ffort towards
muscular development," which was to be found "back of the
Museum";--otherwise the old North Wing. Mark Norris, '79, thus pictures
the comparatively primitive state of athletics in the University of his
day:

The athletic side of the University was almost wholly undeveloped
in 1875. There was no organization and no chance for systematic
work. The absence of a gymnasium and practice ground will account
for this. Football was a contest between classes, and a mob of 100
to 150 men on a side chasing the pig-skin over the Campus was a
sight to make the football expert of today go into convulsions. We
had a little base-ball of the "butter fingers" type. At one time we
had a boat-club, which navigated the raging Huron above the dam in
a six-oared barge.

But with the opening of the year 1885 the old rink, later to become the
armory, was fitted up as a gymnasium and a great impetus was given to
all athletic interests, which by this time were beginning to be
organized. As a natural result the student demand for a real gymnasium
was becoming more and more vociferous. As far back as 1868 the
_University Chronicle_ had voiced the sentiment in a two-column
editorial, in which the writer thus describes the awful state of the
University, when the only form of exercise was the opportunity to,--

walk around two or three squares, down to the post office and back
to our rooms again. This already has become a melancholy task; but
we must choose it, or its sadder alternative,--the old buck-saw.
True there are students among us who _will_ have exercise if
cramming professors are ever so vexed. They will not study on
Sunday; they escape to the woods, admire nature--desecrate the
Sabbath. They find relaxation at the billiard table, make effigies
in the night to be burned in the morning, remove side-walks,
dislocate gates, or arm-in-arm parade the side-walk singing: "Happy
is the maid who shall meet us."

By 1865 the efforts of the students resulted in a fund of something over
$4,000. The Legislature that year almost gave the necessary
appropriation for a gymnasium provided the students contributed what
they had raised. But the project finally fell through and it was not
until 1891, when Joshua W. Waterman, of Detroit, long a patron of sports
in the University, offered to give $20,000, provided a like amount be
raised from other sou