His example was doubtless infectious, for the Ann Arbor citizens
continued their tree-planting efforts around the outside of the Campus
in the spring of 1858, while a group of sixty trees presented to the
University were set out inside. The seniors of '58 left a memorial in
the shape of concentric rings of maples about a native oak in the center
of the Campus, one of the few survivals of the original forest growth,
which has since become known as the Tappan Oak, and is now marked by a
tablet on a boulder placed there in later years by '58. Many of these
maples still survive, though all traces of the circles are lost. The
juniors also set out another group further to the east, while Professor
Fasquelle planted a number of evergreens east of the north wing to
balance a similar group of Professor White's at the south. The maples
outside the walk on State Street were also the gift of Professor White
and were balanced by a similar row of elms on the inside, given by the
Faculty of the Literary Department. This general interest in Campus
improvement did not escape the Regents and successive appropriations,
though comparatively small, continued the work until Michigan now has,
in the words of the father of the movement, written forty-six years
after his work was undertaken, "one of the most beautiful academic
groves to be seen in any part of the world,"--a monument to him and to
the students of his time.
The development of the building program, if a thing so haphazard can go
by that name, was less fortunate for the University. Only in very recent
years has there been any appreciation of the need of some degree of
uniformity and planning for the future. Many of the present buildings
have been evolved, as the needs of the University grew, rather than
planned, while others have been built to suit the tastes of certain
officers, or the special needs of the departments concerned, with no
reference to the larger unity which has come to be recognized as so
necessary in any group of buildings. Some of the oldest buildings have
gone; in particular the two residences on the north, which became the
old Dental College and the Homeopathic School in their last
incarnations, while the picturesque old Medical Building followed them a
few years later. The two on the south still survive; the President's
House, though often remodeled, still retains its old lines, but the
adjacent building, now known as the Old Engineering Building and used
largely for instruction in modern languages in the Engineering College,
has lost all semblance of its former character.
[Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS IN THE SEVENTIES]
[Illustration: THE CAMPUS ELMS]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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