The Two Towers: Main

Donald G. Downing

There is always the need for one new laboratory building at the Institute.
      --Ralph Earle, 1931

the trustees were said "to approve a fifth year for selected seniors." "This is not a post-graduate department," they hastened to add, "but a means whereby we can furnish additional education"-- shades of the Institute's first year, when the board had modestly issued "diplomas" instead of "degrees." Nevertheless, the new work in the 1940's led to a master's degree. It was graduate work, and it brought strong new colors to old patterns.

The summer courses offered during the War were renewed and strengthened under the direction of Donald Downing in 1950, and later by Kenneth Merriam. And the School of Industrial Management was organized in 1949 with twenty-nine men from twenty-two local industries in the first class. Championed by President Cluverius and industrial leaders such as Wallace Montague and Philip Morgan, this program was supervised by a team of Tech men which included Albert Schwieger as director, Edwin Higginbottom, and Ernest D. Phelps. Industrial Management, which offered a four-year series of evening courses, had as one of its main objectives a cross-pollination of ideas between the industrial and academic worlds--almost as much an experiment in group relationships as in adult education. There were unbelievably good results, handsomely fulfilling Ichabod Washburn's wish that the school might be closely allied with the real work of the world. The School effected a balance of theory and practice on a higher level than even Mr. Washburn would have dared to dream.

The summer school, the ROTC unit, the graduate program, and the School of Industrial Management were all helpful in increasing the enrollment of the Institute. At the same time, financial reports made better reading, especially after the receipt of several bequests such as the gifts from Charles L. Allen, officer of Norton Company and a member of Tech's board for many years, and from Mrs. Theodore T. Ellis, the widow of a Worcester publisher. An unexpected gift came from Mary Ellen Butterick, her estate having materialized from the dressmaking pattern business--the first in the country--started by her parents in Sterling, Massachusetts, in 1863. And there had been many surprised and beaming faces on campus that morning in 1951 when it was announced that Forrest W. Taylor's real estate holdings, their value estimated at two and a half million, had been left to the Institute. Mr. Taylor had had no relationship with W.P.I. other than that his sister, Agnes, had married a Tech alumnus, Harry P. Davis, chairman of the board of the National Broadcasting Company.

In the years of Dr. Homer Gage's treasurership the endowment had been raised from $500,000 to more than four million. And in 1947, after the War, a million and a quarter had been added in a campaign for endowment, salaries, and a new building for Civil Engineering. Bookwise, the school had never been in better shape. The trustees were nevertheless reluctant to build,