The first courses of the Law School were given in the old chapel in the
North Wing, or Mason Hall, where the Law Library was installed with the
General Library above. This proved a most unsatisfactory arrangement
for the growing school and in 1863 a new Law Building was dedicated on
the northwest corner of the Campus. This building in turn quickly became
inadequate for the needs of the still rapidly expanding department. Some
relief was given in 1872 by using the Chapel in the new University Hall,
and again in 1882, when the University Library which had been housed up
to this time in the Law Building was moved to its new quarters. The Law
Building was remodeled and enlarged in 1893 and a second time in 1898,
when it was almost completely made over into its present form.
The College of Engineering, the fourth of the larger divisions of the
University, was in fact the last to be established, as it was not until
1895 that the Regents authorized its organization as an independent
department with Professor Charles E. Greene, Harvard, '62, as its first
Dean.
The history of the course in engineering, however, is almost as old as
the University, and really begins with the designation of a chair in
Civil Engineering and Drawing in the article authorizing the University.
That was as far as the matter went, however, for the first fifteen
years, or until the appointment of Alexander Winchell in 1853 as
Professor of Physics and Civil Engineering. Physics is the science upon
which the profession of the civil engineer rests and the two subjects
were closely associated in those days of small beginnings. There is
little to indicate that Professor Winchell or his successor to the chair
in 1855, William G. Peck, West Point, '44, did much to advance the
engineering half of their charge. But with the coming of DeVolson Wood
as Assistant Professor, immediately upon his graduation in 1857 from
Rensselaer Polytechnic, the cause of engineering was properly presented
to the students. Though the fourth institution in this country to offer
courses in engineering, the first two students were not graduated until
1860, so that actually Michigan became the sixth institution in America
to grant degrees in that branch of scientific training.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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