Repository: UIHistories Project: Course Catalog - 1886-1887 [PAGE 25]

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Buildings and Grounds.

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at the junction of the Illinois Central, the Indiana. Blooinington and Western, and the Wabash railways. The country is a region of beautiful rolling prairies, with large belts of timber along the streams, and is one of the richest farming districts in the State.

BUILDINGS AND GEOUNDS.

The domain occupied by the University and its several departments, embraces about 623 acres, including stock farm, experimental farm, orchards, nurseries, forest plantation, arboretum, ornamental grounds, and military parade grounds. The University buildings, fifteen in number, include a grand Main Building, a spacious Mechanical Building and Drill Hall, a large Chemical Laboratory, a Veterinary Hall, a small Astronomical Observatory, two dormitories, three dwellings, two large barns, and a green-house. The Main University Building, designed wholly for public uses, occupies three sides of a quadrangle, measuring 214 feet in front and 122 feet upon the wings. The Library-wing is fire proof, and contains in spacious halls the Museum of Natural History, the Library, the Art Gallery, and the Museum of Industrial Art. The Chapel wing contains the Chapel, the Physical Laboratory and Lecture Boom, and rooms for draughting and drawing. In the main front are convenient ckss-rooms; on the upper floor, elegant halls for literary societies. The building is warmed by steam from a boiler-house which forms the fourth side of the quadrangle in the rear. The Mechanical Building and Drill Hall is of brick, 126 feet in length, and 88 feet in width. It contains a boilerroom, a machine shop, furnished for practical use with a steam engine, lathes, and other machinery; pattern and finishing shop; shops for carpentry and cabinet-work, furnished with wood-working machinery; paint and draughting rooms, and rooms for models, storage, etc. An addition built lately for a blacksmith shop, 32 by 36 feet, contains sixteen forges with anvils and tools, and a cupola for melting iron. In the second story is the large Drill Hall, 124 by 80 feet, sufficient for the evolutions of a company of infantry or a section of a battery of field artillery. It is also supplied with gymnastic apparatus. One of the towers contains an armorer's shop and an artillery room; the other contains a printing office and editor's room.