Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/410

 356 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO which the men and women students of the Junior Colleges were to meet in separate classes, two buildings were needed for the two sexes. By the assignment of Ellis Hall, which was about to be vacated by the College for Teachers, to the men of the Junior Colleges, the problem for one of the buildings was more or less happily solved. In November and December, 1902, plans for a temporary building for the Junior College women were prepared. Once more Mr. Rockefeller came to the assistance of the Trustees and agreed to give fifty thousand dollars for its construction. It was located on the east side of Lexington, now University Avenue, midway between Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth streets, and was named Lexington Hall. It was built of pressed brick and made a better appearance than Ellis Hall. It contained fourteen recitation rooms, a library room, a large luncheon room, a rest room, executive offices, and cloak rooms. The Young Women's Christian League and other organizations of women students were assigned rooms in the building. Connected with the main structure was a women's gymnasium. Lexington Hall was built during the winter of 1902-3 and was occupied in the Spring Quarter of 1903. The thirteen buildings of the period here under review cost two million, three hundred and thirteen thousand dollars, a sum con- siderably in excess of that of the first two eras of building combined. They added immensely to the external equipment of the University, making that equipment, not entirely, but more nearly commen- surate with its needs. The architectural plan, which had been looked upon as a dream of enthusiasts that might be realized in a hundred years perhaps, was actually materializing in enduring stone before men's eyes, and nothing any longer seemed impossible.