CHARLES STORER STORROW. 771 



]Mr. Lawreuce was made president, and Mr. Storrow was made treas- 

 urer, engineer, and agent of the company. Mr. Storrow had a very 

 broad appreciation of the work before him, and phmned wisely for the 

 long future. He designed and built the dam across the river, — an en- 

 gineering structure of high merit, built in a manner much in advance of 

 the time, consisting of granite masonry laid in cement ujjon ledge, giving 

 a direct fall of 25 feet, with an overfall 900 feet in length, with wing 

 walls rising 16 feet above the crest, and wing dams to this height extend- 

 ing 1800 feet farther to high land, which have served to protect the city 

 from great freshets. 



He designed the canals and laid out the mill sites, both well adapted 

 to the full development of the power of the river. He built several of 

 the large mills, and bore the responsibility of building and carrying on 

 several manufacturing establishments. He laid out the city, planned and 

 built broad streets lined with shade-trees, and provided several public 

 parks, which were afterwards given to the city. He was active in estab- 

 lishing public schools of a high order, and helpful in establishing churches 

 for all of the people, and in IS.'iS, when the charter of the city was 

 obtained, the people made Lim their first mayor. 



Intimate association with Mr. Storrow, and recognition that his educa- 

 tion and training qualified him in an unusual degree for directing great 

 and diversified enterprises, caused Mr. Abbott Lawrence to consult with 

 him as to what was needed in a school for educating engineers. 



The remarkable letter of IMr. Abbott Lawrence of June 7, 1847. to 

 the treasurer of Harvard College, presents his views of the pressing 

 want in our country '• of an increased number of men educated in the 

 practical sciences," and offers a foundation for "a school, not for boys, 

 but for young men whose early education is completed, either in college 

 or elsewliere, and who intend to enter upon an active life as engineers or 

 chemists, or, in general, as men of science, applying their attainments to 

 practical purposes," and goes on to describe as few men, even among 

 engineers then in the world, could have described the essentials of an 

 engineering school having three departments, "1st, Engineering; 2d, 

 Mining in its extended sense, including metallurgy ; 3d, the invention 

 and manufacture of machinery." He includes the important provision 

 that " this school of science should number among its teachers men who 

 have practised and are practising the arts they are called to teach." 

 Mr. Lawrence urged Mr. Storrow to take the general direction of the 

 Lawrence Scientific School and to accept its professorship of Engineering; 

 but he was too earnestly engaged in the work in hand to undertake it. 



