Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/384

 336 I In the first days of the University the enlargement of the site from three blocks to four, an addition of six or seven acres, was looked upon as a most important and significant step in expansion. It was a great step in a transformation which changed the char- acter and scope and outlook of the young institution. Com- pared, however, with the enlargement of the site in this second period of expansion, it was insignificant. This second movement in site enlargement was a progressive one. It had a very small beginning. Immediately following the raising of the million dollars in ninety days in Chicago in 1892, the Trustees purchased the corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Ellis Avenue, the site on which the Press Building was later erected. In 1893 J nn Johnston, Jr., gave to the University the site for the Observatory at Lake Geneva, more than fifty acres of ground, to which small pieces were added from time to time by purchase, increasing the grounds to seventy- one and a half acres. Early in 1894, lots were purchased on the northeast corner of Fifty-ninth Street and University Avenue on which the President's House was built. In 1898 Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Field united in adding to the site the two blocks north of the central quadrangles, to be used for athletic purposes. No name being officially given to these grounds they were, for a number of years, called by the students and the public Marshall Field. In 1914, however, the Trustees, responding to the desire of the students and alumni that their admiration and affection for the "Old Man" might receive recognition, formally and officially made the name Stagg Field. In 1901 Mr. Rockefeller purchased for the University, as a location for the power plant, the west half of the block between Ingleside and Ellis avenues and Fifty- seventh and Fifty-eighth streets, and Mr. Ryerson, about the same time, presented most of the east half of the same block. The year 1901 also marked the gift by Mr. Rockefeller of the entire block south of the one just named, thus protecting the quad- rangles on the west from any possible undesirable occupancy. For this same purpose protecting the quadrangles the three hundred feet south of Fifty-seventh Street, opposite the Reynolds Club House and Mandel Assembly Hall, were purchased. As has been told already in this chapter, during the years 1901