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Millikin University

History

Like most projects, Millikin University began as donations to reach the half million dollar goal
someone’s vision. While attending Washington he had set to underwrite the new college. As
College (now Washington and Jefferson with most collaborations, Millikin’s initial ideas
College) in southwestern Pennsylvania, 20-year were enhanced by those whom he engaged,
old James Millikin witnessed the financial and resulting in a grander vision: a merger of Lincoln
academic challenges that his fellow students University, to be relocated from Lincoln, Illinois,
faced. If he were ever to have the fortune and the Decatur College and Industrial School
to do so, the young man vowed to found an under the new name of The James Millikin
“institution of learning in which all classes of University. The new institution’s curriculum was
youth could secure an education fitting them for to provide instruction in both “the literary and
any occupation they might desire to enter.” Fifty classical” and “the scientific, the practical, and
years later, now a successful banker living in industrial,” and, despite the financial support of
Decatur, Illinois, Milliken had the opportunity the Church, was to be nonsectarian and diverse,
to follow through on his promise. At this point, “conducted on a broad plane in which all will
however, the vision had taken a more definitive be treated alike, regardless of sect or creed.”
form. Giving a newspaper interview in 1899,
Millikin noted his desire to start a school that With Dr. Albert Reynolds Taylor named as the
would educate boys and girls to “make a living University’s first president, the senior leadership
with their hands as well as with their heads group undertook several benchmarking visits
and prepare them fully for some industrial – including Cornell University, Pratt Institute,
occupations.” and the University of Pennsylvania – for “the
purpose of studying their plans, buildings and
Meanwhile, Millikin was engaged in a equipment.” According to President Taylor,
fundraising effort. While planning to offer the brick and stone used on Penn’s library
JAMES MILLIKIN $200,000 of his own money, he also and museum was particularly admired and
approached the City of Decatur and the influenced the materials selected for Millikin’s
The founding of a university carries within Cumberland Presbyterian Church for significant first buildings. Site selection for the new
it the seeds of its future development and the
unique culture that will take root there. For
those of us who come after and become part
of that development, understanding the history
of a place enables us to see our role within a
larger context and to better align our efforts
to the unique circumstances we find there.
For architects, our understanding of a place
includes both the institutional culture and the
built environment which reflects, sustains, and
shapes this culture.

While it is unnecessary to recount Millikin
University’s history to those who know it better
than we do, it may be of some value to point out
those moments from the past which will likely
resonate in the design and construction of the
Center for Theatre and Dance. Reading of the
founding in President Albert Reynold Taylor’s
short biography of James Millikin or in Taylor’s
autobiography, it is easy to imagine similar
challenges ahead. PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT DEDICATES THE UNIVERSITY BUILDINGS

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