KELVIN SMITH LIBRARY

The Promise of the Land

In 1799 David Hudson (1761-1836) purchased seven thousand acres of Connecticut's Western Reserve in the Ohio Valley. By 1826 he had not only founded a town and built a church, he had also opened Western Reserve College. As with many colleges founded during that time, it was inspired and sustained by a deep sense of faith and hope¹.

In 1880 Amasa Stone (1818-1883) and Leonard Case, Jr. (1820-1880) made possible an important step in the development of Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University. Amasa Stone donated over $500,000 to move Western Reserve College from Hudson to Cleveland, already the home of the Medical Department of Western Reserve College. Stone's gift provided for the construction of a classroom building and a dormitory and for an endowment fund on the condition that the college be renamed in memory of his only son, Adelbert, who drowned in 1865 while a student at Yale. The undergraduate college was named Adelbert College of Western Reserve University².

Leonard Case, Jr. bequeathed a portion of his estate to found the Case School of Applied Science. Over $80,000 was raised from contributors who were interested in both Case and Western Reserve for the site of 43 acres west of Adelbert Road and south of Euclid Avenue to locate Adelbert College (1882) and the Case School (1883), adjacent to one another.³

Gifts of land from the Wade family were made at critical points in the university's development. Jeptha Homer Wade I (1811 - 1890) donated a portion of his estate from E. 105th south of Euclid Avenue to create Wade Park. Wade's gift became the eventual site of many University Circle institutions including Western Reserve University. Jeptha Homer Wade II (1857 - 1926), a noted philanthropist, like his grandfather, developed what was known as the Wade Allotment.

In 1888, the trustees of Western Reserve University had ceased admitting women to Adelbert College and established the College for Women. Within the next three years a new campus was established on the north side of Euclid Avenue, on land provided by Jeptha Homer Wade II. It extended from East 105th to East 115th Street, and northward from Euclid Avenue on two and one-third acres from the Wade Allotment along Bellflower Road..⁴

Throughout its history, the College for Women received substantial gifts from affluent Cleveland women and their families. Elizabeth (Eliza) Ann Clark (1815-1894), Anna M. Harkness, (1818-1888) and Louis H. Severance (1838-1913), who gave in memory of his wife, Florence Harkness Severance. Flora Stone Mather, (1852-1909) whose generosity was recognized when the College for Women was renamed for her in 1932.⁵

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¹ C.H. Cramer, Case Western Reserve University 1826-1976,3-4.
²David D Van Tassel and John J. Grabowski, eds. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, 157-158.
³C.H. Cramer, Case Institute of Technology: A Centennial History, 1880-1980, 6.
⁴Cramer, Case Western Reserve University, 101
⁵Ibid., 101-102