The first University of Chicago went bankrupt before Rockefeller money built a second
Baptist educators incorporated a University of Chicago in 1857, but fire, a financial panic and debt ruined it, and creditors foreclosed in 1886. A new university took the name in 1890, backed by $600,000 from John D. Rockefeller, and the original was renamed the Old University of Chicago so the newcomer could carry the city's name.
The first school had a land gift from Senator Stephen A. Douglas, and its first president, John C. Burroughs, led the fundraising. The Great Chicago Fire and the Panic of 1873 deepened its money troubles until it closed. A year after the name swap, the new university voted to count the old one's graduates as its own alumni.
Its founding president, William Rainey Harper, took office on July 1, 1891, and classes began on October 1, 1892. Harper lured senior scholars with big salaries and within two years had 120 faculty, eight of them former college or university presidents. He brought in Amos Alonzo Stagg to coach football, set up evening and correspondence courses for adults, and started the University of Chicago Press, now North America's largest university press. The school picked goldenrod as its colour, then switched to maroon in 1894.
Harper's ambitions ran up deficits averaging $215,000 a year between 1894 and 1903, which Rockefeller covered. His successor, Harry Pratt Judson, imposed austerity that restored the benefactor's confidence, and a final $10 million gift in 1910 balanced the budget. In 1911 the university adopted a Latin motto hoping knowledge would grow and enrich human life.
Chicago scholars went on to shape whole fields, giving their name to schools of thought in economics, law and sociology. Beneath the stands of Stagg Field, the Metallurgical Laboratory ran Chicago Pile-1, the first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, and chemists there pioneered carbon-14 dating. By 2025 its students, faculty and staff had included 101 Nobel laureates.
Source: University of Chicago
