Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 16 Years (Edmund James) [PAGE 82]

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CHAPTER I I I BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT One of the items contained in the offer of Champaign County in 1867 to secure the location of the University was "the Urbana and Champaign Institute buildings and grounds." There was however but one building—a brick structure one hundred twenty-five feet in length and five stories in height. According to the early catalogs of the University, the public rooms of this building were sufficient for the accommodation of over four hundred students and it had private study and sleeping rooms for one hundred thirty. The first legislature which met after the organization of the University appropriated $25,000 for barns, tools, etc., for the agricultural department, and $20,000 for a greenhouse, barns, trees, etc., for the horticultural department. The next legislature, meeting in 1871, appropriated $25,000 for a building to be used as a drill hall for the military department and as a shop for the department of mechanical science and engineering. It appropriated also the first $75,000 for a main building to cost $150,000.1 The next legislature, however, appropriated only $41,550 for the completion and equipment of the latter building.2 Succeeding legislatures appropriated funds from time to time for the erection of minor buildings, but with the exception of a chemical laboratory in 1878 costing $40,000 no large building was provided for during the sixteen years from 1873 to 1889. In the latter year $10,000 was appropriated for an armory, and scarcely a legislature since that time has failed to provide funds for one or more University buildings. A complete list of the principal buildings which have been erected by the University and which are still in use is here given. I t should be added that besides the buildings enumerated in the following lists certain others no longer in existence have been occupied by the University for various periods of time.

'Kept., Univ. of HI., 1870-71, pp. 15-16 *Rept., Univ. of 111., 1872-8, p. 148 77