Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/364

360 millionaire with which to build and equip an entire institution at the start, were necessarily small, and the growth slow, until the public should recognize the worth and value of such an organization and assist it with substantial gifts.

The first building erected by the university was the south wing of the old university group on Seventeenth Street, near Washington Avenue, in which a school was opened in 1856. During the first year 108 scholars were entered in this school, which afterwards became the preparatory department of the university, the name being subsequently changed to its present title of Smith Academy.

On the twenty-second of April, 1857, the formal inauguration of the Washington University took place, with appropriate exercises in Academic Hall and an oration delivered by the Honorable Edward Everett, as well as addresses by the president of the board and several of the directors. This same year, 1857, saw also the erection of a building for a chemical laboratory and the appointment of Dr. Abram Litton to the chair of chemistry. Dr. Litton, 'the first thoroughly trained chemist west of the Mississippi River,' held this position until 1892.

The chair of mechanics and engineering was filled by the appointment of Joseph J. Reynolds, a graduate of West Point, and afterwards Brevet Major-General in the United States Army. The chair of physics and civil engineering was filled by the appointment of John M. Schofield, also a graduate of the United States Military Academy, of the class of 1853, who, after a brilliant record during the civil war, finally reached the rank of Lieutenant-General commanding the United States Army.

Dr. George Engelmann, 'the leading scientist of the west,' was called to the chair of botany; Dr. Charles A. Pope, the celebrated surgeon at the head of the St. Louis Medical College, was made professor of comparative anatomy and physiology, and the Rev. Truman M. Post accepted the professorship of ancient and modern history. With such distinguished men on its first faculty, the influence of the university in the community was at once felt, and the future seemed assured.

During 1858 a college building was erected on the corner of Washington Avenue and Seventeenth Street, and on December 17 of that year Joseph G. Hoyt was elected the first chancellor of the university. Chancellor Hoyt was a native of New Hampshire and a graduate of Yale College, of the class of 1840, and for many years had been professor of mathematics at Phillips Academy, Exeter, N. H. He was a man of scholarship and learning, and of great tact and affability, than whom no one could be better fitted for the young institution.