36o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thropic 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 

 lOS 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 Eiver,'* held this position 

 until 1892. 



The chair of mechanics and engineering was filled by the appoint- 

 ment of Joseph J. Eeynolds, 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 sur- 

 geon at the head of the St. Louis Medical College, was made professor 

 of comparative anatomy and physiology, and the Eev. Truman M. 

 Post accepted the professorship of ancient and modern history. With 

 such distinguished men on its first faculty, the infiuence of the univer- 

 sity in the community was at once felt, and the future seemed assured. 



During 1858 a college building was erected on the corner of Wash- 

 ington 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 pro- 

 fessor of mathematics at Phillips Academy, Exeter, IST. 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. 



* The Popular Science Monthly, December, 1903, p. 122, footnote. 



