Chicago Tribune
MISS CULVER’S CHRISTMAS GIFT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
The University of Chicago has received an unexpected Christmas present which has quite taken its breath away. Its stocking is full and running over, for the gift of $1,000,000 just received from Miss Helen Culver releases one-half of the additional $2,000,000 recently and conditionally promised by Mr. Rockefeller. The university, therefore, has had its first Christmas gift of $2,000,000 several days in advance of the holiday, before which time it would not be surprised if Santa Claus turned up again, for it never rains but it pours, and the university has never needed an umbrella when the rain was coming down. The university was not very rich when it was born, but it was lucky, which is better, since it shows that the great world has a good opinion of it.
Miss Culver, a cousin of the late Charles J. Hull, from whom she inherited her property, makes this munificent gift as a memorial to him and also to benefit the science of biology, in which he was greatly interested. The money will go to the expansion of the present resources of that department, to equip and establish laboratories, to construct the necessary buildings, and to maintain a series of university extension lectures in the West Division upon biological research as it relates to sanitation and hygiene. Mr. Hull’s name will be attached to all that his money has provided for the university. President Harper has already indicated that there will be the Hull Biological Laboratory, the Hull Marine Laboratory, the Hull Inland Experimental Station, and the Hull professorships. These, taken in connection with Hull House, will serve to keep his memory green, and the quiet, unostentatious little woman to whom all this largess id due will have the satisfaction of knowing that the favorite studies of Mr. Hull will be opened up at the university to the largest possible number of students and with an equipment superior to anything in this country, if not in the world. It is little wonder that the university workers in this department are happy, that the university is happy over this windfall, and that Miss Culver is happy in carrying out the wishes of Mr. Hull.
