagnosis is the duty of a veterinary insti- tution. So, too, with the production of other sterilizcd disease poisons, of protective and curative antitoxins, serums, and animal extracts. Further, the investigation of the composition of such disease-poisons and

636

LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY.

of their appropriate antidotes is the natural work of such institutions. The more this field is studied, the wider its possibilities appear, and to those who already know something of the subject, the demand for investigation becomes more and more imperative. At the present moment the all but universal interest in the tuberculosis of cattle and its conveyance to man through mcat and milk, creates a demand for veterinary supervision of our herds, and of veterinarians sufficiently well educated in bacteriology, epidemiology and sanitation to be en- trusted with the extinction of the disease in animals. Hence the latest movement in reference to our veterinary department has been the appropriation by the Legislature of fifty thousand dollars as the first instalment toward the building and equipment of a Veterinary College in connection with Cornell University. If this is followed up in a manner becoming to the great State of New York, we may hope for a center of education and investigation which will furnish this and other States with accomplished men, equipped not only to deal with animal plagues, but with every other disease and injury of domestic animals, and with the whole subject of their improvement and hygiene. To do justice to the subject will demand a liberal outlay, first for veterinary education and second for veterinary sanitary work throughout the State, and the aroused public sentiment may be trusted to carry this out. What was impossible twenty-five years ago, though no less necessary and no less imperative in the estimation of those of us who know the field, has become not only possible but a public demand, which must be supplied at no distant date. The province of this work is admirably expressed in a review of Professor Law's bulletin on tu- berculosis: "Two enormous tasks are naturally presented to the State and to economists for solution One is that of exterminating all tuber- culosis by means of test examinations of the animals; the other is the thorough inspection at the abattoirs of every animal slaughtered for food, and the rejection of all animals that are in the slightest degree infected.

" The difficulty and expense attending such work will be at first very great, but it seems to us that the course to be pursued is a plain one. Tuberculosis kills one-twelfth of the population and maims many more. The most potent and serious source of danger is in the animals that supply us with milk and meat. We do not hesitate to spend millions on a navy and army that are to be used only against possible future enemies. Why should we hesitate to spend still more on an enemy which is real and which is constantly assailing us?"

637

CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

These are truly "enormous tasks," but they are only the beginning of the work that looms up before the veterinary college of the future. The State that will furnish a college equal to the demands of the pres- ent day and of the new era now dawning, will deserve well of the nation and of humanity. Colleges that have been conducted as private corporations, have in some cases striven nobly and have accomplished much, but their day is past and the eve of the twentieth century de- mands an institution in keeping with the rapidly growing knowledge of the day, and with the uses to which such knowledge must now be applied.

XVII.

THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE.

Among the professorships proposed by Mr. White in the organiza- tion of the university, was a professorship of architecture. Attention had already been called to the great need in this country of scientific instruction in this important branch. Professor William B. Rogers, to whom, we may perhaps say, the Institute of Technology in Boston primarily owes its existence, in an address on the "Objects and plan of an Institute of Technology proposed to be established in Boston," published in 1860, had presented an eloquent plea for the organization of a Society of Arts and an Industrial Museum, and also for a School of Industrial Science and Art. He embodied in the plan of the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technology a course in architecture. Seldom have the beginnings of an institution been guided by a higher scien- tific wisdom and experience than in this case. Its foundation enlisted many of the most intelligent and progressive scholars in Boston, and all the discussions connected with the establishment of this school show an admirable mastery of the history of industrial education abroad, as well as a clear grasp of the demands of such an institution in America. This department of instruction went into operation in the Institute in 1865. President Barnard, that sagacious educator and noble man, whose services as an investigator rank with his great merit in advancing the interests of Columbia College, of which he had be- come president two years before, said in his annual report presented

638

LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY.

June 4, 1866: "There is no country in the world in which building in a style of costly magnificence is more constantly going on than this; and yet, in the whole country therc does not exist a school of scientific architecture." President White, in his lectures upon the history of cul- ture, had naturally become interested in the fine arts as illustrating in- tellectual development and typifying national character. He admired the English colleges with their picturesque quadrangles and cloister- like appearance; their halls and chapels as miracles in the history of English art; and it was with something of the feeling derived from the contemplation of these buildings, having their origin in the ecclesiasti- cal foundations of English culture, that he sought to transplant their form to this country, to a new atmosphere, but with a suggestion of the external glory and traditions of their home. This accounts for the attempted arrangement of the university buildings in the form of quadrangles. There seems to have been a suggestion at first, that the department of architecture should be linked with that of civil engineer- ing, for we find it so grouped in the original announcements of the courses of study. It was, however, impossible to realize at once Presi- dent White's broad conception of the university as a center of all de- partments of industrial science, and it was not until September 18. 1871, that the Reverend Charles Babcock was elected professor of architecture. Professor Babcock was a graduate of Union College, and had been associated with that brilliant architect, Richard Upjohn, in architectural work in New York. To a mind loving art in every form he added practical skill as a designer and draftsman. Eccle- siastical architecture he studied with especial fondness. Upon entering upon his duties, there was little equipment available for specific instruc- tion in his department. Models, plans and designs, which are indis- pensable for training in drawing, and as an illustration of styles and historical periods in art, were lacking. One valuable feature, however, for his work was available in a collection of splendid works upon the history of architecture which had constituted a part of President White's private library, and which he offered to present to the univer- sity in consideration of the acquisition of a mathematical library, were at the disposal of the department of architecture. Technical instruc- tion in physics, in chemistry, in mechanics and mathematics, and to a limited extent in drawing, was supplied by associated departments of instruction; but the entire work of teaching architecture devolved at the beginning upon one professor. Not only was it necessary for him

639

CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

to give courses of lectures upon the history of classical, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and later architecture, and the history of its development in various countries, but to discuss the question of the materials of construction, and the designing of public and private buildings, and to give instruction in drawing in all the forms essential to the architect. No department, whose full equipment demands large appropriations for architectural models, has so grown, with limited sup- port, as the department of architecture. It now ranks as one of the three great technical schools of the university. It was not until 1876 that the department was enlarged by the appointment of a single in- structor in architectural drawing. In 1880 Charles Francis Osborne was made instructor in architecture, and in the following year assist- ant, and later associate professor of architecture. The first accommo- dations for the architectural department were found in a single room on the second floor of the west division of Sibley College. Later it occu- pied two rooms in McGraw Hall; it was then transferred to Morrill Hall, north end, where it occupied the second and third floors. It was finally removed to Lincoln Hall, to accommodations that seemed ample when the building was erected, but the great increase in numbers has caused instruction to be given the present year to nearly one hundred students in rooms originally planned for fifty. With ample museum accommodations, the collections in this department would soon become among the most valuable in the university.

XVIII

THE DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING.

The first professor chosen to th s chair was William Charles Cleve- land. Professor Cleveland was a graduate of the Lawrence Scientific School, a scholar accomplished in several departments of science, an excellent botanist and geologist, gifted in his own profession and an enthusiastic and inspiring teacher. He left his impress upon the stu- dents whom he taught during the first four years of the history of the university. The Era of that day pays a beautiful and pathetic tribute to his memory. It says: "How shall we adequately describe him, claiming as he did to a degree rare as it was beautiful, veneration as a

640

LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY.

professor, esteem and profound respect as a friend? Of his scholastic acquirements we need not speak. The extent of his studies was only equaled by his thoroughness. An erudite mathematician, an ardent geologist, thoroughly conversant with literature, language and science in almost every department and proficient in sculpture and music, he was indeed a rare example of thoroughness and widely diversified scholarship. He aimed to make his department at Cornell the best of its kind in the country, and he succeeded to a wonderful degree." President White said of him: " He was a builder, and his ambition was nothing less than to build a great college of engineering which should be known for good throughout the United States, and be a tower of strength for the university. In all this he planned most sa- gaciously and labored most devotedly. Against all persuasion to lower the standard of scholarship in his department, he insisted on holding it high, maintaining that this was the only policy which would give it permanent success. The originality of his methods and the extent of his knowledge was a constant surprise to his associates. On the practi- cal side of his department he was admirable. In the construction of models for illustration he showed very great skill, nor was his skill en- tirely mechanical or mathematical; he showed a capacity for work in art, which, if carried out, would have certainly brought him high reputation. The sketching of a landscape that pleased him, the model- ing of the bust of a brother professor whom he loved, these were pas- times with him." Upon the death of Professor Cleveland, Professor E. A. Fuertes, a graduate of the Troy Polytechnic Institute in this country, but who had studied with distinction in several foreign schools, was called to be his successor. Professor Fuertes was a scholar of thorough literary as well as scientific training. He had been the en- gineer in charge of the Nicaragua survey, and had had wide experience as a consulting engineer in the erection of important municipal works in New York. The College of Civil Engineering began with the establishment of a department of engineering, which originally bore the name of engineering and architecture. Like every other branch of the university at that time, the engineering work was still in a pri- mordial or chaotic condition. A vast amount of well directed effort had outlined the work in certain directions, which waited to assume useful shape, when Professor Cleveland was cut down, before he could fully organize his evident intentions with reference to the development of this school. The quarters of the department were in a single room

641

CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

about thirty feet long by fifteen feet wide, and all its equipment found ample space under the stairs, in a corner of the same room, leading to a garret. The organization of the present college is the outgrowth of what has been considered the duty of raising both the social and pro- fessional standing of the engineers of this country. Progress was at first slow, owing to lack of resources and the absence, at the time, in the university of the proper atmosphere, in which alone technical and professional studies can be prosecuted. The difficulty of engrafting upon our curriculum certain needed studies was greatly enhanced by the lack of that ready sympathy, which is not less influential than the lack of material resources. In the course of time, as the university broadened in every direction, it has been possible to carry out the evi- dent purposes of the organizer of the school, viz., that catholicity of sympathy and appreciation of intellectual activity in every field must be an all-prevading purpose in any institution of learning. The plain wooden building bearing the name of the Chemical Laboratory, which, soon after the opening of the second term, furnished scant accommodation for the departments of chemistry, physics, civil and mechanical engineering, botany and veterinary science, and even gen- eral store rooms for the university, was in process of time, vacated, as better accommodations were opened to them elsewhere, and the entire building was devoted to civil engineering. The growth of the depart- ment was maintained in the depressing years which followed the finan- cial crisis of 1873. The trustees suddenly changed the cautious policy which they had pursued as regards appropriations. The need of a vigorous development and of wise and enthusiastic leadership was felt throughout the university. The trustees felt that to inspire new life into all departments, additional appropriations must be made, even if the capital of the university was temporarily impaired. At a single meeting, December 18, 1880, one hundred thousand dollars were ap- propriated to equip certain departments in the university. In the summer of 1880, the dean of the department purchased in Europe the nucleus of the present equipment, which has been steadily increased until it has no equal in this country, and, considering the mutual rela- tions of the entire equipment in the university, it can be safely said that it has no equal in the world. The single teacher in 1873, upon whom devolved all the professional and other work of the college, has been supplanted to-day by fifteen men who dedicate their entire lives to the subdivided labor submitted to their charge, while the advance

642

LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY.

in other departments of the university, supplements, in extra-profes- sional studies, the distinctive work of the College of Civil Engineering. Many graduates have become eminent as authors, investigators or en- gineers, not only in the material industrialism of the country, but also in the development of transcendental engincering and cognate sciences. The proportion of graduates of this department who have charge of important works in the field of engineering, exceeds possibly that of any other institution. The striking feature of the educational aims of the college has been to impress upon its graduates the habit of well-con- trolled self-reliance, to which in no small degree is due the orderly and industrious qualities which they manifest, and without which success would be impossible. The theory has been to regulate instruction by the needs of the country, which are entirely different and, in some cases, cven incompatible with those of older societies. To this is due the progress in professional preferment characteristic of our gradu- ates. They are educated for the purposes for which they are needed. The effort to render useful our educational theories has given rise to novelties in method for which Cornell can claim priority of inception. Prominent among these is a feature now universally adopted, not only in the schools of this country, but in Canada, and is gaining favor in Europe, viz., that of teaching engineering in laboratories, a method which appeared for the first time some eighteen years since in the an- nouncement of this work.

XIX.

THE DEPARTMENT OF MECHANIC ARTS.

Provision was made upon the opening of the university for a depart- ment of mechanic arts as required by the charter and by the Land Grant Act, by the election of Professor John L. Morris, a graduate of Union College as professor of practical mechanics and director of the shops. Professor Morris, in addition to special training under Professor William L. Gillespie, a graduate of West Point, and one of the first professors of civil engineering in this country, and Professor Isaac W. Jackson whose reputation in the departments of mathematics and of natural philosophy made him one of the most prominent of the

Enģ+ ]ry H.B. Hall's Sons, New York.

Hivan Sibley

643

CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

earlier scholars in that department, had had a valuable experience in practical engineering. One of the earliest chairs of civil engi- neering in this country had been established in Union College. Although this department was one of the twin departments which gave rise to the. Land Grant, no preparation had been made for its equipment until after the opening of the university. There were no shops, laboratories, drafting rooms, or models of machinery, to prepare this important department for successful work. For the first two terms, so little provision was afforded for instruction, that the attention of the professor was devoted entirely to instruction in mathematics, and, for a time, in physics. A single room in Morrill Hall was shared in company with other professors. In the late winter of 1869, when the chemical laboratory was finished, it became the temporary home of the department of mechanic arts, in connection with other departments, but it was not until the last term of the first year that initial instruction in drafting and designing was given.

THE SIBLEY COLLEGE OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING.

Sibley College, so named in honor of its founder, the Hon. Hiram Sibley, of Rochester, N. Y., since deceased, is the school of mechanical engineering and of the mechanic arts, founded as a department of Cornell University in compliance with the law of Congress and the charter to carry into effect the requirements of the law establishing the university. The college dates from the year 1870, in which year Mr. Sibley began a series of contributions to the treasury of the university which have culminated in this great institution. The first building was begun in the summer of that year, a stone structure 100 feet in length, forty feet in width and three stories high, in which not only the college of engincering was established, but other departments of the university, including the printing establishment and the department of botany. This building was lengthened in 1884-5, and an extensive line of shops added, making the main building 165 feet in length. The workshops, which were one story in height, embraced a similar floor area. Attached to the latter, was a janitor's house and suitable store rooms and toilet rooms. After the death of the founder, his son, Mr. Hiram W. Sibley, succeeded to the trusteeship vacated by the father, and to the guardian- ship of the college. The last addition made by the founder to the buildings of the college was an extension of the line of workshops

644

LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY.

erected in 1888, consisting of a two-story structure, fifty feet in length, in which were placed, for the time, the equipments and apparatus of the laboratory of experimental engineering and research. The son continued his father's work, by the erection, in 1893-4, of a second main building, 165 feet long, 50 feet in width and three stories high, with a lofty and well-lighted basement; following a plan which had been prepared by the architect, for the founder, as a guide in further extensions, and which he approved only a brief period before his death.

The plan thus provided embraces the two large buildings described, each of which constitutes a wing of the contemplated structure; the space between being occupied by a central mass surmounted by a dome, and containing a large auditorium and the offices of administration. At either end of the front thus constructed, it was also proposed to erect, when needed, flanking structures, making, with the front and the shop line in the rear, a quadrangle of something like 500 feet in total length on the front, with a depth of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet. The plan is exceedingly imposing, and was prepared on the assumption that it would accommodate 1,000 students, receiving professional instruction in engineering to the extent and in the manner now practiced. As now arranged, the first of the two main buildings is occupied by the departments of electrical engineering, and of art and industrial drawing; the former using the lower floor, the latter the upper floors. The eastern wing affords drawing rooms for the Graduate School of Marine Engineering, and for various other drawing classes, and the needed lecture and class rooms. Its lower floor is occupied principally by the museums of the college, which cover a space of about 7,000 square feet. The basement is assigned to the lubricant- testing and hydraulic work of the department of experimental engi- neering.

The accounts of Mr. Sibley show a total of disbursements in behalf of the Sibley College of Cornell University amounting to above $150,- 000. These include the cost of the building erected in 1870-71, the first in the Sibley College group, $36,160; a complete set of the models of kinematic combinations and mechanical movements by Dr. Reu- leaux, $8,000, in 1882; an endowment fund for the professorship of mechanic arts, in 1885, of $50,000; buildings added in 1885-88, $63,- 367.44; total, $157,528.38; and the sum of $20,000 given to the univer- sity in 1873, and later devoted to the establishment of scholarships and fellowships, thus making a total of $177,528.38. The cost of the

645

CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Landmarks of Tompkins County, New York : including a history of Cornell University, Part 65

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