The First Three Classes at Cornell University

x, 114 pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Cover has slight wear mostly at top and bottom of spine, and soiling. Scarce surviving copy from undoubtedly a small press run. Published Under the Auspices of The Class of '71. Includes a brief history of the University. Cornell University is a private and statutory Ivy League research university in Ithaca, New York. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, the university was intended to teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge-from the classics to the sciences, and from the theoretical to the applied. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornell's founding principle, a popular 1868 Ezra Cornell quotation: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." Cornell is one of three private land grant universities in the United States and the only one in New York. The university was inaugurated on October 7, 1868, and 412 men were enrolled the next day. Among the alumni from the first three classes were a Civil War veteran, future diplomats, scientists, lawyers, civil servants, industrialists and entrepreneurs. In 1871 Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University, exhorted the Board of Trustees to establish a new program to provide formal academic training in architecture. White had a fascination with architecture, combined with a sense of its importance to cultural history. While still a young man, he had begun collecting architectural books and journals. He offered his collection - possibly the best collection in the United States at the time - to the university. In return, the trustees agreed to found a school of architecture and appointed Charles Babcock as the first professor of architecture in the United States.…