Mr. Armour, aside from many private charities, has given over a million and a half dollars to the Armour Institute of Technology. The five-story fire-proof building of red brick trimmed with brown stone was finished Dec. 6, 1892, on the corner of Thirty-third Street and Armour Avenue; and the keys were put in the hands of the able and eloquent preacher, Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, "to formulate," says the Chicago Tribune, Oct. 15, 1893, "more exactly than Mr. Armour had done the lines on which this work was to go forward. Dr. Gunsaulus had long ago reached the conclusion that the best way to prepare men for a home in heaven is to make it decently comfortable for them here."
Dr. Gunsaulus put his heart and energy into this noble work. The academic department prepares students to enter any college in the country; the technical department gives courses in mechanical engineering, electricity, and electrical engineering, mining engineering, and metallurgy. The department of domestic arts offers instruction in cooking, dressmaking, millinery, etc.; the department of commerce fits persons for a business life, wisely combining with its course in shorthand and typewriting such a knowledge of the English language, history, and some modern languages, as will make the students do intelligent work for authors, lawyers, and educated people in general.
Special attention has been given to the gymnasium, that health may be fully attended to. Mr. Armour has spared neither pains nor expense to provide the best machinery, especially for electrical work. "In a few years," he says, "we shall be doing everything by electricity. Before long our steam-engines will be as old-fashioned as the windmills are now."
Dr. Gunsaulus has taken great pleasure in gathering books, prints, etc., for the library, which already has a choice collection of works on the early history of printing.
The Institute was opened in September, 1893, with six hundred pupils, and has been most useful and successful from the first.
LEONARD CASE AND THE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE.
Technological schools are springing up so rapidly all over our country that it would be impossible to name them all. The Stevens Institute of Technology at Hoboken, N.J., was organized in 1871, with a gift of $650,000; the Towne Scientific School, Philadelphia, 1872, $1,000,000; the Miller School, Batesville, Va., 1878, $1,000,000; the Rose Polytechnic, Terre Haute, Ind., 1883, over $500,000; the Case School of Applied Science of Cleveland, Ohio, 1881, over $2,000,000.