The Two Towers: Main

Salisbury. When Mr. Salisbury died in his eighty-sixth year (1884), Judge Peleg Emory Aldrich succeeded him as president of the corporation. At the same time, Mr. Salisbury's son, Stephen III, accepted board membership in addition to the many other positions in Worcester to which he fell heir from his father. When Judge Aldrich died in 1895, Stephen III became president.

The treasurer hip of the Institute had passed through the hands of David Whitcomb to Philip L. Moen (Ichabod Washburn's son-in-law), to Waldo Lincoln, then to Charles G. Washburn, the latter being the first graduate of the school to become a trustee. With the duty of keeping the books, the privilege of paying many of the bills was also transferred.

Although the trustees had been fairly generous in gifts and legacies, the adolescent school had had to grow up fast when its most benevolent guardian, Stephen Salisbury II, was no longer available. When his son asked for an accounting of his father's gifts, a record of $236,800 could be found in the books, but the amount of Mr. Salisbury's unlisted gifts will never be known.

Except for ten thousand dollars for instruction, Mr. Salisbury left the school no more in his will. Soon after his death, however, his son made a hundred-thousand-dollar contribution in his memory. This gift was immediately used to fill the pressing need for laboratory space.

The arrangement of the four-story building, built not for looks, was planned by the professors themselves to be as useful as possible. Professor Alden took a good share of the building for mechanical engineering, Alonzo S. Kimball a floor and a half for physics and electrical engineering (its new subsidiary). Leonard P. Kinnicutt appropriated part of the first floor for chemistry, but his laboratories were placed on the top floor, where "the wind would have a chance to dissipate the odors."

For the first time in years Boynton Hall was free to clean out its corners and take a deep breath. In the name of progress its lustrous chestnut woodwork was covered with paint, student lockers were placed in the basement, hardwood floors were laid, and a skylight was fitted into the ceiling of the drawing room.

One of the first things Dr. Fuller did in the newly-decorated Boynton Hall was to arrange a place to exhibit his five thousand minerals and three thousand geological specimens. At last there was enough space for a library room, and the few books kept in the president's office were added to those which were accumulating from an alumni fund given in Professor Thompson's memory. By 1885 there were fifteen hundred volumes in the collection.

The death of Professor Thompson in 1885, so soon after he left Worcester, came as a result of inflammatory rheumatism, which had troubled him for years. Professor Thompson's father, professor of Hebrew at Hartford Theological Seminary, was present in Worcester at the Commencement exercises of 1885 to witness the unveiling of his son's portrait. He looked so young--Charles Thompson was