The Builder

Oldest U. S. engineering school is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N. Y., founded in 1824 by Dutch Patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer. Rensselaer, self-styled "birthplace of technology," is fanatically devoted to "practical" learning. Its students (now numbering 1,500) go to their first classes at 8 a.m., rarely knock off before 4:30 p.m. They are too busy for drinking, dancing, big-time athletics or campus chitchat (only one-third live in dormitories). Offering no snap courses, Rensselaer strips down even English and Philosophy to their utilitarian bones. English is studied by Rensselaer men primarily as a tool for writing business reports and selling their ideas. Almost their only un-antlike activity is stamp collecting, favorite Rensselaer hobby.

Rensselaer's creed was stated in 1935 by the late Edwin S. Jarrett, then its acting president. After Communist Granville Hicks had been dismissed from Rensselaer's faculty, Mr. Jarrett said: "We adhere to an unwritten regulation of long standing that there shall be excluded from our classrooms all controversial discussions about politics, religion and sociology. Time devoted to such subjects . . . is . . .lost time. . . . We have developed and prospered under the capitalist regime. The men we have sent forth and who have become industrial leaders-have . . . richly endowed us. ... If we are condemned as the last refuge of conservatism, let us glory in it."

Rensselaer was almost wiped out by fire in 1904. It was resurrected by Mrs. Russell Sage (who gave it $1,000,000) and by an anonymous old man whose money made the institution what it is today but who for more than a third of a century has been known to Rensselaer men only as "The Builder." Rensselaer's alumni have long speculated about "The Builder's" identity. This month Rensselaer's busy President William Otis Hotchkiss at long last told them. Because he died last January (at 73), his family consented to let it be known that the man who gave Rensselaer five of its buildings and much of its $6,000,000 endowment was a Pittsburgh steelman named John Marshall ("Mar") Lockhart.

Although he headed Lockhart Iron and Steel Co. (founded by his father, who was also a co-founder of Standard Oil Co.), looked like Andrew Mellon and had a finger in several Mellon enterprises, few had ever heard of old John Lockhart. He was born, lived and died in the same street in Pittsburgh's east end. He ate sparingly, rarely drank, never married. No intellectual, he read few books, but was fond of the theatre and made a hobby of collecting theatre programs, which he always had autographed by his companions. He was a member of Philadelphia's Union League Club, contributed regularly to the Republican Party.

Most remarkable fact about John Lockhart was that he gave away most of his fortune (to Pittsburgh hospitals as well as to Rensselaer) anonymously. This month President Hotchkiss wrote to Rensselaer's 11,000 alumni: "It is with sadness that I report his death. . . . Without his gifts the Institute would still be the small school ... of 30 years ago."

-Among them: John A. Roebling, builder of the Brooklyn Bridge; William B. Cogswell, founder of Solvay Process Co., (chemical).

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