Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1944 [PAGE 1074]

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U N I V E R S I T Y OF I L L I N O I S

1071

Although the Commission did not have the time to examine in detail the innumerable minutiae of material instructional facilities such as laboratory equipment, maps, and the like, nevertheless, on the basis of the information which it has, the Commission is of the opinion that the material instructional facilities are at least as well provided now as they were a decade ago. THE ATTENTION GIVEN TO NONFORMAL, NONCURRICULAR ASPECTS OF STUDENT WELFARE Student Housing Authentic history relates that the original dormitory of the Illinois Industrial University, the predecessor of the University of Illinois, was made uninhabitable in 1880 as a result of a storm. Since no money was forthcoming from the State at that time for its reconstruction, the University was compelled to open an agency for rooms in the Urbana-Champaign district. This, so the narrative states, proved a source of great concern both to those responsible for the administration of the University and to the parents of the students. Thus from the earliest days of the institution, student welfare has been a matter of administrative concern at the University of Illinois and student housing has been a major item in this concern. Since the destruction of this first dormitory, the University never has been able to house all of its students in its own dormitories. The business brought to the university community by reason of the fact that so many hundreds of students must rent rooms in private residences has built up over the years an income of no mean proportions in the community and one which in more recent times has seemed to have its repercussions registered in the administrative policies of the institution itself. Busey Hall was built in 1917. In the middle twenties Evans Hall was built and Davenport House acquired to house women students. With the exceptions of those who lived in these residences, however, the students of the University resided in private homes and ate in restaurants distributed over the entire Urbana-Champaign residence and business districts. The administration of the University was conscious of the problem of improving living conditions of students and in 1937 re-

[A.C.E. Report—53]