Denison Business and Normal College
(1893-1917)
The city of Denison was free of debt in the general fund in 1892. The waterworks had been extended, but the bonds for those were not yet due. L.M. Shaw thought Denison should have and could support a business and normal college, thereby making it possible for more young people to increase their education. True, a goodly number of high school graduates for that time were attending colleges and universities, but they were so far away from home. Shaw approached a number of his friends and business aquaintances with the idea of starting a college. To prove he was in earnest, he gave $5,000 toward such a project. Others followed, donating from $500.00 upward. By the fourth of May, 1892, $30,050.00 had been raised. The first week of May, at a public meeting held in Germania Hall, (the largest assembly room in town) it was decded to incorporate for $60.000.00, buy some 88 acres at the east edge of town, the eastern edge of Chestnut Street (First Avenue South). The west 20 acres were to be the college campus and the remaining 68 acres put into lots and sold to prospective buyers, the proceeds going into the college fund. Committees were also appointed to (1) prepare articles of incorporation, (2) procure plans, (3) site and water supply, (4) renew or close options. (5) solicit subscriptions to stock and (6) to go to the country to solicit subscriptions for stock. Articles of incorporation were filed May 30, 1892. Incidently, the 20 acres, purchased for $100.00 an acre, were located just outside the corporation. The first board of directors was made up of the following businessmen: L.M. Shaw, J.P. Miller, J.B. Romans, J.P. Connor. L. Corwell. C. Sievers, T.J. Garrison, Carl F. Kuehnle and H.C. Laub. L.M. Shaw was elected president, H.C. Laub, vice president, D.L. Boynton, secretary and J.T. Haugh, treasurer.
The college building costing $35,500.00 was planned by Fisher and Lowry and erected by George H. King.
There were 40 rooms in the brick building, It was heated by steam and supplied with city water. Just north of the college was a frame building, also heated by steam, supplied with water and furnished throughout with carpets, beds and kitchen utensils, This would serve as a dormitory for the women students, The men students found rooms where they could, some rooming and boarding at the Heaton house on East Broadway. Some male members of the faculty also stayed there.
The college published a catalog announcing they were open for business January 3, 1893. The catalog listed A. Everett Whitten, M.A., as principal, teaching Latin, Greek and normal work; Miss Louise Ott, preceptress [a woman who is the head of a school] and teacher of German and mathematics; John H. Holmes, B.S., teacher of English; J.H. Schoonover, principal of the commercial department; Mrs. J.H. Schoonover, teacher of shorthand; Mrs. Carrie H. McCoy, teacher of typewriting and Mrs. Louise Green, teacher of music and art.
Table board was $1.50 a week and rent for a room was 50c a week. No extras were charged for light and heat. The price for board does seem small, but the food served was nourishing and good, not fancy but just what the students were accustomed to having at home. In the rooms was a folding bed, a combined dressing case, a bureau and commode, chairs, and a large clothes closet adjoining.
There were three terms per school year: fall, terminating in January; spring term, beginning almost immediately and running until the first weeks in June; and the summer term, usually late June, July and running into August. Tuition for the Academic and Normal Department was $10.00 per term, for the full Commercial course, $15.00 per term. Music, piano, organ or voice culture, two lessons per week, per term, $10.00; chorus class, per term, $10.00. Art lessons were 50c a piece. Thirty five registered for the first term, By 1899, there were 216 students. Later, as many as 500 were in attendance. By 1910, 319 had graduated from the college.
Students from the college benefitted the county in improving the instruction in the rural schools and certainly added to the cultural climate ot the town. Of the individuals connected with the college, perhaps the best known and longest remembered was W.C. Van Ness.
The war years and he fact that the Iowa General Assembly in 1916 removed the certification for the county superintendents to the State Department of Public Instrucition, helped to cause the college to close the doors. Again, feeling the pinch for more room, the Denison Board of Education leased the college for a school building for a time, and then with the consent of the electorate, purchased the building for a high school. The new high school, built in 1936 with some federal funds, was occupied in 1937-38, leaving the old college building vacant. During the second World War, some of its rooms were used as home canning and processing center for food. The building was dismantled to make room for the Crawford Memorial Hospital. Some of the brick from the college and the North Brick were purchased by Mr. Art Paup and today can be seen in Paup's garage.
FYI: In 1891, the flooring was shipped by way of the Chicago Nortwestern Railroad, which at the time ended at Vail, Iowa. From Vail, the flooring was shipped to Denison by mule and wagon train. In 1994, this flooring was donated to the Prairie Arts Council at Sheldon, Iowa. by Virgil Boyens of Denison. It was used for the flooring of an additon to a 1871 house at the Historical Park.
According to wikipedia: A normal school was a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy [discipline that deals with the theory and practice of teaching] and curriculum. Most such schools, where they still exist, are now denominated "teachers' colleges". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canada trained teachers for primary schools.
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