Courtesy of Drew Magazine. Article originally appeared in the Spring 1998 edition, by John T. Cunningham C'3
Any proper walking tour of Drew's campus begins by climbing the 10 thick stone steps to the broad piazza of Mead Hall , Drew's first and forever heart. William Gibbons, Elizabethtown/New York gentleman and Savannah slave owner, built the imposing antebellum mansion in the mid 1830s. It bears the name, however, of Miss Roxanna Mead . She married hometown boy Daniel Drew in Carmel, N.Y., in 1823, when young Daniel, our name giver, had scarcely begun the first misdeeds that would take him to high rank among Wall street's jackals.
On this campus, however, Daniel Drew was a lamb, deserving whatever sainthood we beneficiaries might bestow. He paid $140,000 in 1867 to buy the central part of today's campus- the mansion and its furnishings, the stable and granary , the Sycamore house , and about 95 acres of what townspeople called "The Forest." Later he contributed at least $150,000 to revamp the stable into a dormitory and the granary into a student center and to build four new homes for professors. Drew also game $250,000 in endowment (at 7 percent interest) to pay faculty salaries and other expenses. No one else, Methodist or otherwise, gave so much as a dime until Brother Daniel sadly announced his bankruptcy in 1873. He had even lost the endowment.
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On the morning of August 24, 1989, a spark from a painter's torch found tinder in the walls and erupted into flames. The brick withstood the 23 hour fire , but the lavish interior collapsed in a sodden, l charred mass. Most of the furnishings and paintings, as well as irreplaceable computer records, were saved by a hastily recruited, fast moving, small army of volunteers. Other treasures survived because a special providence shielded them from heat, flames, water, and falling debris.
No one dared suggest that the ruin be replaced with a modern architectural monstrosity. Ultimately, the state of the art restoration cost $13 million (including$7including $7.5 million in insurance money). The interior is probably more exquisite and certainly more comfortable than in the Gibbons' heyday.
The temptation to linger in Miss Mead's hall is powerful, but the mansion, for all its beauty, is only a small part of the Drew campus. Out we troop, past the huge hallway mirrors and the period-like wallpaper. We head for Seminary Hall, behind the mansion.
But wait. Stop on the broad piazza to look northward toward Madison Avenue. Immediately in view is the bronze statue of Francis Asbury , "Prophet of the Long Road" and the greatest of early 19th century Methodist circuit riders. He rode unceasingly for 45 or so years, through all of the United States east of the Mississippi not to get money or notoriety or honorary degrees but because he believed.
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On our way round back to Seminary Hall, look west to Wesley House, and early Victorian structure with a broad piazza and the mansard roof Daniel Drew favored. Once called President's House, the building was first occupied by John Fletcher Hurst , Drew's third president and the man who almost singlehandedly raised the $250,000 lost in Drew's bankruptcy. A new President's House was built in 1957 on the east end of campus for seventh President Fred G. Holloway. Thomas H. Kean , Drew's 10th president, uses used that building for ceremonial occasions, and Wesley now houses the admissions offices for all three schools.
If Mead Hall is the heart of Drew, unostentatious Seminary Hall is its spiritual foundation. Thirteen months and $100,000 went into erecting this two-story, imitation collegiate Gothic structure, faced with Harvard brick and trimmed with pink granite. When it opened a century ago, seminary classes moved out of Mead Hall and into the building's six classrooms.
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Calling the brick building south of Seminary Hall "Kirby Theater" is to risk forgetting the building's core as the campus gymnasium and swimming pool donated by Samuel W. Bowne in 1909. The overhead running track in the gym confounded Drew opponents, whose shots often hit the track's underside during basketball games. The diminutive swimming pool in the basement was a throwback to days when students had no great expectations. Campus wags encouraged taking a cleansing shower after swimming as well as before.
President Robert Oxnam in 1972 invited the Shakespeare Festival of Cape May to convert Bowne gym into a theater. The group produced all of the bard's plays (a rare feat) on a stage so small that front-row playgoers often felt they performed in, as well as watched, such epics as Richard the Third. Thanks to a $7.5 million renovation and expansion in 1997-98, the days of basketball and synchronized swimming are all but forgotten in the handsome, functional playhouse known as Kirby Shakespeare Theater.
Drew's extensive sports areas fringe the long parking lot leading southward to the Simon Forum. Partially hidden by a copse of trees is the synthetic-surfaced field where all Drew field teams (except baseball) compete. This is the U.S. Field Hockey Center, designed to provide practice and game space for men's international field hockey, if needed. Partially paid for with United States Olympic Committee funds, the field boasts Drew's first permanent stands, first press box, and first permanent light towers.
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The baseball field adjacent to the field hockey complex honors Sherman Plato ("Doc") Young T'27, T'29, T'30 , the feisty baseball coach whose often undermanned nines won on aggressiveness, mastery of fundamentals, and guile.
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Baldwin gym and swimming pool have been cleverly incorporated into the Simon Forums , finished in 1994 and named for major donor William Simon and his wife, Carol. The giant $11 million facility's most spectacular feature is the field house, under whose roof there is room to play four simultaneous basketball games, to run on a regulation indoor track, and to his fly balls in baseball practice. The field house also converts easily into a huge auditorium or forum, seating nearly 4,000 persons. Adjacent are machines for indoor workouts, training rooms, and squash courts. (Squash courts? That's Ivy League!)
Southward and eastward from the Simon Center are most of the undergraduate residence halls, pleasantly tucked into the forest. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new dormitory seemed always under construction, thanks to liberal federal loans. These dorms honor deceased presidents, deans, and trustees. This emphasis on living quarters for College of Liberal Arts students was ironic; When the Baldwins underwrote the college, they hoped it would serve commuting students from northern New Jersey towns,
Step out of Baldwin Gym's front doors and just ahead stands the glass walled University Commons , opened in 1982 to cope with a growing student body and seek yet another answer to nearly 125 years of unceasing student food complaints.
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Directly east from the Commons is the University Center, opened in 1964 to ease gustatory growling. Undergraduates in the innocent 1950s had staged several campus wide strikes over such major issues as the quality of the hot potato salad and the need for "more fruit in the fruit salad" (as reported in The Acorn.) When dining shifted to the Commons, the UC became a place of mailboxes, the book store, meeting rooms, bulletin boards and a place to while away an idle hour or two.
Great Hall, just north of the UC, is the most Gothically correct building on campus. Its towering New Hampshire granite walls stretch 135 feet across the front. On ground-breaking day in October 1912, the new edifice was likened to the splendid Christ Church Hall at Oxford, where John Wesley and others had eaten, likely opining that the pease porridge was too hot- or too cold.
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Just outside the Great Hall entrance is a deep declivity that students (theological and liberal arts alike) called "Tipple's Pond " whenever heavy rains left several feet of water on the bottom. One legend insisted the rainfall was actually "Tipple's Tears," shed by President Ezra Squire Tipple if he learned another potential donor had escaped without leaving an endowment to the university.
Beyond the now dry pond lies what pre-1950 graduates might call "the real Drew," commencing with Hoyt-Bowne and Asbury dormitories. Each is rich in mingled theological and liberal arts memories, for in these rooms bull sessions roared, parties sprang into being, occasional students staggered to their beds- some prayed for themselves, others for starving humanity- and lasting friendships evolved.
Double winged, four-storied Hoyt-Bown Bowne Hall, conceived in a no-nonsense architectural style, was opened in 1893 as Drew's new building for student residence. It was financed by and named for loyal trustees William Hoyt and Samuel W. Bowne. Hoyt was a major donor to Seminary Hall, while Bowne's name belongs on this dormitory, the old gymnasium, the Great Hall, and the Gateway. Seminarians and undergraduates have all lived in H-B in a longtime game of revolving room assignments.
Asbusy Hall has been a dormitory since its completion, if the stabling of William Gibbons' precious, famed thoroughbred horses can be considered housing. In 1867, after Daniel Drew donated yet another $75,000 to raise the roof and create dorm rooms, seminary students moved in. When the College opened in 1931, undergraduates (all male) resided in Asbury. When women enrolled after World War II, they were assigned to the Hall, the best that Drew could then offer.
Women students liked Asbury, where they gathered in one another's rooms for what The Acorn described as "girl's talk." When a storm of protest arose in 1967 over the limitations of so called "inter-dormitory visits" on campus, women students surprised an Acorn pollster when they revealed only moderate interest in open dorms. Among other things, women reportedly said, they feared being caught "running around in curlers."
Just behind Asbury is Embury Hall, and Gibbons granary refurbished and rechristened for Bishop Phillip Embury. In the 1869s, students set up a "club house" in Embury "to board themselves." They assumed all chores, from purchasing groceries to cooking them. The Boarding Club, the most influential organization on campus until the Bowne Refectory opened, endured demands (as written in the club log) for "more variety, fish one time less per week, and oysters twice per month." A versatile structure that at one time housed the New Jersey Museum of Archeology, Embury now provides space for the Center for Holocaust Study.
Between the dorms and Mead Hall is the state-of-the-art library complex. Rose Memorial Library , tied to Mead by tall pillars and, in front at least, the same architectural style, replaced the small Romanesque gem called Cornell Library . When opened in 1888, the sandstone structure, named for the donor, trustee John B. Cornell, already was near capacity. Thus, in the spring of 1937, when wealthy leather manufacturer Lenox B. Rose of Madison willed $600,000 to build a memorial library, old Cornell was doomed.
Rose Library, the envy of small colleges everywhere, became even more commodious and more useful in 1980 when $2.2 million was allocated to refurbish the somewhat shabby overcrowded facility. Soon after, $4 million more added a spacious l;earning learning center.
The Learning Center serendipitously provided a lasting tie to Cornell Library. The "Rose Window " (so called because of the glow that warmed old Cornell), which was "lost" in 1938 when the old library was demolished, was found 40 years later. As work proceeded on the new Learning Center, workers found the window, taken apart and packed in small boxes, on the then-vacant top floor of Science Hall. The window now holds a place of honor over the Learning Center's main entrance.
The $10.6 million capital campaign that brought about the library's enhancement also financed the building of the United Methodist Archives right next door. Its completion meant that church records stored in both the Rose Library basement and in facilities at Lake Junaluska in North Carolina would finally be under one roof.
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One of Drew's most traveled pathways links Rose Library and the main building of the College of Liberal Arts, a pallid name substitute for the original Brothers College . Dropping "Brothers" minimized the magnificent gift of Arthur and Leonard Baldwin, the East Orange brothers who conceived the idea of a liberal arts college on the Theological School campus. They underwrote the college building and gave $1 million endowment. It did not guarantee the use of the fraternal name forever. "Brothers" became history in 1956.
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Increasing demands for proper chemistry and physics laboratories created a deepening crisis. That turned to joy in the spring of 1959 by a pronouncement that a new science building would rise adjacent to Brothers College. The Hall of Sciences eventually cost $3.2 million to build, chiefly because of the addition of a third floor. The structure, two-and-a-half times as big as the College building, took undergraduate science instruction from a bargain basement level to frist class.
Obviously there is much more to Drew: the several administrative buildings to the west of the campus, the political science house named for beloved Professor Robert G. SMith Smith (a class of '36 liberal arts alumnus), and the various buildings seen here and there in breaks in the woodland. For now, however, it is time to disperse.
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