Location, Buildings, etc.

The location of the University is in the south part of Chicago, directly on the Cottage Grove line of the Chicago City Railway. The site was the gift of the late Senator Douglas, and is universally admired for its beauty and healtfulness. The building is unsurpassed for the completeness of its arrangements, especially the students' rooms, which are in suites of a study and two bed-rooms, of good size and height, and well ventilated. The accommodations of the University have been enlarged by the completion of the main building, 136 by 72 feet, a structure erected at a cost exceeding $117,000, and believed to be second in convenience and elegance to no other educational edifice in the country. In this building there are a large Chapel, rooms for the various Scientific Departments, and also the Preparatory Department, spacious and airy recitation rooms, elegant suites for the Literary and Religious Societies, and dormitories for the students.

Through the liberality of the different railroads which center at Chicago, classes have had the privilege of making frequent excursions into the country, in order to examine rock strata, and to collect specimens in Natural History. These explorations have extended, during past years, to Dubuque and Burlington, Iowa; Kewanee, LaSalle and Quincy, III.; to the Wisconsin River, and along the Mississippi River, from McGregor to St. Louis.