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ARMOUR INSTITUTE |
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By Walter Hendricks |
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| Later that year, to meet the
expanding requirements of the course in mechanical engineering, Machinery
Hall was constructed at a cost of over $100,00, a gift of Mrs. P. D.
Armour and J. Ogden Armour. This building was ready for use at the opening
of school the following year. [In 1904, the Institute received a large gift of land from J. Ogden Armour.] This tract, worth a quarter of a million, and lying north of the Mission, was to be turned into an athletic field, the lack of which had forced the teams to practice in the American league baseball park at Thirty-ninth street and Wentworth avenue or in the playground of a school nearby. It was about this time that correspondence schools had their vogue. Believing that the work of education in technical subjects by means of correspondence schools could be made efficient and helpful beyond what had hitherto been accomplished, Dr. Gunsaulus made arrangements with the American School of Correspondence, established in Boston, in 1897, and now moving to Chicago, to conduct this work with the assistance of the Institute’s faculty. Besides the instruction it gave, the correspondence course spread the name of Armour Institute of Technology to the uttermost parts of the earth. Students from every country and climate, from the Fiji Islands, Argentine, Korea, Alaska, Moscow, Trinidad, Peru, Australia, and over 300 from New Zealand registered for the courses. The aim was to bring a technical education within the reach of the workingman. After a few years, this affiliation was dissolved, the correspondence school establishing itself elsewhere in its own quarters. |
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| Page last updated on May 17, 2000. |
