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
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Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Nevins) [PAGE 181]

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NEW BUILDINGS

165

in Board meeting, and the architectural faculty was then asked to submit its own plans, Dean Bicker, Prof. White, and Grant Miller offering the Romanesque design which has proved so serviceable and beautiful. Minnesota sandstone, as enduring as any stone except granite, was obtained, the foundations were laid with special care, and the whole was roofed with clay tile. Yet the building was completed within the appropriation, and its success was one of the reasons which induced Altgeld to give up his plan for a uniform style.1 The Observatory was simultaneously built j while these were the years in which Dr. Draper was awakening the University to a new interest in its grounds. He repeatedly declared them the most beautiful of the sort in America, and contrasted their finished appearance under the care of Dr. Burrill with the unkempt look of most campuses of the time. But much was still to be done for their improvement, for lawns had been permitted to grow bare, stumps left in the ground, and townspeople allowed on holidays to drive their vehicles over the flower-beds. The last vestiges of the arboretum and the campus fences were removed, cement walks laid, and roadways improved; and in 1895 Burrill Avenue received its name—a pleasant bit of sentiment. A year later the constant services of a night watchman and day policeman were first employed. A little later still the central heating plant, whose smokestack Dr. Draper thought "an attractive feature" rather than

I Prof. N. A. Wells decorated the library, and spent much time and effort upon the fresco work in the rotunda, working six months in Paris (1898) upon the studies and cartoons from which these frescoes were executed. Upon this part of his task ho spent eighteen months, for which he received about $700 remuneration. The oil paintings are quite worthy the library, and rank with the best of similar frescoes in other American buildings of the sort.