Bishop George Maxwell Randall
Courtesy Gardner Family Collection
"The idea was to establish here a superior grammar school with special reference to the peculiar industries of the Territory, the pupils of which should be qualified at once to enter with credit upon a complete course in Arts and Sciences in any established university and also to engage with success in the special pursuits which characterize the population of Colorado. It was the Bishop’s intention, faithfully carried out from the onset, gradually to raise the standards of scholarship and to increase the subjects contained in the curriculum, so that when Colorado should become a State, it would find a native university complete in all its departments, which had grown with its own growth, ready to take that important place when the progress of the people should require such an institution."
- 2nd Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Territory of Colorado
The legendary Episcopal missionary Bishop, George Maxwell Randall, pictured above, arrived in Colorado early in the 1860s. Here he found not the frontier he expected, but an up-and-coming young Territory, still without the education so near to his heart. The Bishop resolved to bring the best in higher education to Colorado, starting in 1868 with the Wolfe Hall college for girls in Denver. The next year, he turned his sights to boys and partciular Colorado needs in collegiate learning, and those sights centered on Golden City.
Randall set as his mission to develop at Golden City a university, along the lines described above. It was not to solely serve the Episcopal faith, but to address the future needs of all Colorado. Golden citizens and others throughout the Territory gave liberally to the Bishop's noble cause; Central City resident Charles Clark Welch gave 10 acres of land on a small plateau south of the Golden City townsite for this university. The first school of Bishop Randall’s vision was Jarvis Hall, to be a grammar, military and liberal arts school for boys, Golden's answer to Wolfe Hall. Bishop Randall laid the cornerstone on August 23, 1869, with the help of Rev. William J. Lynd, the first rector of Golden's Calvary Episcopal Church, to be the first principal of Jarvis Hall.
Javis Hall was designed to be 83 x 33 feet in size, 3 stories tall with a central tower, housing school rooms and a dormitory. Editor Byers of the Rocky Mountain News noted "The style of architecture is happily suited to scholastic purposes, and, standing on an elevated spot will present an imposing appearance. It will be an ornament to Golden City and a credit to the Territory." Contractor Thomas Chandler of Denver was placed in charge of building, along with Ruler & Company.
The great building was nearly complete when the day of November 17, 1869 arrived. That day one of the most horrific windstorms of Colorado came, wrecking buildings across the Territory. To this point, Jarvis Hall had been nearly completed, its walls up, its roof on, no windows as yet, with workers putting lathe on its walls. The winds, howling in through the windowless openings, had full play throughout the building, lifted the roof off its moorings, and crashed it back down upon the walls, crushing the structure into a heap of brick and wood. One worker and his wife, who were living inside, miraculously escaped unharmed. However, the loss of Jarvis Hall itself sent shock waves throughout the Territory, along with a call for action:
This disaster is a public loss, inasmuch as its erection was no private enterprise, but for the promotion of a high order of education in the territory. It was the purpose of its projector to establish as soon as practicable a college, which if successful, would grow into the full dimensions of a university, that would be not only an honor to Colorado, but a great blessing to this entire region of the West. Every parent and every good citizen has an interest in the enterprise. The defeat of such an undertaking by the loss of this building would be a sad disaster to the best interests of this community. We trust that the citizens of Denver appreciating this matter in the light of their own best interests will with their wonted foresight and generosity come forward and liberally aid in so far making good the loss as to enable Bishop Randall to go on and complete the building and open the projected college. We trust the fact that he has already expended nearly thirty thousand dollars for educational purposes in this territory will serve, if anything were needed, to prompt our citizens to do what they can in making good the damage which has been done.
- Rocky Mountain News, November 22, 1869
Blame for not boarding up the open windows that resulted in the wild winds demolishing the structure was placed at the extreme negligence of Chandler. The calamity hit the Bishop hard, he also having nearly lost the nearly completed Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown to the same storm. The Bishop, area citizens and the media doubled their efforts to rebuild, and soon, a new and greater edifice rose from the ruins. This time the noted contractor who built Calvary and would build Old Main at the University of Colorado, John H. Parsons, was in charge, with Denver's Henry C. Brown helping superintend the work. Byers wondrously wrote: "The brick are of unusual size-the walls massive-the tower is much larger than before, and projects several feet into the building, which will secure additional strength, while two cross walls through the centre form the foundation to the top of the side walls, will sufficiently brace them against the face of the wind."
Jarvis Hall College
Courtesy Colorado Historical Society
Jarvis Hall was formally dedicated on October 18, 1870. The college, named for its greatest benefactor, George B. Jarvis of Brooklyn, New York, cost $15,000 to build. It was a noble brick structure, designed in a unique combination of styles. Its root style is known as Second Empire, created by the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris during the reign of Napoleon III, who presided over the second French empire. Jarvis Hall's third floor was a mansard roof, essentially the original "pop-top" roof of architecture invented by the great French architect Charles Mansart, a signature element of the Second Empire style. The lower floor windows were Italianate arches, and the third floor windows, in the bell tower and in the dormers, were Gothic. Jarvis Hall's eclectic design was fairly simplified compared to the pure Second Empire style, which was known to include colonnades and columns, but it complemented Golden well and was top of the ritz for architecture in this newly settling region. It was an impressive and singular combination of such diverse styles in the region, whose architect unfortunately may remain forever unknown. It did, however, have its criticisms. Colorado Transcript editor George West wrote, as his architectural review:
In its exterior architecture, Jarvis Hall exhibits a chaste beauty and symmetry of design. The only apparent fault is in the tower, which is too low for the length and height of the main building. And to the eye of a Christopher Wren, the interior finish of the walls would be objectionable. Fine architecture rejects all shams. The interior walls of Jarvis Hall are made to represent stone, while the exterior are built of brick. This is offensive to good taste, and it is to be hoped that the law of fitness in this as in other matters, will cease to be violated.
The west half of the first floor served as the kitchen, dining room and lavatory, and the east half serving as rooms for the matron and servants. On the 2nd floor were the large school room, reception room, several rooms for professors and recitation, and a 2000-volume library. The 3rd floor was the dormitory, well-ventilated and divided into alcoves for the students. To bring water to the new college, Welch dug an irrigation ditch to its grounds, and with the additional help of two wells, trees, shrubs and landscaping grew on land that had been barren grassland for ages. Jarvis Hall was off to a wonderful start, and soon, much more was to come.