The University of Michigan’s main campus is in Ann Arbor, about an hour west of Detroit. Its fist buildings were built in Gothic revival style. It was founded in 1817, but classes didn’t begin 1841 because it wasn’t established as a modern university but more like a network of lecture halls and libraries.
Mason Hall had classrooms, a chapel, a museum, and dormitory room for 13 students. They were taught Greek, Latin, rhetoric, and maths by two professors. It took until 1849 for the second block of classrooms and dormitories to be added. In the 1850s, it grew to include an observatory, law, and laboratories for science. After the Civil War, it was even the country’s largest university with 1,200 students.
The campus saw rapid expansion in the latter half of the 19th century when over 30 buildings were added and different faculties were established by university president James Angell, who was also a diplomat to China in his previous job. Prof. William Jenney taught at the U of M in the 1900s and later invented the steel frame skyscraper.
