1878 - Cutler Hall - Colorado Springs, CO - Dated Buildings and Cornerstones on Waymarking.com

On July 4th, 1877, Colorado College and the people of Colorado Springs gathered to celebrate the beginning of construction on the undeveloped and isolated plot of prairie donated for its campus. With an uninterrupted vista of the Rocky Mountains providing a magnificent backdrop for the ceremony, General William Jackson Palmer, who had founded Colorado Springs only six years earlier, turned the first shovel of dirt

Completion of a permanent building for the college addressed Palmer's vision of a cultivated and refined community in which education would play a central role and constituted a milestone in the school's quest for stability. The task of raising enough money to pay for the building appeared almost insurmountable for the fledgling institution. Donations toward the cost of construction ranged from four pounds of butter to a pet ram to partial interest in a mine in the San Juan Range.

Within days of the groundbreaking, the college eagerly began preparations for construction of the new building. Even before the architects produced exact specifications for its dimensions, volunteers with wheelbarrows, picks, and shovels performed much of the foundation excavation during a "Digging Bee." After interviewing Colorado quarry owners, the college selected pinkish-gray rhyolite stone quarried at Douglas Station near Castle Rock for the walls, together with white Manitou limestone trim. Colorado stone would be utilized in all major construction at the college in the early years.

The original portion of the building, known simply as "The College," was completed by December 1879 and occupied for the winter term on 5 January 1880. The surrounding open landscape dwarfed the two-story edifice standing alone on the campus. Frederick Tuckerman, of the first graduating class, observed that the building "looked very small and lonely, far out on the campus with no other structure, not even a tree or shrub near it, and the towering mountains as a background." General Palmer, in his first substantial gift of money to the college, donated funds for the addition of the north and south wings. Dedication of the expanded building coincided with the first commencement in May 1882. The finished structure housed all of the college functions, including a library in the north wing, classrooms, a small auditorium that also served as a chapel, and a chemistry laboratory in the basement.

When William F. Slocum became president of the college in 1888, the first building remained the only structure on campus. Slocum initiated an aggressive improvement program that greatly expanded the school's facilities and enriched its faculty. In June 1889, this building received the name "Palmer Hall" in recognition of William J. Palmer's support of the college. Palmer Hall housed both college classes and Cutler Academy, which continued to operate here until 1914, when public high schools were producing enough adequately trained students for higher education.

In 1904, General Palmer provided major funding for a state-of-the-art science building. The designation "Palmer Hall" then appropriately transferred to the new structure, and this building was renamed "Cutler Hall" in recognition of Henry Cutler, a Massachusetts, philanthropist. President Tenney had asserted that Cutler and his eastern friends "saved the College from extinction" during an early period of financial uncertainty.

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