was completed in
1841, at a cost of about $16,000; while the four professors' houses,
which were ready at the same time, cost $30,850. The dormitory, which
was the first University building, is now the north wing of University
Hall. It was a gaunt, bleak structure in those days, one hundred and ten
by forty feet, whose stark outlines were softened nowhere by trees and
shrubbery. The original plan called for sixty-four bedrooms and
thirty-two studies, but the necessity of including a chapel and a
recitation room on the first and second floors, the library on the
third, and a museum on the fourth, severely limited the space for the
students' rooms. In 1843 the building was named Mason Hall, in honor of
the late Governor who had just died, but the name was long forgotten
until revived in 1914, when a tablet was placed by the D.A.R. on the
building, which has since been called by that name. Contemporary opinion
is reflected in a description of this building in the _Michigan State
Journal_ of August 10, 1841, where we read: "More classical models or a
more beautiful finish cannot be imagined. They honor the architect,
while they beautify the village." From this one cannot but suspect that
journalistic exaggeration is not entirely a latter-day fault, although
the opinion of Governor Barry seems to have been somewhat the same when
he charged the Regents with "vast expenditures" for "large and
commodious buildings, which ... will doubtless at some future period be
wanted for occupation and use."

As a matter of fact the Governor's strictures were not entirely
unjustified, as the four professors' houses proved a continual source of
annoyance and expense, while the wisdom of erecting a building to be
used largely as a dormitory when students could easily have lived in the
town, as they do nowadays, was doubtful. Governor Barry is reported to
have said in 1842 that "as the State had the buildings and had no other
use for them, it was probably best to continue the school." That was in
the period of the lowest ebb of the University's fortunes which followed
soon after its doors were opened, and, as Professor Ten Brook remarked,
it showed that the balance of the scale between suspending and going
forward may have been turned in favor of the University by the bare fact
of having these architectural preparations. The second and corresponding
building was not erected until 1849 at the cost of about $13,000. A few
months later the Medic