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Rolling Oak Hill became a flattop when its summit was shaved to receive the quadrangle. The library was the last of its five buildings to be
enclosed.
of Alexandria to Jefferson's rotunda.
Someone ordered up a wooden model
of the library with a hole to be left
where the tower was to go. Keith
Marvin, then a young architect with
the firm, recalls a scene, glimpsed
through half-open doors, of members
of the building committee circling the
model, placing now one tower and
then another on the model as they
contemplated the proper pinnacle for
the dome they knew would dominate
the southwest skyline of Rochester.
When it came to naming the
other buildings, the designations
chosen were largely reminiscent of
University life on the old campus.
The chemistry building honoring
Professor Samuel A. Lattimore, the
first to be built, was enclosed a scant
three months after groundbreaking.
The five-story liberal arts building
beside it was named for "Uncle Bill"
Morey, the late professor of Latin
and history.
The biology building, namesake of
former chemistry professor Chester'
A. Dewey, was billed as "one of the
outstanding buildings of its kind in
the country," with "apparatus
representing the last word in modern
science." (It may have been the last
word in security, too. The same
source adds that "cloak rooms are
built to face the laboratories so that
students may keep watch of the property.
Buzzers are being attached to
the cloak room doors to further this
insurance of property. . . . The
laboratories . . . will feature a new
combination locker and cupboard to
be placed at the very elbow of the
student.... A fireproof vault for the
safeguarding of expensive specimens
and other valuables will be installed
on the third floor.")
The Alumni Gym was so
designated not because the alumni
gave it; the name was simply
transferred from the building on the
Old Campus on the reasoning that it
would have no meaning for what was
now to become the women's campus.
The new gym incorporated "the
finest features" of the best athletic
facilities visited by "Doc" Edwin
Fauver (professor of hygiene and
physical education) and the architects,
while Varsity (later Fauver)
Field, seating 6,000, was so in the
vanguard among football fields that
for years it was inspected, praised,
and emulated.
Fifteen buildings, apart from
fraternity houses, were envisioned on
the final working drawings for the
River Campus. Only eleven were
constructed, however, as two dormitories
and an administration
building were postponed and a
boathouse deleted. By groundbreaking,
the chapel, president's home,·
law school, and architecture school
seen on earlier plans were gone as
well.
When the contractors moved
out the students moved in, and during
the last week in September,
two weeks before the official dedication,
the 600 students in the College
for Men began classes on their newminted
campus.
•Rush Rhees knew, although no one else did,
that George Eastman planned to bequeath his
mansion to the University for the president's
home.
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