UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
N A V I G A T I O N D I G I T A L L I B R A R Y
Bookmark and Share



Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 30 Year Master Plan (Tilton & O'Donnell) [PAGE 26]

Caption: Book - 30 Year Master Plan (Tilton & O'Donnell)
This is a reduced-resolution page image for fast online browsing.


Jump to Page:
< Previous Page [Displaying Page 26 of 250] Next Page >
[VIEW ALL PAGE THUMBNAILS]




EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:



CHAPTER

II

PROBLEMS OF IMPROVEMENT. REGENT PEABODY AND ACTING REGENT BURRILL: (1881-1894) >npHE REMOVAL of the old building on Illinois Field left the •*• ground on which it stood without definite use, and for some time its future was uncertain. Regent Peabody, regarding it as waste space and believing that "the time will come when the University will wish to hold no property north of Springfield Avenue," recommended that it be sold as soon as a fair price could be obtained; but fortunately the suggestion was not carried out. Intercollegiate athletics had been introduced two years before; six years later this feature of the University life had gained such prominence that the Trustees felt warranted in turning over the area to the newly-formed Athletic Association. It was in the early nineties that the University experienced a period of unprecedented and unanticipated growth. When the last decade of the century opened, there were three main buildings on the campus: University Hall, the old Mechanical Building, and the Chemical Laboratory (present Entomology Building). A small greenhouse, relatively unimportant in the group but a center of great interest at the time, stood near the site of the Adminstration Building. Registration, after running in the three hundreds for eight dull years in the early eighties, leaped from 377 to 519 in the three years from 1887 to 1890. The result was a crowding of all available space. In order "to give the Mechanical Department room for needed expansion in the old Mechanical Building," a new Drill Hall was requested of the legislature in December, 1888, and the appropriation was secured. The site for this building, now the Gymnasium Annex, seems not to have been given much consideration by the

17