Hill read the following communication:
The Michigan Chapter of the American Institute of Architects at a regular meeting held Tuesday, Nov. 7, 1905, have instructed me to assure your Board that the Michigan Chapter, A.I.A., after a discussion on the establishment of a School for Architecture in the University of Michigan, is most heartily in sympathy with the plan proposed by your Body …
R.P.
Finally, in February, 1906, twenty-six years after the termination of Jenney's appointment, Emil Lorch was appointed Professor of Architecture with service to begin October 1. This marks the beginning of the revival of instruction in this field, the first step in a program destined to develop to the present time. A schedule of work for students in architecture and in architectural engineering was approved in June, 1906.
President Angell in his report of October, 1906, said:
We are now to resume instruction in Architecture under Professor Emil Lorch. It was carried on from 1876 to 1880 * 1.1 under Professor Jenney, and some men were graduated who have attained eminence in their professions. The work was provided for by a special appropriation of the Legislature at the urgent suggestion of Governor Bagley. But in 1877 the Legislature failed to renew the appropriation, and so the instruction was necessarily and much to our regret discontinued. We trust that we shall now be able to maintain it permanently.
R.P.
1906-1913. — The status of architecture as a subdepartment with a ranking chairman in the Department of Engineering was approved by the Regents in 1905. The four-year curriculum in architecture appears in the Announcement of the Department of Engineering for 1906-7. Accommodations were provided on the second and fourth floors of the West Engineering Building, and library space was made available in the Engineering Library. Almost immediately additional faculty members were appointed. Staff members of those years included Emil Lorch (A.M. Harvard '03), 1906-40; William Caldwell Titcomb (Harvard '04), 1907-13, 1925-32; Percy Ash (Pennsylvania '86), 1910-12; Raymond Everett (Harvard '09a), 1910-15; George McDonald McConkey ('14e [Arch.]), 1911-; Louis Holmes Boynton, 1912-24; Wells Ira Bennett (Syracuse '11a, D.F.A. hon. ibid. '19, M.S. Michigan '16), 1912-; and Beverly Robinson (Columbia '09a, M.S. Michigan '17), 1912-18. The enrollment which in 1906-7 had numbered twenty-two increased until by 1912-13 there were one hundred students.
Even in the early years of the unit it was the desire of the architectural profession and of Professor Lorch and his staff that architecture be made a separate department. At the Regents' meeting in May, 1907, "Regent Dean read a communication from the American Institute of Architects asking that Architecture in this University be made a separate Department. The communication was received and placed on file." It was to be expected that action toward separation would be delayed until student and faculty response should justify it.
In July, 1913, the following action was taken:
Resolved, That the Department of Engineering and the department of Architecture be hereafter known as the Departments of Engineering and Architecture with the present Dean and Secretary acting in a similar capacity for the new organization; and that the Department of Architecture shall hereafter administer the admission and discipline of its students, with full control of the curricula in Architecture.
R.P.
The administration of the early program
