Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/769

   WISCONSIN, UNIVERSITY OF, a co-educational institution of higher learning at Madison, Wisconsin, the capital of the state, established in 1848 under state control, supported largely by the state, and a part of the state educational system. The university occupies a picturesque and beautiful site on an irregular tract (600 acres), including both wooded hills and undulating meadow lands stretching for 1 m. along the shores of Lake Mendota. The main building, University Hall (1859; enlarged 1897-1899 and 1905-1906), which crowns University Hill, is exactly 1 m. from the state capitol. The other buildings include North Hall (1850), South Hall (1854), Science Hall (1887), the Biology Building (1911), the Chemical Building (1904-1905), the Hydraulic Laboratory (1905), the Engineering Building (1900), the Law School (1894), Chadbourne Hall (1870; remodelled in 1896) for women, Lathrop Hall (1910) for women. Assembly Hall (1879), the Chemical Engineering Building (1885), Machine Shops (1885), the armoury and gymnasium (1894), a group of half a dozen buildings belonging to the College of Agriculture and the Washburn Observatory (1878; a gift of Governor C. C. Washburn). On the lower campus is the building of the Wisconsin State Historical Society.

An act for the creation of a university to be supported by the Territory was passed by the first session of the Territorial legislature in 1836, but except for the naming of a board of trustees the plan was never put into operation. A similar act for the establishment of a university at Green Bay had no more result. In 1838 a university of the Territory of Wisconsin was created by act of the Territorial legislature and was endowed with two townships of land. This was the germ of the state university, provision for which was made in the state constitution adopted in 1848. The university was incorporated by act of the legislature in that year with a board of regents as the governing body, chosen by the legislature. A preparatory department was opened in the autumn of that year, and John H. Lathrop (1799-1866), a graduate of Yale, then president of the university of Missouri, was chosen as the first chancellor of the new institution. He was inaugurated in 1850, and in that year North Hall, the first building, was erected. The first academic class graduated in 1854. In the same year the Federal Congress (which had granted to the state seventy-two sections of salt-spring lands, and as no such lands were found in the state, had been petitioned to change the nature of the grant) granted seventy-two sections to be “sold in such manner as the legislature may direct for the benefit and in aid of the university.” The Federal land grants, however, which ought to have supported the university, were sacrificed to a desire to attract immigrants, and the institution for many years was compelled to get along on a small margin which rendered extension difficult; and the university permanent fund was soon impaired for the construction of buildings. Henry Barnard in 1859 succeeded Lathrop as chancellor, but resigned in 1861. After the Civil War, the office of chancellor was displaced by that of president. Paul Ansel Chadbourne (1823-1883), a graduate (and afterwards president) of Williams College, became president in 1867, and in his presidency (1867-1870) the university was reorganized, a college of law was founded, co-education was established and the agricultural college was consolidated with the university, a radical departure from the plan adopted in most of the Western states. In 1S71-1874 John Hanson Twombly, a graduate of Wesleyan University and one of the founders of Boston University, was president, and the legislature first provided for an annual state tax of $10,000 for the university. With the coming to the presidency (1874) of John Bascom (b. 1827), another graduate of Williams, the university began a new period of development; the preparatory department was