Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/498

 436 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Rosenwald had not come to the rescue, none of us know In place of one reasonably good classroom and one poor one and one or two bits of incon- venient space which had to be used for classroom purposes, we have now six good classrooms. In place of limited space adapted to laboratory purposes as it might be, we have now half a dozen laboratories adapted to the various needs of the work. Instead of inconvenient and uninclosed offices and work rooms for members of the staff, and no quarters at all for advanced students, we have workrooms both for members of the staff and for research students, where their work may be left from hour to hour, or, if need be, from day to day, undisturbed, and it is not only we who are here who are grateful to Mr. Rosenwald, but generations after us will rise up to bless him. In concluding his dedicatory statement President Judson said: As President of the University and representing the Board of Trustees, I declare this building duly dedicated for all time to sound learning and to the advancement of knowledge, and its name shall be known throughout the years to come as the Julius Rosenwald Hall. The amount expended in the erection, equipment, and furnish- ing of Rosenwald Hall was three hundred and five thousand dollars. It was located immediately west of Walker Museum and was con- nected with it on all the floors of the Museum. The Business Manager stated that it had "four stories and a half and basement," and that it had a "ground area of eleven thousand, two hundred and fifty square feet." A graceful octagonal tower rising high above the building added greatly to its attractiveness. One of the inter- esting features of the building was the seismograph room in the basement with its massive cement column built solidly into the rock foundations of Chicago nearly seventy feet below the surface of the ground. Rosenwald Hall was planned internally to meet as exactly and fully as possible the varied needs of the departments of Geology and Geography. It contained the astonishing number of eighty rooms, every one of which had its designated use. The character and uses of the Hall were expressed in multiplied exterior carvings showing the heads of many eminent geologists, shields on which were carved the floral emblems of the nations, fossils of past types of life, gargoyles representing birds, reptiles, and the winds, and many other symbolic representations.