Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/53

 THE PREPARING OF THE WAY 27 four. In another six years the attendance had reached one hundred and thirty-three, and in 1891-92 it became one hundred and ninety. While the Seminary was at Morgan Park its endowments were secured. Two additional buildings were erected and paid for; a library building costing ten thousand dollars, and a chapel and recitation building, called, in honor of E. Nelson Blake, Blake Hall, costing thirty-three thousand dollars. Thus the Theological Seminary, continually increasing its equipment and growing in its attendance, in influence, and in the public confidence, rounded out a quarter of a century of history, having during that period enrolled above nine hundred students. At the end of twenty-five years, the Old University having been succeeded by the new University of Chicago, the Baptist Union Theological Seminary became the Divinity School of the University and entered on a new career. The entire history of the Seminary emphasized the conviction of the importance of Chicago as an educational center. The men having its interests in charge realized more profoundly than anyone else could do the greatness of the loss of the Old University. That institution had been the preliminary training-school for large num- bers of its students. It needed beyond measure such a training- school to prepare students for its classes. A new university was felt by all its friends, and most of all by its officers of administra- tion, to be indispensable to its highest usefulness. To them, it was a thing not to be thought of that there should not exist a college or university in immediate proximity to the Theological Seminary. They gave themselves therefore to the founding of a new university with a determination that no one else could feel. This interest and purpose were controlling factors in forwarding the movement for the new institution. And a great constituency ready to follow where they led was behind the Seminary and its friends. But it was not institutions alone that were important factors in preparing the way for the University. There were men who were not merely important, but essential factors in that preparation. It goes without saying that chief among these was John Davison Rockefeller. He was one of those men who change history. It fell to him to alter for the better the future of mankind; not through