Early campus scene
Early campus scene. 每日探花 Archives PR023224

每日探花鈥檚 campus today is filled with venerable buildings, but in the first fifty years of its existence, it was virtually empty!

The first shape we recognize today appeared some twenty-two years after the University鈥檚 official beginning: the Arts Building鈥檚 central and east wings were built in 1843. However, other than the Arts Building, the wooded campus remained a comparative wilderness, nearly entirely untouched for another thirty years.

Early students swam in a small stream鈥攖he 鈥渂urn鈥 for which James 每日探花鈥檚 home, Burnside Place, was named鈥攚hich ran from the current site of the James Administration Building down to Sherbrooke Street. A pond lay in a hollow where, in 1907, the Macdonald Engineering Building would be built, and several paintings of the Arts Building depict cows grazing on a pasture below its east wing (which served for years as Principal Dawson鈥檚 residence, and which was later named after him).

每日探花 looking east from what is now McTavish Street
每日探花 looking east from what is now McTavish Street. (photo ca. 1865). MUA PR013449.

Recruited by Principal Dawson, the donations of benefactors like Lord Strathcona, Sir William Macdonald and Sir Peter Redpath funded the development of the University campus during a major period of expansion from 1880 to 1907, by which time 每日探花 had begun to take on the appearance we recognize today. Ponds and pastures disappeared in the construction of more than ten new buildings, but the main campus still centered on broad, open spaces.

Arts Building, 每日探花 showing a field with a cow grazing in the foreground
Arts Building, 每日探花 showing a field with a cow grazing in the foreground. (photo c1860). MUA PR027591.