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| Brick from Seminary and Bedford now in Nieslen |
Cleverly, they used "every brick, board, stick of timber, every bit of trim, doors, and windows" from the empty thirty-year-old seminary building down the road. When a new gym was built (now the Nielson Center), some of those bricks were put in the second floor wall where the running track is. In the picture, the bit in the middle is from the original seminary building. The surrounding bricks are from Bedford. This building would even have a small swimming pool added in 1926!
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| Bedford Gymnasium (1917-81) |
In 1912, Luckey and Bedford searched around for a better source. They found one about a half a mile west of campus, a spring from which gravity could bring the water down. Once again, Bedford was charged with making it happen. Eventually, the college sold the water to some of the surrounding houses too.
In 1910, telephone reached Houghton. A rented hand-cranked phone connected the seminary on a party line to the phone of the village. In 1920, electricity came to the campus. Up to that point, they had powered the campus with acetylene produced on campus. There was an acetylene generator behind the girls dorm.
In 1912, the denomination approved indoor toilets in the girls dorm. It was not until the early 1920s that an adequate number were installed. Chamber pots and Houghton's "great brick privy" behind the girls dorm continued to be used until then. In the early 1930s, Allegany County "insisted" that a central sewer line be extended to the campus, and FDR's WPA installed it.
Affordability was an important value of the early Houghton, something I am incredibly excited to see President Mullen achieve again this year both for residential and online students. In 1916, elementary school students paid $10 per semester. High school tuition was $15 per semester. College tuition was $20 a semester.
3. During Luckey's presidency, other buildings went up.
In 1922-23, Woolsey Hall went up next to the old admin building (Fancher). It was used primarily for high school students, but it housed the library and science classes too. [2]
Bowen/Old Science/
Woolsey Hall- The girls dorm (Gaoyadeo) had dining bits added to the back in 1922, then living bits added to the north in 1931, and more rooms to the south in 1935.
- In 1932, the Music Building went up. [3] I smiled to read that the Trustees authorized this building "at a maximum of $6,000." By the time it was done, it had cost $14,000, "the number of doors being a major expense." [4] The Music Department itself was supposed to raise $2,000 of the $6,000, a third. :-) Apparently, the odd mixture of sounds that emanated at the same time from the building earned it the nickname, "Cacophany Hall."
- In 1934, the current Houghton Wesleyan Church was built.
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| memorial for WW1 fallen 1920 |
Nevertheless, there was "wild rejoicing" when news of war's end arrived in Houghton. "People went crazy with joy. There was shouting and laughter. The bells were rung. People rushed into the streets."
Three Houghton alumni did lose their lives in the war. Three trees were planted at a memorial service in the spring of 1920, two years after the war and after the influenza pandemic had subsided. They were planted on the hill just to the east of where Fancher is today.
5. Houghton, like many Christian schools in the holiness tradition, has had several spiritual outpourings. The first was in 1926. The Houghton pastor at the time felt that it was needed to counterbalance Houghton's academic advancement. It needed a "corresponding advancement in spiritual life." He counted 259 seekers at the altar and noted with approval that "professors are having prayer services in their classrooms instead of lessons." [5]
6. In the previous post, I mentioned that Houghton received a provisional charter with New York state in 1923, then a permanent one in 1927. Around 1930, Luckey upped the ante. He began to apply for Middle-States accreditation. This type of regional accreditation is what the world really looks for when they want to know if a college is legit.
The first application was "postponed"--not enough funds, not enough graduate training of faculty, too low of salaries to keep good scholars long term, loose administration in the admission of students.
He tried again in 1933. Action deferred. Financial resources still not good enough. Although when looking at the requirements, Houghton was really pretty much reaching them.
Finally, with trips by both Luckey and the young Dean Stephen Paine to the Middle States chairman and to Albany, Luckey successfully made his case.
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| Today in Fancher, marketing is where chapel used to be |
[I'm trying to figure out if I was actually in Luckey's office my first year at Houghton. There was an outer room to my office, and I was at the bottom of the stairs on the left as you come down. But the office in the picture on Gillette 91 looks to be the office by the front door.]
The bell was rung. Luckey could hear it over the phone. Houghton was now regionally accredited!
7. Like Willard Houghton, running the college wore Luckey out. Six months after accreditation, Luckey was hospitalized and underwent major surgery for cancer while traveling with the A Capella Choir. [6] He was never the same after that. In late 1936, he managed to come to chapel to confer the first honorary degrees of the college. He would die April 7, 1937, just shy of a year after his wife's death. [7]
[1] By then he had been president for two years of what is now Southern Wesleyan University.
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| Groundbreaking for Chamberlain |
[2] Named after Warren Woolsey's dad (Pierce Woolsey) and built the year of his birth. It came down in 1988 to make way for the current Chamberlain building. Forgive me but I wanted to slip in this picture of President Dan Chamberlain at the groundbreaking because in it is Bud Bence, who hired me at IWU in 1997. He was the academic VP at the time.
[3] It stood until 1998, when the current Center for the Arts was built.
[4] Gillette and Lindley, 117.
[5] Wing, 107.
[6] Wing notes that "Many of the individuals interviewed for this book [2004] cited their opportunity to hear a Houghton musical group as being a prime factor in their decision to apply for admission to the college" (109). This would not at all seem to be the case now. Probably the appearance of ministry teams at summer youth camps has taken its place.
[7] Another sad note at Houghton in this decade was the suicide of Dean W. LaVay Fancher in 1934, who had been the likely successor to Luckey. He had a doctorate from Cornell. He had been a key player in getting Houghton up to academic standards for accreditation. He was even denominational director of Youth in 1931. Apparently, in addition to overwhelming stress, he was suffering from a horrible tooth infection in the days before pain medication and good surgery.
Previous posts in this series on the story of Houghton:
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