The	First Years of the University
	•  Henry Ives Cobb
		The early trustees had the challenge of finding an architect able to represent their vision.  After communicating for several months with the renowned architect Henry Ives Cobb, the trustees decided on Cobb's grand but sober architectural design.  Since arriving in Chicago in 1881, Cobb had received several significant commissions in the Chicago area, including the Newberry Library, the Chicago Opera House, and Lake Forest College, and he was well suited to his charge at the University.  The University's first building, Cobb Hall (named for an unrelated financial donor, Silas B. Cobb),
	was erected simultaneously with the early constructions of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1892.  Cobb Hall was the template for later structures on campus.   Internally it was a strictly functional build- ing, composed of small rooms for intimate study and a large lecture hall on the first floor.  Externally it possessed the graceful and imposing Gothic facade duplicated in many later structures on campus.