Enduring Legacies: The Stories of Gifts That Built a University: Part 2, George I. Alden and Alden Memorial

By any measure, George Ira Alden, one of the handful of faculty members who greeted the Institute's first students in 1868, was WPI's most distinguished and supportive friend. A longtime trustee, he was also the Institute's greatest benefactor.

Alden's name is closely identified with mechanical engineering education; with the second element of the Institute's "Two Towers" tradition student practice as carried out in the Washburn Shops; and with hydraulics and the creation of what became the Alden Hydraulics Laboratory in Holden, Mass. He was also one of the founders of Norton Co.

Born in 1843 in Templeton, Mass., hometown of WPI's founder, John Boynton, Alden, like many youngsters of the time, had to work for several years to raise the funds he needed to enter college. He attended Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School, graduating summa cum laude in 1868 at age 25. Except for a brief summer job at the Harvard College Observatory, his life was intertwined with WPI, Norton Co. and the Worcester community for the next 58 years.

When Alden began his WPI career in 1868, engineering was still very much an art. The few schools that offered instruction in engineering were groping for an educational model that in some manner blended instruction with practice. While Stevens Institute was the pioneer in the development of education for mechanical engineers, WPI can rightly lay claim to having created a novel "practice paradigm"--the establishment of working shops on a college campus.

This concept of blending classroom and shop instruction, the so-called shop culture, would serve as a model for several other institutions, especially in the field of mechanical engineering. For example, Alden helped create the shop program at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Alden was hired by WPI's first president, Charles 0. Thompson, also an educational pioneer, and he enjoyed a relatively free reign under Thompson and his successor, Homer T. Fuller. But in 1894 when Thomas C. Mendenhall, a distinguished educator and scientist who had already been president of Rose Polytechnic Institute in Indiana, became WPI's third president, that freedom ended.

Mendenhall and the WPI Board of Trustees could see that the shop model in mechanical engineering was giving way to the school model, in which the element of practice was relocated from the shop to the laboratory. They probably also observed the amount of time Alden was giving to his side entrepreneurial interests. So, in 1896 the Washburn Shops was subsumed, and Alden resigned from the WPI faculty.

Outwardly, the break appeared amicable. In time the action would prove a blessing in disguise for WPI, as Alden put more of his energies into the development of Norton Co., becoming a rich and generous man. He was a member of the WPI Board of Trustees and a regular supporter of the Institute.

After the rift, Alden became more active in the community. Fourteen years before his death in 1926 he established the George I. Alden Trust, specifying that the trust's funds be used to promote education, particularly the technical and professional education with which he had been so intimately involved. With starting assets worth nearly $3.6 million, the trust has supported colleges and institutions around the nation.

WPI has been the greatest beneficiary of the trust's generosity. One of its first major gifts was Alden Memorial. WPI had already developed plans for the building, which would serve as the school's first auditorium, by the time it approached the Alden trustees. The trustees were searching for a fitting way to memorialize the man who had done so much for Worcester and WPI. The building, which WPI's trustees insisted be among the most elegant and beautiful buildings on any New England campus, seemed the ideal tribute.

The building was completed in 1940. Its great hall featured stone figures (carved by a stonecutter whose work can also be seen on the U.S. Treasury and National Archives buildings in Washington, D.C.) and stained-glass window medallions, created by an artist whose work is featured in the National Cathedral, that depict themes from American history. The Aeolian pipe organ was installed in 1942 and the carillon placed in the tower the following year. In 1992, the building was completely renovated and transformed into a center for music and theatre, complete with rehearsal and performance spaces, dressing rooms and a scenery shop.

During his lifetime, WPI twice honored Alden, who was named dean of the college in 1894 and twice served WPI briefly as acting president. The hydraulics laboratory in Holden (to which he had been a significant contributor--both intellectually and materially) was named for him, and he, along with radio pioneer Atwater Kent, Class of 1900, received an honorary doctorate in 1926. But Alden Memorial stands as the most enduring and fitting tribute to one of the most important individuals in WPI's history.