The 20th Century began disastrously for Mines, with forces ripping the school apart. Mines suffered under heavy debt incurred over time, and was forced to confront the reality that it needed help our would be forced to close. Professor Paul Meyer, one of the most respected faculty members, looked to be on the course of resigning. Then in February came a rebellion of the student body, when the entire freshman class walked out in protest. The rebellion, the second since the Class of 1900 staged one four years earlier, was the latest in a simmering feud over how students should be handled. The conflict began with the 1896 walkout, and would ultimately explode in a couple of years. Before it was over, two presidents, the entire faculty and many students would be gone, with Mines' Trustees taking extraordinary measures to save the institution.
State School of Mines - Class of 1900
Photographed at entrance to Executive Building
Photo courtesy Richard A. Ronzio Collection, Golden
Historical Collection
All was not lost. During this time, Mines' built world thrived, with generous people stepping forward to give whole buildings to the instutition. This began in 1900, when trustee Winfield Scott Stratton suddenly, and without solicitation, gave Mines a gift of $25,000. Stratton, a modest miner who had struck it rich at Cripple Creek, had joined the SSM Board of Trustees in 1899. Soon the legendary generosity he bestowed upon the people of Colorado Springs had come to Golden, starting with the building that one day would bear President Chauvenet's name. Stratton's money gave the school a new Assay Laboratory, a state-of-the-art building providing valuable facilities to educate students in smelting. It was a long, one-story building of red pressed brick and tall rectangular window openings and gabled roof, nondescript in appearance but far from it in use. Its roofline was dominated by chimneys coming from 16 furnaces and a great steel smokestack that could be seen from virtually anywhere in the valley, all necessary for the lab's often fiery use. The building was constructed for $5,586 by contractor Gray of Denver. Built in the midblock between what was then 4th and 5th Streets, the building was the first step towards making Mines not just one of the best in the nation, but THE best. However, the Assay Laboratory wasn't perfect:
The terrific wind storm of Sunday night demolished several adjunct to householdings. The west end of the School of Mines assay laboratory was loosened so completely that the professor of mechanics posted a notice on the school bulletin board that the damage would be worth while examining to see how imperfect construction would give way to great strain. The wind was the worst in years and it is fortunate that no greater damage was done.
- Colorado Transcript, February 4, 1904
By that time, however, Stratton was no longer there to repair his gift. He had died at home in Colorado Springs, to be greatly mourned by the community he had given so much to, from the poor to its streetcar system. Stratton himself never lived in the opulence of his peers, giving away uncounted millions more than his modest frame house was worth. In his will, Stratton gave much of his fortune to build an orphanage in Colorado Springs, a move that outraged many high-roller peers who thought he must've been out of his mind to make such a "lowly" cause his final life's work. Attempts to break his will were made, and they failed. This was fortunate for the School of Mines, for in that will Stratton gave $25,000 to the school, to build a new, state-of-the-art hall of engineering second to none.
The Mines leaders named the new building Stratton Hall in his honor. A location was selected just east of the Assay Laboratory, at the southwest corner of what is now 14th and Cheyenne. Noted Denver architect Harlan Thomas, and Colorado Springs contractor W.W. Atkinson, were hired to design and build the new edifice. Soon, upon a base of Lyons sandstone Stratton Hall arose, a monument the likes of which Golden had never seen. Upon the first steel frame ever built in the city limits gray bricks were used to shape a building in the Mediterranean style, a new shape of walls topped by curvilinear parapets the area had never known before. Atop the building was placed the first skylight Golden had known.
Architectural Rendering of Stratton Hall
Harlan Thomas, Architect
From the Colorado Transcript, 1902
The Masonic Grand Lodge of Colorado laid the building's cornerstone. Inside was a copper box, in which were sealed, according to the Golden Globe: photographs of Stratton from the Denver Republican and Cosmopolitan; a letter from Frank Bulkley of the Mines Board of Trustees; the latest Mines catalog; a set of Mines bulletins; the Mines alumni constitution; copies of the Denver Republican, Rocky Mountain News, Denver Times, Denver Post, Golden Globe and Colorado Transcript; a set of 1902 coins; a brass plate with the inscription of the Golden Masonic lodge; a list of the members of the Golden lodge; letters from the members of the SSM faculty to their future successors; a list of the 1903 student body; and pictures of President Chauvenet, President Palmer and Professor Nathaniel P. Hill. Editor Garrison wrote of the order of the Ancient Free & Accepted Masons: "Away back in the night of time the foundations of great public buildings, monuments and obelisks were laid by the grand masters of the mystic tie, and they are marks in the book of time of the presence and work of the order that directed the building of King Solomon's temple, and designated the position of every stone in its walls....All corner stones of public buildings are laid on the northeast corner of the building." Inscribed on the cornerstone is the date A.L. 5902, translating to the commonly referred to date of 1902.