Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/443

 SOME IMPORTANT EVENTS 389 pied in the spring of 1896. Here for a year and more the Club flourished. But in the summer of 1897 the new building was defaced and injured by fire. The repairs had barely been com- pleted when on Christmas morning, 1897, the club house was practically destroyed by what was in fact the third fire, all these fires occurring during the last six months of the year. At the Convocation a week later the President spoke of the disaster with much feeling and concluded by saying: It would seem to be our duty to join together more heartily than ever before in an effort to make the club the strong and helpful factor in our Uni- versity life which we now know it can be made. With the help our friends in the city will give us, we may give the Quadrangle Club a higher position than that which it has yet occupied, and what has seemed to be a calamity may perhaps yet prove to have been a blessing in disguise. Robert F. Harper, then president of the Club, secured new quarters for the Club so promptly at 357 Fifty-eighth Street near Kenwood Avenue that the Christmas dinner was served there before the embers had cooled. With the same energy a new building, nearly or quite twice the size of the old one, was constructed and within six months was ready for occupancy. In this building the Club flourished during the remainder of the period covered by this history, in the last year of that period enrolling a membership of over three hundred, the largest it had ever had. The constitution of the Club stated that it was "instituted for the association of members of the faculties of the University of Chicago and other persons interested in Literature, Science, or Art." This purpose of acquaintance and fellowship it accom- plished with very large success. It is not too much to say that it was to the Quadrangle Club that the University largely owed the extraordinary spirit of unity and fellowship that prevailed between schools, departments, professors, officers of administration, Trus- tees, and alumni. The Club gave to its members the advantages of tennis courts, a reading-room, dining-room, billiard-room, living- rooms, and committee-rooms, with entertainments of many kinds. Following Dr. Judson's term, the presidency of the Club was filled up to 1916-17 by Professors Henry H. Donaldson, Robert F. Harper, George E. Vincent, Frank F. Abbott, James R. Angell,