Building for a
The University of Chicago and Its Donors, 1889-1930
At first glance, Annie McClure Hitchcock's pledge in 1899 to build a men's residence hall appears to be simply another magnanimous gesture by a local Chicago donor. Hitchcock mirrored other women donors by making a sizable donation in honor of her late spouse, Charles Hitchcock. William Rainey Harper sent her several letters thanking her profusely and then updated her on the planning of the building. Surviving letters also show that Annie Hitchcock reviewed the invitations for the hall's formal dedication ceremony before they went to their final printing. From these details emerges a portrait of an aggressive, self-willed philanthropist who knew exactly what kind of building she wanted to erect. Indeed, Hitchcock's activist style of giving not only challenged the architectural standards set by the early Trustees led by Martin Ryerson and Charles Hutchinson, it also raised the more profound question of the right of donors to participate in making policy decisions.
Annie Hitchcock (1839-1922), a native of Chicago, decided to build a permanent memorial to her husband, wealthy lawyer Charles Hitchcock, after his death in 1881. She announced in 1899 her intention to donate the funds needed to build a men's residence hall at the University of Chicago, providing $159,499 for construction and $25,000 for maintenance.
Upon learning of Annie Hitchcock's generous gift, University Trustee Charles Hutchinson, the chair of the campus planning committee of the Board, unwittingly angered Hitchcock by commissioning Charles Coolidge of the Boston architectural firm Sheply, Rutan and Coolidge to submit sketches for the building.
"I am not content," Hitchcock wrote in an agitated letter to Harper, "that the building should be put up as my expression of an adequate memorial to my husband, and as my ideal of what a boy's dormitory should be, when I have not been consulted at all." Realizing that the Board of Trustees' break with architect Henry Ives Cobb in 1901 opened the way for the possibility of new architectural visions on campus, she lobbied strenuously to have the commission go instead to the rising young architect Dwight Heald Perkins. Sensing promise in Perkins, she had financed his education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; now she wished to help him further by ensuring that he would design a building to her specifications. Hitchcock had no doubt that Perkins was a wise choice—he was already working closely with some of the most progressive figures in Chicago architectural design, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Myron Hunt, and Robert C. Spencer.
Several influential Trustees resisted Hitchcock's intervention in campus planning, and they were even less enthusiastic about giving Perkins the commission. Nevertheless, Hitchcock prevailed, and the young architect set to work on the plans. Hitchcock Hall was completed September 1902 and occupied in October. It was like no other building on campus. Cloaked beneath a Gothic exterior highlighted by angular modern accents, the building's interiors blended the aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts movement with the horizontal modern style of the Prairie School. After the building's construction and occupation, Hitchcock continued her activist role in its management. She visited the residence hall frequently, and she donated carefully selected furnishings and books to elevate the social life and domestic culture of the male students it housed.
Annie McClure Hitchcock, n.d.
Archival Photographic Files.
Hitchcock Hall, library, n.d.
Archival Photographic Files.
Helen Culver to William Rainey Harper, manuscript letter, Lake Forest, Illinois, July 16, 1902.
Correspondence of the Secretary of the Board of Trustees, 1890-1913.