THE PROPOSED MEADVILLE HOUSE IN CHICAGO BY REV. RICHARD WILSON BOYNTON Chairman of the Special Committee of the Board of Trustees of the Meadville Theological School on the Erection of the Chicago House The Unitarian denomination in the United States depends upon three schools of theological learning for the recruiting of its ministry. The oldest of these is the Divinity School of Harvard University. This was founded in 1816 and endowed by Unitarians, though for the past thirty years or more it has been a part of the University and nonsectarian. It receives students of all Protestant denominations, chiefly for postgraduate study, but each year a number of its graduates still enter Unitarian pulpits. The youngest of the three schools is the Pacific Unitarian School for the Ministry, established in 1904 at Berkeley, California, and, like the schools of other denominations there, working in close harmony and co-operation with the University of California. The third institution for the training of Unitarian ministers is the Meadville Theological School. This school was founded in 1844 at Meadville, in northwestern Pennsylvania. Its buildings, set in an ample and beautiful campus, crown a hill toward the eastern edge of the city of twenty thousand inhabitants. It has always had an able and scholarly faculty, never more so than at the present time. The school received students of all denominations on equal terms, a provision of its charter being that "no doctrinal test shall ever be made a condition of enjoying any of the opportunities of instruction." Planned originally to furnish missionaries for the then pioneer West in its earlier years students of the Christian connection shared its privileges; but for the last half-century or more practically all its graduates have been Unitarians. The school has just been celebrating, on June 1, 2, and 3, with appropriate academic and historical exercises, its seventy-fifth anniversary, postponed from 1919 because of conditions growing out of the world-war. As a small and comparatively isolated institution, with Allegheny College on a neighboring hill, but apart from the larger centers of learning, Meadville has long done effective work. To its theological courses it has added provision for Junior students, of undergraduate rank, and more recently courses for parish assistants and leaders in religious education. Women have always been received on a complete equality with men. In recent years, however, the need has been urgently felt of giving its students the wider contacts with learning and with life that can be found only in a great university and a metropolitan city. It was obvious that Chicago and the University of Chicago offered what Meadville lacked, and the generous cordiality and hospitality of the University authorities paved the way for a co-operative arrangement whereby Meadville professors should lecture during the Summer Quarter in the University lecture-rooms, and a group of Meadville students should avail themselves for a few weeks annually of the facilities of the University halls and dormitories. This arrangement, now to be carried out for the sixth summer, led directly to the project for building a Meadville House in the University district, which is now in course of realization. The gift, by Hon. Morton D. Hull of Chicago, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Meadville Theological School, of an ample building lot, at the corner of Woodlawn Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, diagonally across from the First Unitarian Church, was the first important step. A committee, appointed to secure funds and erect the building, procured suitable plans from Mr. Harold L. Olmsted, architect, of Buffalo, New York, whose perspective drawing of the proposed Meadville House accompanies this article. It is estimated that the House will cost, furnished, between $100,000 and $125,000. In design it will be congruous with the church diagonally opposite and with the buildings of the University. The front portion, first and second story, is planned as a home for the Meadville professor residing permanently in Chicago and in charge of the work of the house. In the rear on the first floor will be a handsome library, intended to serve as a place for social gatherings, not only for the Meadville group but also for Unitarian students in all departments of the University. On the first floor, also, will be a lecture-room and office. Above, in the rear, will be the dormitory for students; the entire third floor also being given over to this purpose. In all between twenty and twenty-five students can be accommodated. Ample provision is made for bathrooms and shower baths. It is confidently hoped that building operations may begin in the spring of 1921, and the house be pushed rapidly to completion. The United Unitarian Drive, for several million dollars, now in process of organization, will provide for the Meadville House in Chicago as one of its foremost objects. The friends of Meadville rejoice in the prospect, not only that its students will enjoy the great advantage of spending a portion of each year in Chicago-all its collegiate work being done there, and its graduates urged to take their postgraduate courses at the University of Chicago, but also that the Meadville group, with its earnest, loyal, open-minded spirit, may more and more make a place for itself as one of the many allied institutions that are coming to gather about this truly great and far-shining seat of humane learning. The work at Meadville itself will be in no way curtailed but rather supplemented and expanded by the larger opportunities which the Meadville House in Chicago will be able to offer. THE ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH CONVOCATION The One Hundred and Sixteenth Convocation of the University of Chicago was held in Hutchinson Court at four o'clock on the afternoon of June the fifteenth. The Convocation Address by David Prescott Barrows, Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1897, President of the University of California, is printed in this issue of the University Record. The President's Convocation Statement is also included in this issue. The award of honors was as follows: Honorable Mention for excellence in the work of the Junior Colleges: Theodore Krehbiel Ahrens, Frank Howard Anderson, Louise Bonstedt Apt, Dorothy Beatrice Augur, Phyllis Baker, Foster King Ballard, Robert McLaren Barnes, Charles Albert Beckwith, Harry Lewis Bird, Jr., Donald Frederic Bond, Gordon Willson Bonner, Burtis Arthur Bradley, James Cekan, Robert Edward Collins, Blair Coursen, Edith Pearl Crawshaw, Paul Edgar Crowder, Frances Elaine Crozier, Miles Edward Cunat, Paul Albon Davis, Harold De Baun, Ruth Nellie Drake, Cedric George Dredge, Edith Corinne Eberhart, Edmond Isaac Eger, Arthur Theodore Fathauer, Carroll Lane Fenton, Richard Foster Flint, Harry Friedman, Robert Hermann Gasch, John Joseph Gunther, Amy Marjorie Gustafson, William Charles Harder, III, John George Harms, Ray Nelson Haskell, Wilbur Jackson Hatch, Virginia Hibben, Emanuel Henry Hildebrandt, Alex Lester Hillman, Mary Josephine Hoke, Carolyn Stokes Hoyt, Harry Victor Hume, Pao-Chun I, Carl Helge, Mauritz Janson, Frieda Kaplowitz, Leonard Field Kellogg, Jr., Harold Dwight Lasswell, Charles Ernest Lee, Meyer Leo Leventhal, George Helenus Lust, Elizabeth Louise Martin, Charles James Merriam, Helen Isabelle Mills, George Edward Morris, Donald Christopher Morrison, Alfred Livingston McCartney, Samuel Henry Nerlove, Marie Vivian Niergarth, Harry Nevins Omer, Miriam Ormsby, Valeska Pfeiffer, Mila Ione Pierce, Israel Rappoport, Elwood Goodrich Ratcliff, Louis Philip River, Jr., Theodore Rosenak, Mary Arnie Ruminer, Heyworth Naylor Sanford, Amanda Charlotte Schultz, Karl Edwin Seyfarth, Lorraine Lucas Sinton, Ruth Marian Skinner, Ralph Laverne Small, Mariam June Stadelmann, Brenton Wallace Stevenson, Helen Graff Strauss, Dorothy Victoria Sugden, Thane Taylor Swartz, Carolyn Elizabeth Thompson, Otmar Thurlimann, Sarah Sheldon Tower, Adelaide Marie Werner, Effie Mae Wills, Alexander Wolf, Arnold Lewis Yates. Honorable Mention for excellence in the work leading to the Certificate of the College of Education: Greta Benedict, Edith Marguerite Colwell, Florence Althea Foxwell, Genevieve Fern Michell, Adelia Inez Mullen. Scholarships in the Senior Colleges for excellence in the work of the Junior Colleges: Frank Howard Anderson, Political Economy; Dorothy Beatrice Augur, Household Administration; Robert McLaren Barnes, Physics; Charles Albert Beckwith, Chemistry; Margery Alice Ellis, Romance; Richard Foster Flint, Geology; John Joseph Gunther, English; Amy Marjorie Gustafson, History; Ray Nelson Haskell, Mathematics; Emanuel Henry Hildebrandt, German; Leora Adeline Jannsen, Sociology; Sibyl Eleanor Kemp, Education; Harold Dwight Lasswell, Political Science; Elizabeth Louise Martin, Geography; Israel Rappoport, Romance; Dorothy Victoria Sugden, Greek; Enid Townley, Geology; Robert Joseph West, Botany; Thomas Winfrey Woodman, Physiology. The Joseph Triner Scholarship in Chemistry: Adrian Rezny. The Julius Rosenwald Prize for excellence in Oratory: David Mandel Halfant, first; George Dewey Mills, second. The Florence James Adams Prize for excellence in Artistic Reading: Ernest Robert Trattner, first; Eve Marie Kohl, second. The Milo P. Jewett Prize for excellence in Bible Reading: Ralph Warren Hoffman. The David Blair McLaughlin Prize for excellence in the Writing of English Prose: Margaret Lenora Runbeck. The Conference Medal for excellence in Athletics and Scholarship: Charles Graham Higgins. Scholarships in the Senior Colleges for excellence in the work of the first three years of the College course: Isabel Allen, Latin; Samuel King Allison, Chemistry; Maurice DeKoven, Philosophy; Mary Amanda Gingrich, Sociology; Joseph Bates Hall, Political Economy; Harold Lewis Hanisch, Political Science; Ben Herzberg, Geology; Dorothy Evelynne Huebner, Botany; Leila Loretto Lydon, Physiology; Louise MacNeal, Household Administration; Esther Frances Marhofer, Romance; Sydney Kaufman Schiff, History; Lloyd Schmiedeskamp, Physics; Isaac Schour, Mathematics; Mary Lillian Stevenson, Education. The Bachelor's Degree with Honors: Arthur Maurice Abraham, Herman Harbor Allen, Leona Celeste Bachrach, Lillian Dorothy Bargquist, Emmet Blackburn Bay, Martha Nash Behrendt, Ramona Bressie, Edith Brown, Fred Temple Burling, Mary Lucile Carney, Lyman Chalkley, Jr., Arthur Cohen, Madeleine Isabel Cohn, Lillian Grove Davis, Thomas Parker Dudley, Jr., Frank Lowell Dunn, Iva Maud Dunn, Margaret Durkin, Nicholas Augustine |