Andrew Dickson White papers microfilm reel 6, June 1866-October 1867

Abstract

Cornell trustees and the first members of the faculty wrote frequently to White about the organization of the university. There were offers to sell libraries and scientific collections and letters evaluating these collections and professorial candidates. In the midst of this intensive search for personnel and apparatus for the new university, White was invited by Noah Porter of Yale to become Director-president-manager or what you may call it of our art school. Although White was elected president of Cornell by the trustees on November 21, Porter renewed his offer December 10, expressing the hope that White would keep the Cornell post for only a brief period. A letter from Charles Eliot Norton in September 1867, proposes Edwin Lawrence Godkin as professor of political economy. The architectural firms of Nichols and Brown of Syracuse, Russell Sturgis, Jr. and Olmsted & Vaux of New York, Arthur Gilman of Boston and Wilcox and Porter of Buffalo were among those consulted by the builders of the Ithaca campus. In the legislative papers for February is a petition of Archibald James and sixty other colored men and taxpayers of Rochester praying for equal privileges in our public schools.