Laying the cornerstone at William Henry Gray Hall, Albany College. At right, C.W. Green, college president, and David Mason, Albany druggist.

Orange and Black: Albany College

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum volunteer

A college in Albany that closed its doors 76 years ago once fielded the best women's basketball team in the Willamette Valley and employed a professor who later became the grandfather of Matt Groening, the creator of the animated sitcom,The Simpsons.

The college was first known as Albany Collegiate Institute and later as Albany College. 

The Oregon Legislature chartered the Albany Collegiate Institute in 1867, and enthusiastic residents responded by raising $8,000 in cash and promissory notes to build a preparatory school and an institution of higher learning on land donated by the pioneer Monteith family.

The site consisted of four city blocks bounded by Ninth and 11th Avenues and Ellsworth and Ferry Streets. 

The first building measured 50 by 66 feet, contained two stories, and was crowned with a tower. 

Presbyterian minister William Monteith was picked to lead the school. 

College officials noted that the school would be a good place for "timid" souls who wouldn't be at home in a larger institution, those wanting a Christian environment, without funds willing to work to pay for their educations, and those looking for a town with a "home atmosphere and high moral and intellectual standards."

School opened in the fall of 1867 with 40 students. The first class graduated in 1873 and was comprised of four women: Maria Irvine, Cora Irvine, Weltha Young, and Mary Hannon.

By the early 1870s, college-age students studied the sciences, English, Latin, Greek, French, German, mathematics, political science, history, and bookkeeping, among other offerings.  

The school's colors were orange and black, the mascot was a pirate, and the yearbook called the "Orange Peal." The school song was "The Orange and the Black."

In 1892, the Presbyterian Board of Aid for Colleges wanted the school's name changed to Albany College to better reflect the high caliber of its teaching staff and to recognize the recent inauguration of its advanced curriculum. The switch was not official, however, until 1905. 

Girls basketball practice, 1910.

Also in 1905, the women's basketball team won nearly every game it played even though it had only five players, allowing for no substitutions. Team members were Elsie Francis and Flo Nutting, forwards; Gertie Bussard and Wilda Starr, guards; and Rose Ficklin, center. 

Arthur Wilson, a former high school player in Portland, was persuaded to coach the women. College teams in those days played against anyone available, even if it meant high school or community groups. 

Despite boasting outstanding sports teams, debt and financial problems always dogged the school. Teachers sometimes went two months without pay. 

May pole dance, 1912.

The college nearly closed several times due to lack of money and a roller-coaster enrollment that left administrators wondering how much student tuitions would bring in year to year.  Competition for students grew as similar institutions opened in Corvallis, Eugene, Salem, McMinnville, Newberg, and Forest Grove. 

The school also found it difficult to stay accredited because of frequent deficiencies in the curriculum, and some facilities were ruled inadequate, such as the library and the science labs.  

Nevertheless, in 1925, the school decided to sell its property to the public school district and reopen on an expanded 46-acre campus at Broadway Street and Queen Avenue. 

Unfortunately, the new campus did nothing to resolve the financial crises, and the school's demise began to take serious shape in the early 1930s, though enrollment had reached an all-time high of 214. 

Trustees attempted to secure more funds during the Depression era by offering classes in Portland, but that didn't help, and the threat of war in Europe made continuing problematic. The school's doors closed forever in 1938, and operations eventually moved to the Lloyd Frank family property in Portland. In 1941, the institution became known as Lewis & Clark College. 

It was Matt Groening's grandfather, Abram A. Groening, who joined the Albany College faculty in 1930 and was named dean in 1935, who suggested the school rent space in downtown Portland with professors traveling there twice a week to hold classes.

After Albany College closed, Groening went on to head the physics department at Lewis & Clark. He died in February 1981 in Portland.

The Albany College property was sold in 1942 to the U.S. Bureau of Mines for $143,500. Most of the proceeds went to retire the school's debt. 

At one of the last Albany College reunions, graduates remembered what it was like to go to school in a small town.  They recalled enjoying tea at the homes of college professors in the afternoons and in the evenings sitting in front of their instructors' fireplaces talking of books and the problems of the world. 

The college atmosphere was quite different back then, they said.