Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/255

 THE EARLIER BUILDINGS 223 authorized to prepare plans for a library building, a museum, a gymnasium, and a dormitory for women. The other important action was the adoption of the recommendation of the Finance Committee that an immediate effort be made to raise one million dollars to be expended on the grounds, buildings, and general equipment of the University. The story of this million dollars has been told in a preceding chapter. On November 23 the contracts for the two buildings authorized were let to Messrs. Grace & Hyde, and ground was broken for them three days later, November 26, 1891. There were no public exercises. The workmen gathered, the word was given, and the work began. The plough entered the ground near the corner of Ellis Avenue and the Midway Plaisance, where the first dormitories were to stand. Within three weeks more than a hundred men were at work on the foundations, and before January i, 1892, these were completed. The conclusion to erect two buildings instead of three, in the first instance, had led to a change in the proposed location of the recitation building, or lecture hall as it now began to be called. Instead of being placed between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth streets on Ellis Avenue, it was built south of Fifty-eighth Street adjoining the dormitory, which extended south toward the Plais- ance. The dormitory was in reality three buildings. The central one was five stories in height with rooms for ninety- two students. North and south of this, separated from it by fire walls, were build- ings of four stories, each with accommodations for forty-six students. The length of the three structures was two hundred and seventy feet. While it was originally arranged that the southern section should be a University dormitory, it was found convenient to set apart the northern section for the University and to assign it to stu- dents in the graduate departments. It was called at first Graduate, later North, Hall, and the central and southern sections were known as Middle and South Divinity halls. Although it had been hoped that these dormitories could be built for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, their cost proved to be one hundred and seventy- two thousand, eight hundred and six dollars. Of this sum Mr. Rockefeller contributed one hundred thousand dollars.