USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cleveland, Ohio, Volume I > Part 70
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).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104
10 "Western Reserve University Bulletin," Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 16-17.
549
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
WORKSHOPS.
The college attempted to meet the primitive economic conditions of a new region by establishing in 1828 workshops where the students could labor at productive employment to support themselves in part at least.9
It is evident from the records that while the element of self-support was foremost, there was at the same time some thought for "manual dexterity" and considerable emphasis placed on providing a "rational exercise," perhaps to commend it more readily to students and parents alike. Cabinet, cooperage, wagon and blacksmith shops, were established and maintained at a large cost for about twenty-five years. The experiment was an utter failure. The out- put of half willing students, withdrawn from their primary interests, and driven to a distasteful labor by college rules, laboring intermittently, unskilled and with nothing of the modern technical school's aims for the future economic value of the student's labor, such an output was miserably poor and unsalable.
PROSPECTS AT HUDSON.
During the Hudson period the endowment, student body and faculty had grown very slowly. The college possessed in 1880 a productive endowment of a little more than two hundred thousand dollars; college buildings and equip- ment worth under forty thousand dollars; and student body averaging sixty- five for the decade from 1870 to 1880. Such statistics measure but little in telling a story of prospects. Absence of regular, stable and adequate chan- nels of support and the proximity of numerous other colleges foretold to the thoughtful stagnation and possible retrogression. This outlook came at a time when economic conditions were changing rapidly and when the flood had set cityward. The conviction had taken a firm hold that the city possessed some advantages over the country as a seat for a live and growing college thoroughly equipped to meet modern conditions. Cleveland near by was developing rapidly into a great industrial center. Its citizens had begun to aspire to possess a great university and a Polytechnical school. Two facts were self-evident: That Cleveland would soon possess its university ; and that Western Reserve, already falling between the state supported institutions of higher education and the denomination supported college, was facing a crisis in its history.
REMOVAL TO CLEVELAND
Dr. Hiram C. Haydn, long time trustee, and later president, professor of biblical literature and honored vice president at present, a service which has lasted through many years, and speaks for itself, became himself convinced of the advantage of building anew in Cleveland on the historic foun- dation at Hudson, and advocated such a change before his associates. His paper on the future interests of the college presented to them on June 25, 1878, led to definite measures toward a removal.11
11 Records of the Trustees, p. 419 p. 432; Haydn, "From Hudson to Cleveland," p. 46. " Records of the Trustees, p. 18.
550
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
Dr. Haydn interested Mr. Amasa Stone in his plan, secured from the college authorities a statement of the necessary financial provision to make advisable a removal to a more costly location and to meet the enlarged work, and induced Mr. Stone to meet these terms. All this took many conferences of the several parties interested. Dr. Haydn's service to the college in this one respect alone was of incalculable value. The first steps in the removal to Cleveland were made early in 1878, the final agreement with Mr. Stone was concluded September 20, 1880.12
Mr. Stone gave the college five hundred thousand dollars; one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for buildings and for the improvement of grounds, and three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the permanent endowment. Promi- nent Cleveland citizens provided the site. Mr. Leonard Case had set apart certain property in February, 1877, to endow and establish a scientific school in Cleveland and on his death January 6, 1880, the organization of the school was undertaken. This magnificent foundation aroused enthusiasm for Dr. Haydn's project for a larger university of Cleveland which should supplement the proposed technical establishment, and quickened the ambition of the Hudson college to play the new role. A plan to locate the two institutions in proximity and bring them into some sort of working relation naturally commended itself to the founders on both sides. The L. E. Holden homestead of forty-three acres was obtained by the subscriptions of a committee of citizens and divided be- tween the Case School of Applied Science and Adelbert College of Western Reserve university, which had been rechristened in accordance with the wish of Mr. Stone.13
Adelbert college opened its halls on the new campus September, 1881, and Western Reserve college at Hudson passed away. Its buildings remained for a few years occupied by the Western Reserve Preparatory school, but even this was abandoned in 1903 and the Hudson property at present lies idle.
THE ELIMINATION OF COEDUCATION.
When Western Reserve college was founded, a college education was re- garded as the exclusive privilege of man. Neither the charter nor the laws of the college presented in themselves any obstacles to the admission of women, but the gates were left open, not because the trustees had consciously left their fold unguarded, but because in accord with the spirit of the times they had never thought that there might be intellectual cooperation between the sexes in the higher concerns of life. Inasmuch as they had not thought out the pos- sibility, not to speak of the more practical advisibility of such a course, no cen- sure falls on them for making no provision in Western Reserve college. Ober- lin college founded in 1834, was at the outset committed to the "elevation of female character" and extending the higher education to both sexes. Other western colleges followed the example of Oberlin. Many state universities opened their doors to women. Such institutions established out of public funds were quite logically forced to offer their instruction to all citizens re-
12 Records of the Trustees, p. 436; Haydn, "From Hudson to Cleveland," pp. 48-49.
13 Records of the Trustees, p. 443; Haydn, "From Hudson to Cleveland," pp. 52-53.
AMASA STONE
551
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
gardless of sex. Iowa admitted women from 1856; Kansas, 1866; Minnesota, 1868; Nebraska, 1871; Indiana, 1871; Michigan, Illinois, California and Mis- souri in 1870; University of Ohio in 1874; Wisconsin, 1874. The prevalence of coeducation in the west carried Western Reserve college along. President Cutler after gaining the consent of his faculty, announced at his own inaugura- tion in 1872 that women would be admitted to all the privileges of the college on the same conditions as men. In the autumn of 1872, several girls entered the preparatory school, and in 1874, one young woman entered the freshman class of the college. Others followed in successive years. Coeducation seems to have come in as an apparently harmless expansion when a need of more students was felt, and when most other colleges of the west were following the same course. The spirit of the time demanded that existing institutions make provision for the education of the daughters, and the foundation at Hudson could easily care for a larger student body. There was a decided decrease in the number of students at this period: 1870, fifty-six; 1871, fifty-two; 1872, forty-eight. For many years the admission of women had very little percep-
tible effect on the college. A very few, three or four at most at one time, availed themselves of the new privilege. But after the removal to Cleveland, the num- ber increased until about twenty per cent were women with no such correspond- ing proportionate increase in men for many years. The Adelbert undergrad- uate men opposed the presence of women-jealousy, fear, traditions combined to arouse a spirit against coeducation. Most loyal and wise friends of the college were alarmed with fears that the student body would become "over feminized," and that a new student class would exhaust resources piously pro- vided for the boys' good. After a long conflict within the college and outside, a struggle which weakened the college in its new environments unfortunately, the faculty voted to abandon coeducation, and the trustees upheld their action, January 24, 1888. Dr. Haydn became president in 1887, largely to untangle the coeducational snarl, eliminate it and initiate a new policy.14 The resolution of the trustees called the college back to the original purpose to educate men only without expressing an opinion on the merits of coeducation. At the same time they suggested the establishment of a college of equal grade for women.15
The establishment of a separate college for women was made easy by a pledge from the Adelbert faculty to duplicate their instruction in such a college for three years. This was the first great gift providing one prime agent of a college for women-a faculty for a period of three years. Mr. John Hay and Mrs. Amasa Stone promptly added five thousand dollars and three thousand dol- lars for immediate use. With these provisions, to be sure an uncertain foun- dation for a college, the Ford home at the corner of Euclid avenue and Adel- bert road was rented. The college for women was opened in September, 1888, with eleven students in regular courses and twenty-seven special students. In March, 1889, Mrs. James F. Clark gave one hundred thousand dollars to be divided, part for a building and part for the endowment of a professorship. Mr. Wade gave the site and in 1892, the Cleveland college for women moved onto its present site. After the expiration of the three year arrangement with
14 Haydn, From Hudson to Cleveland, p. 97.
15 Records of Trustees, p. 550; Haydn, From Hudson to Cleveland, pp. 106, ff.
552
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
the Adelbert faculty, it acquired a separate corps of instructors, though in a num- ber of the departments a system of exchange of work prevails by which the in- structor offers his courses in both colleges, economizing the effort of the instruc- tor, and giving both colleges the benefit of particular strength in any department. Graduates of the college for women receive their degrees from the university, of which the college is a part. The system is not one of coeducation of the sexes as prevails in the state universities, nor of complete separation which has been the method generally adopted in New England and the east, but one of coordination. Here again it differs from the system of coordination adopted at Radcliffe, Barnard and other colleges of eastern universities which depend entirely upon the fac- ulty of the colleges for men for instruction. At Western Reserve, the labora- tories for biology, chemistry, geology and physics, are situated on the campus of Adelbert college and are used in common with the students of that college, though in distinct rooms of each building.
FOUNDING A UNIVERSITY.
Two or three generations ago all higher education worth the while was thought to start with the preparatory school, continue through the college and terminate with a theological seminary, in a sort of a longitudinal course. The subject matter of the curriculum was narrow and dominated by the ancient languages and literatures. This was the American type. It was the University in embryo, but it was not the European university in the sense of including in its scope universal knowledge, the universitas.
The Theological Department of Western Reserve college died in 1852, from undernourishment and overcompetition. The preparatory school, a necessary adjunct to the colleges throughout the United States, was maintained at Hudson, until 1903 and at Greensprings where another was maintained from 1884 until 1894. The growth of public high schools had taken the place of such so-called feeders. They are now rarely found necessary by the better institutions. Stu- dents are received directly on certificate from the high schools without any ex- aminations. This system prevails throughout the United States except for a few of the older eastern colleges.
In the meantime another tendency had set in, to attach other professional schools than Theological seminaries. The Cleveland Medical college had been organized in 1843. Its faculity petitioned to be taken over by the trustees of Western Reserve college, and accordingly after the charter of incorporation had been amended to empower such action, the trustees adopted the new medical college as the medical department and located it in Cleveland. Like all medi- cal schools of that time, it depended wholly on tuition fees for support. The fees were divided equally between the professors and lecturers, "it being un- derstood that all apparatus necessary for illustrating the various departments of instruction shall be furnished by the professors and lecturers filling the same, until provisions for such apparatus be made by the board of agency." 16 The faculty was the board of agency. It erected a building on the. corner of St. Clair avenue and Ninth street in 1844, which appears to have been paid for
16 Records of Trustees, pp. 177, 182, 186; Haydn, "From Hudson to Cleveland," p. 154.
-
553
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
partly out of matriculating and graduating fees and out of subscriptions made by the members of the faculty. "In 1847 the faculty was authorized to mort- gage the property of the professors who had advanced funds for the depart- ment." 17
The authorities of Western Reserve college were wide awake to the needs of the community and eager to serve it, especially when the creation of a new department would increase the patronage or the student body. A teachers' seminary was proposed in 1839, and a committee appointed by the trustees to petition the legislature for a grant of five thousand dollars to carry out the plan. The department was never established. A department of natural' science was announced in 1840 and students received for a few years; the late Sena- tor M. A. Hanna attended as one of these for a few months. An effort was made to establish a law department in Cleveland in 1843, and again in 1851, but without the success that attended the effort to organize a medical department in 1844.
A course of instruction for graduates was announced in 1847, and contin- uously published in the catalogue for many years thereafter. It was however, a premature effort to establish the Graduate school. Resident graduates do not seem to have come forward. Another significant innovation was made when Professor Forest Shephard was elected in 1847 professor of agricultural chemistry and economic geology to promote "practical agricultural science."
The curriculum has been gradually broadened from the classical type limited to the staples of Greek and Latin and mathematics and senior lectures on men- tal and moral science to keep pace with progress in education. A professor of chemistry, mineralogy and geology was added in 1839, though with meager provision for apparatus, and none for class laboratory practice. An instructor in modern languages first appeared at the college in 1843, but such instruction was a by-product at that time and was soon dropped, not to appear again until 1876, shortly before the removal to Cleveland.
In 1877 the trustees authorized the establishment of courses in engineering in order to meet the pressing demands for technical training in the west, but the removal to Cleveland and the organization there of Case School of Applied Science, made inexpedient such a development.18
The refoundation in Cleveland, in a city community, with a diverse popu- lation, with vast opportunities for growth, and greater promise of patronage, had the effect of raising on the horizon visions of a great city university. In pursuit of this new ideal the trustees secured in 1884 a new charter with a definite statement of a purpose to establish in Cleveland a university to promote learning with a broader scope so as to include departments of medicine, law, philosophy, art, music, and such other means of education as the trustees should deem advisable. This was a final legal step in the transformation from a col- lege to a university basis. In the year 1888 at the same time that a college for women was established, two other departments rather adjunct to the special foundation for women, a school of art and one of music, both formerly private
17 Haydn, "From Hudson to Cleveland," p. 156.
18 Records of the Trustees, p. 416.
554
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
schools, were grafted onto the university. In 1890 a site was bought on Euclid avenue just west of Doan Brook, near the university campus, and preliminary plans were made for a building to accommodate both schools and furnish a large auditorium for all university functions appealing to the public, but a quarrel in the art school came to a climax in 1891, when it severed its relations with the university. The school of music feeble, crippled by the fall of the school of art was separated from the university in 1892 by mutual consent.19
In 1892 a dental school was established. This is housed in rented quarters in the Bangor building. A law school was organized at the same time. The following year on the promise of Mrs. Backus to endow the school with fifty thou- sand dollars the name was changed to the "Franklin T. Backus Law School of Western Reserve university," in honor of her husband who was during his life one of the leaders of the Ohio bar. After some years in temporary quarters in the Ford house at the corner of Euclid avenue and Adelbert road and in Adelbert hall it was removed in 1896 to the present building on Adelbert road. A graduate school which had been so long in contemplation was finally realized in 1892. The faculties of Adelbert college and the college for Women were associated together to give advanced instruction of a graduate character leading to the degrees of A. M. and Ph. D. This department has no endowment, no distinct faculty, no buildings or other equipment aside from that available from that provided for the undergraduate colleges, and no income except the small amount coming from fees. It depends wholly upon the gratuitous service of the hard worked members of the colleges. Mr. Carnegie gave one hundred thousand dollars in 1903 to endow a Library school. This was opened in 1904 in Adelbert hall on the Adelbert col- lege campus where it is still located. The latest expansion came with the addition of the school of Pharmacy in 1908. These professional schools are not closely articulated one with another. They constitute a mere confederation under the centralizing control of the trustees and president. Each manages its internal scholastic affairs with the utmost freedom subject only to a general supervision by the president and to the limitations of finances which are wholly administered by the trustees.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS.
An era of utilitarian policies has begun in higher education throughout the United States. This movement began in Germany where it has gone the farthest, and has developed in the United States under the lead of the state universities, particularly the university of Wisconsin, which is easily in the van. Such univer- sities aim to serve the people in a wider sense, reaching the mature as well as the youth, offering practical courses as well as those in pure culture. The object is coming to be to serve all the people all the time. The practical application of this principle takes many forms, sometimes in loaning professors as experts in city and state government and in industrial problems, sometimes in sending advanced students out to apply class room theories, and at others in extension lectures and
19 Haydn, "From Hudson to Cleveland," pp. 189-194.
Rev. George E. Pierce. D. D.
Rev. Carroll Cutler, D. D.
Rev. Henry L. Hitchcock, D. D. THREE PRESIDENTS OF WESTERN RESERVE COLLEGE
555
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
correspondence courses. The result is a radical change in the attitude of the com- munity, and an impetus to civic and industrial development. A university in a city like Cleveland becomes at once an organized body of expert workers for the common good, training the community in the class laboratories and libraries for the larger laboratories of the office, the shop and the factory.
The Western Reserve university has been able to gradually grow into such ser- vice as its endowment has permitted. Several recent gifts have emphasized this tendency. In 1897 Mr. H. M. Hanna gave twelve thousand dollars, to establish the Hanna Research Fellowship at the Medical school, and three years later gave also forty thousand dollars to endow a chair of Clinical Microscopy. Of the same character was the gift of Mr. Andrew Carnegie of one hundred thousand dollars, toward endowing a Library school, which is now actively preparing trained as- sistants for the libraries of Cleveland. A more striking illustration is represented by the gift of two hundred thousand dollars by Mr. H. M. Hanna and Colonel Oliver H. Payne in 1906, to endow a chair of Experimental Medicine at the Medical school, a chair which is full of promise for the general welfare of the city; or by the gift of seventy-five thousand dollars by the three children of Mr. Selah Chamberlain to endow a department of Sociology, which has by the very force of circumstances been pressed into practical sociology with its faculty members cooperating with the several social settlements and boards of charities, and its students prepared for active duty by practice in these ready-at-hand laboratories ; or by the gift of one hundred thousand dollars by many friends of the university to endow a department of political science with the same practical purpose.
The same larger field for university activity was invaded in 1908 and 1909 when several departments at Adelbert college and the college for Women re- peated their college courses to evening classes of teachers, office clerks and pro- fessional men and women. This was an attempt to carry the college to the people. The department of Sociology is offering afternoon courses in various practical aspects of the subject at Goodrich house during the current year, 1909-1910. Members of the faculties are constantly appearing before clubs, societies and labor organizations for public lectures along special lines. The university has grown rapidly in buildings and laboratory facilities, but the funds to maintain the libra- ries and to support an adequate body of instructors to keep pace with the newer tendencies in higher education have lagged behind. Adelbert college has at present a productive endowment of one million, thirty-four thousand, three hundred and eighty-two dollars and thirty-nine cents; the college for Women, four hundred and fifty-one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-six dollars and fifty-nine cents ; the Medical school, four hundred and forty-two thousand, three hundred and twenty-five dollars and fifty-three cents ; the Law school, sixty thousand dollars ; and the Library school has one hundred thousand dollars, or a total for the entire university of two million, eighty-eight thousand, five hundred and thirty-four dol- lars and fifty-one cents. The university publishes a quarterly bulletin wherein ap- pear reports of the president, accounts of research work of the faculty and news- notes bearing on University affairs.
556
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
CHAPTER LIX.
CASE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE.
By Eckstein Case, Secretary and Treasurer.
Less than thirty years have elapsed since the establishment of Case School of Applied Science upon the foundation provided by Leonard Case, Jr. In America at that time there were a number of schools which might have been classed as first rate high schools, but there were only three institutions devoted exclusively to technical education of a higher grade. These were the Rensalaer Polytechnic in- stitute of Troy, New York, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of Boston, and Stevens institute of Hoboken, New Jersey. It is true that a number of the stronger colleges had technical departments, but these were mainly subordinated to the classical and had made but little progress toward the ends intended by their foundations. Culture was still suspicious of its new neighbor, and it was not until the industrial development of the continent created the demand for the services of technically trained men that these departments were given the recog- nition which led to their present high efficiency.
Although so young, Case school has made an enviable reputation for itself, but, aside from the interest which obtains from its foundation and organization, there are few annals to record in which the reader of history would be interested. However, the promptness with which the intentions of its founder were carried into effect, the loyalty and devotion of his friends to his memory and the high standard maintained from the beginning, are worthy of the highest praise. For a proper appreciation of this disinterestedness and devotion, it is necessary to know and understand the character of Leonard Case and his immediate ancestors.
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.