Centennial Celebration

Centennial Fund

May 14, 1921, marked Trinity’s 98th “Charter Day,” as well as the formal opening of a Centennial Fund for the purpose of raising money to support Trinity into its second century of existence. A truly massive show of effort was made to solicit funds for the College leading up to its 100th birthday. Undergraduates, alumni, and even non-Trinity affiliated people were encouraged to contribute through funds and word-of-mouth advertisement of the needs of the College as it entered a new era of change.

A goal was established by the Centennial Fund Committee to raise $1,500,000 by June 1923: $1,200,000 would be allotted for a professors’ salary endowment and $300,000 for the construction of a new gymnasium. In 1919, the salary of a full professor at Trinity was only $2,500, and the fund was intended to allow Trinity to offer competitive salaries to its professors that would attract highly accomplished individuals to teach at the College. The new gym would accommodate an expanded athletics program that would provide all students with access to exercise space and equipment.

Throughout the two years prior to the centennial celebration, campaigning among alumni and friends of Trinity as well as Hartford residents was undertaken to raise money for the Endowment Fund. Solicitation was to be done in person to Trinity alumni, non-Trinity affiliated wealthy donors, and members of the Episcopal Church “who will appreciate what Trinity has done for the ministry since the days of its founding.” The campaign efforts were organized and carried out by a National Committee chaired by Judge Joseph Buffington, 75’, with chairmen overseeing districts across more than 20 states to mobilize the fundraising efforts in their respective areas. Wherever in America there were Trinity alumni, there was an office of alumni organized to lead fundraising campaigns in that state, including California, District of Columbia, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin, among others.

The Tripod’s “Centennial Supplement” encourages alumni to raise funds for the Centennial drive, April 9, 1921. Photo credit: Trinity College Archives

Throughout 1921, the Trinity Tripod chronicled the first phase of the fundraising efforts and every issue of the Tripod during that year was sent out to alumni, whether they were subscribed to the paper or not, to keep them informed of the progress of the drive and to encourage their contribution to the cause. A supplemental Tripod issue published in April 1921 focused heavily on the centennial drive and urgently appealed to its alumni readers to chip in. Trinity’s undergraduates were also mobilized towards centennial fundraising. On May 23, 1921, the entirety of the undergraduate student body pledged support for the Centennial Fund Campaign. During this meeting, Harold T. Slattery was elected chairman of a committee to solicit subscriptions from undergraduates towards the Fund.

Everett J. Lake, Republican governor of Connecticut from 1920 to 1923 and member of the general organizational committee of the Centennial Campaign, expressed his support for the Campaign and the endurance of Trinity as an educational institution in a speech delivered on May 24, 1921. Governor Lake praised Trinity as an “asset of great value to the city of Hartford and to the nation” and encouraged monetary support for the College, declaring that, “Our best insurance against radicalism is a well-developed educational system, and as an old, tested and living factor in that system Trinity College recommends itself to our active interest and support.”

The campaign for support from Hartford citizens began in November 1921, with a committee of ten non-Trinity men who recruited around eighty solicitors to collect donations from non-alumni Hartford residents. In connection with the Hartford Campaign, an official visiting day was planned during which Hartford citizens were invited to tour Trinity’s campus and, hopefully, be enticed to contribute to the $1,500,000 Centennial Endowment Fund goal.

By the spring of 1922, the Centennial Fund had raised nearly 20% ($290,000) of its goal, and had been promised another $125,000 from the Rockefeller Fund once donations had reached the 25% mark. “A Half Million by Commencement” was the Centennial Fund’s slogan that spring, as efforts to reach $1,500,000 pushed on. Rhetoric warning against the recurrence of the horrors of World War I and disintegration of Christian values in society was aimed at procuring more support for the College, as Connecticut leaders made moral and religious appeals in favor of Trinity. One such proponent of the College’s moral mission in a post-war world was the Reverend E.C. Thomas, rector of St. James’ Church in Hartford; in a May 1922 sermon, he declared Trinity’s role in producing Christian leaders, the “greatest need of the world today.” More support was garnered, and by commencement of 1922, the first half-million of the final goal was raised.

The remaining $1,000,000 of the Fund was raised throughout the 1922-23 school year. The second phase of the campaign was more focused on raising money beyond the alumni. The effort was once again vigorously led by President Ogilby who took it upon himself to lead the campaign in person throughout the country, soliciting funds from those outside the Trinity sphere. A nation-wide organization of the alumni for reaching “non-Trinitarians” was also created to expand the Centennial Committee’s reach. A large dinner inaugurating the reopening of the campaign for the Centennial Fund in Hartford on January 15, 1923 was attended by many influential Connecticut “non-Trinity speakers,” the principal figure being Dean Jones of Yale University. Alumni and Hartford area residents were encouraged to attend. Following the January Hartford Campaign, which raised $30,000, was the wider Connecticut Campaign, supported by Bishop Brewster, who mobilized the Connecticut diocese behind the cause. By the end of the spring semester of 1923, the first tangible results of the money raised were enacted; in June, the Board of Trustees officially raised the salaries of professors to a maximum of $4,500 per year, and authorized three new faculty appointments.

Just as in the previous year, poignant reflection on the previous war-torn decade and apprehension about an industrialized future were refracted through the enthusiasm garnered by the Centennial. Among the excited accounts in the Trinity Tripod of money raised for the Fund during the second phase of the campaign are nestled brief and moving reflections written by students poised before an uncertain future. One such article, published in the January 31, 1923 issue of the student newspaper, warns that “this civilization is rapidly approaching a peneplanation which will entirely eradicate individualism of thought and expression, and wipe out all peaks of personal achievement….” Trinity and colleges like it, the writer asserts, are “the only hope for successfully combating machine-made, rubber-stamp, specialists.”

While much of the focus of the Centennial was pointed forward, one publication in particular made a concerted effort to look into the deep past of Trinity's campus. Assistant Professor of Geology Edward Leffingwell Troxell helped to put together the Trinity College Bulletin’s 1923 “Centennial Number,” a twenty-eight-page in-depth study of the history of the earth upon which Trinity’s campus stood. In his prefatory note to the publication, President Ogilby writes, “The college itself proudly records a single century, while the rocks below register in silence thousands and millions of years.” The geological study of the Trinity campus was made part of the permanent College records in the hope that “as Trinity begins to add another century to her years, a study of the geology of her campus will fill each class with reverence for Him in whose sight a thousand years are as one day.” The study is preserved in the Trinity College Archives to this day.

As fundraising for the Centennial Fund entered its final leg, preparations for the Centennial Celebration began. A three-day affair planned for June 9-11, 1923, the festivities would include an Alumni Reunion Banquet, athletic and musical events, the dedication of a war memorial to the alumni killed in military service, a Senior Promenade, and of course, the 100th Commencement ceremony.

Centennial Celebration Days

The first events of the Commencement and Centennial Celebration were the Class Day exercises, held the afternoon of Friday, June 8. The speaker was chairman of the Centennial Drive Committee Robert C. Buell, who was made an honorary member of the class of 1923 that day. The history of the 1923 class was read aloud, favorite professors were elected, football was voted to be the best activity on campus, and the greatest worries outside of studies in college were voted to be “women, dates, the price of liquor and money.” Awards were given out to exemplary athletes in all sports represented by the class. There was also the revival of the lemon squeezer, presented to the freshman class of 1926 as a surprise event on behalf of the Medusa Society.

Saturday, June 9 was “Alumni Day,” starting with prayer in the Chapel, after which fraternity meetings took place around campus. In the afternoon, informal sports games were put on to entertain the alumni, and a luncheon took place in the gymnasium. The Trinity Centennial Midway, a raucous variety show put on by the undergraduates, drew a large crowd and loud laughter; included in the “congress of monstrosities” were several freak attractions, including a cherry-colored cat, Russian army impersonators, a lion named Bazuka who devoured hot dogs, a headless man, hula dancers, a recreation of King Tut’s tomb, and wild west and marionette shows. The event is cited in the Tripod Class Day issue as being “the most realistic mob scene that had ever been focused on a moving picture reel.”

Alumni Day concluded with a Centennial Dinner for alumni, faculty, and undergraduates at the Hartford Club on 44 Prospect Street. The dinner was the largest Trinity gathering on record at the time, with 600 attendees. World War veteran General James Harbord spoke, echoing a sentiment that had been passed around countless times in the previous two years leading up to the centennial, that “Such things as the traditions of Old Trinity give one much encouragement for the future.” President Ogilby also spoke at the banquet, praising Trinity for its commitment to “cultural not vocational” education and declaring that “Our centennial will serve to strengthen our faith that Trinity will continue to serve our country through service to the Almighty One whose sacred name she bears.”

Sunday, June 10 was billed “Commemoration Day,” beginning with Holy Communion in the Chapel. Afterwards, an Open Air Memorial Service was held on campus. Among the military and veteran groups present were two ceremonial honor guards, the Governor’s Foot Guard and the Putnam Phalanx, as well as veteran groups from the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I.

Major General James G. Harboard, Chief of Staff to General Pershing during the Great War, delivered a piercing address on the subject of post-war apathy and communist sympathizing, condemning “the parlor bolshevist, the half-baked student of political science, the theorist, drifted out of the mainstream of life’s effort and always in contact with the immature and the uninstructed, the hyphenate, the defective, the dulled and the degenerated, the senile and the juvenile” as a growing “threat to our civilization.”

The undergraduates performed the Presentation of Colors in memory of Trinity men who died in service during the century’s wars. Later in the afternoon, a memorial clock was presented to the College Library by the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity in honor of the Reverend Paul Ziegler, a graduate of the Class of 1872 and the founder of the fraternity at Trinity. A portrait of the Reverend Dr. John James McCook painted by James Goodwin McManus was also presented to the College that afternoon.

Following this gifting ceremony was a meeting of the Alumni Association, during which an announcement was made that $65,000 was still needed to fulfill the centennial fund, prompting an enthusiastic flurry of donations from alumni. In total, about $34,000 was raised that afternoon. Evening prayer was held in Christ Church Cathedral with a Baccalaureate sermon by the Reverend Karl Reiland of New York. His lecture urged the importance of retaining religious belief in the face of accelerating industrial and scientific advancement and emphasized the importance of a new Christian tradition that embraced the future of scientific discovery.

The celebration culminated on Monday, June 11 with “Centennial and Commencement Day.” The Centennial Fund Campaign which had begun two years prior was brought to a close by a $5,000 donation by J.P. Morgan, given the morning of the Commencement ceremony. This final donation brought the sum of funds raised to the $1,000,000 quota.

After morning prayers took place in the Chapel, the commencement took place, with addresses from President James Rowland Angell of Yale University, Professor of English literature Charles H. Herford of Manchester University, England, and Dr. Lawson Purdy of the Trinity class of 1884. Dr. Purdy’s address encouraged the vigorous study of Classics, echoing other Centennial speakers’ interest in safeguarding against the increasing popularity of a “specialized” genre of higher education directed solely at producing careermen, without the time-honored consideration of a cultural education: “The classics are not studied for what they may bring in the market, but they are studied that the field of the mind may be ploughed and tilled so that it may bring forth a goodly crop when planted,” Dr. Purdy asserted in his address. There were also nine honorary degrees awarded at the Centennial Commencement, which included two Masters of Arts, three Doctors of Science, two Doctors of Law, and three Doctors of Divinity.

Following the commencement ceremony, a parade of alumni, undergraduates and guests led by President Ogilby marched down Washington Street from the College to the State Capitol, where a tablet was dedicated to commemorate the founding of Trinity in 1823 on the site where the first of its buildings stood. The tablet was unveiled by Charles Aldrich, Jr., the great-great grandson of Bishop Thomas Church Brownell, the first president of Trinity. The tablet was designed by Howard Jones of Boston and features a base relief of the original three buildings of the of College and an inscription of the names of Trinity’s founders. The plaque still remains fixed on the wall of the East Porch of the Capitol building.

That night, the Senior Promenade lasted from 8:30 p.m. until 5:00 a.m. the following morning, bringing a truly raucous end to the Centennial festivities. About 350 couples attended the all-night dance, held in Alumni Hall with music provided by Yaffe’s Orchestra of Hartford.