Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/385

 FURTHER EXPANSION 337 and 1902, the Scammon block was secured as the site of the School of Education. Meantime Mr. Rockefeller, looking far into the future, and anticipating the continued development of the institution he had founded, entered upon a series of transactions fairly bewildering in their promise of steps in expansion yet to be made. He instructed Major H. A. Rust, the University business manager, to begin to purchase for him lands in any and all the blocks fronting south on the Midway Plaisance for a distance of about three-quarters of a mile, from Washington Park on the west to Dorchester Avenue on the east. Purchases were to be made as quietly as possible through different agencies, so that a prohibitive rise in the price of real estate might not take place. In February, 1903, Mr. Wallace Heckman was appointed busi- ness manager to succeed Major Rust, who, having reached the age of seventy, had resigned after more than eight years of useful service. The commission to continue these purchases of land was now transferred to Mr. Heckman and was so industriously executed by him that in December, 1903, Mr. Rockefeller gave to the University lands north of the Midway Plaisance, which, in the letter of gift, were estimated to have cost fifteen hundred thousand dollars. Mr. Heckman was encouraged to continue his purchases, and in the end the University found itself in possession, lacking perhaps four hundred feet front on side streets, of the entire ten blocks from Washington Park to Dorchester Avenue, including the whole of the Midway front. There were many dwelling and apart- ment houses on these blocks, but all were purchased and deeded to the University, the rents adding appreciably to the annual income. The total cost to Mr. Rockefeller of these purchases north of the Midway was one million, six hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars. But this was not all. Mr. Rockefeller seems to have determined, while he was about it, so to enlarge the University grounds as to make provision for any possible future expansion. Mr. Heckman, therefore, was encouraged to transfer his purchasing activities to the blocks fronting on the Midway Plaisance along its southern boundary. This he was not backward in doing, and pushed the