Hall of fame,
A building erected in 1900 on the grounds of the New York University, New York City, with funds provided by
Helen M. Gould (q. v.), and officially known as “The
Hall of Fame
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The Hall of fame. |
for Great Americans.”
It is built in the form of a semicircle, 506 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 170 feet high.
Within the colonnade will be 150 panels, each 2 by 8 feet in dimensions, which are to contain the names of
Americans adjudged the most eminent in their respective spheres.
The rules adopted by the council of the university allow the name of such persons only who were born within the territory of the
United States, who have been dead ten or more years, and who were included within one of ten classes of citizens—viz., authors and editors, business men, educators, inventors, missionaries and explorers, philanthropists and reformers, preachers and theologians, scientists, engineers and architects, lawyers and judges, musicians, painters and sculptors, physicians and surgeons, rulers and statesmen, soldiers and sailors, and distinguished men and women outside the above classes.
Fifty names will first be inscribed.
To these five additional names are to be added every five years until the year 2000, when the 150 inscriptions will be completed.
In October, 1900, a jury of 100 persons was appointed to invite and pass upon nominations for the first fifty names.
The number of names submitted reached 252, of which twenty-nine received fifty-one (the minimum) or more votes.
These were, therefore, declared eligible The following are the names, with the number of votes, which were accepted.
The remaining twenty-one are to be selected in 1902:
George Washington, 97;
Abraham Lincoln, 96; Daniel Webster, 96;
Benjamin Franklin, 94;
Ulysses S. Grant, 92;
John Marshall, 91;
Thomas Jefferson, 90;
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 87;
Henry W. Longfellow, 85;
Robert Fulton, 85;
Washington Irving, 83;
Jonathan Edwards, 81;
Samuel F. B. Morse, 80;
David G. Farragut, 79;
Henry Clay, 74;
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 73;
George Peabody, 72;
Robert E. Lee, 69;
Peter Cooper, 69; Eli Whit ney, 67;
John J. Audubon, 67;
Horace Mann, 66;
Henry Ward Beecher, 66;
James Kent, 65; Joseph Story, 64;
John Adams,
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61;
William E. Channing, 58;
Gilbert Stuart, 52;
Asa Gray, 51.
