On May 31, 2000, President Henry S. Bienen, the Northwestern University Board of Trustees, and other guests gathered in Chicago to commemorate the founding of Northwestern at 69 West Lake Street on May 30, 1850. On that date nine men met in a law office to discuss establishing an institution of higher education. Their hope was that Chicago, already a center of commerce, could become a center of learning as well.
After a benediction, attorney Grant Goodrich, who had opened his
office for the meeting, read a resolution stating that "the
interests of sanctified learning require the immediate establishment
of a university in the Northwest under the patronage of the Methodist
Episcopal Church." This must have seemed a tall order. Chicago
in 1850 was still a crude outpost - hardly a place of campus-like
charm. But things were improving. As the hub of America's former
Northwest Territory - a vast region of great future wealth - Chicago
had attracted pioneers of ambition and intelligence who were now
the boomtown's leading citizens.
Northwestern's founders were just such pioneers. In addition to
Goodrich, there was Orrington Lunt, a founder of the Chicago Board
of Trade, who envisioned a university that would rival any institution
in the eastern United States. And there was John Evans, whose medical
skills were matched by his visionary gifts. His success as the former
head of the obstetrics department at Rush Medical College, his real
estate acumen, his term as a city alderman, and his background as
consolidator of railroads provided him with the abundant cash needed
for his idealistic schemes. Evans contributed the $1,000 down payment
for acreage north of Chicago and assumed responsibility for the
mortgage covering the balance. He was among the first to build himself
a home on swamp-drained land near the current Alumni Center in the
area the trustees named Evanston in his honor.
Through the efforts of Evans, Goodrich, Lunt, and others, Northwestern
University was officially established on January 28, 1851, when
its Act of Incorporation was passed by the Illinois legislature.