1925
November-December,
Frederic Morgan and Maybeck tour the eastern United States for
a month investigating architectural planning of college and
university campuses.
1927
December,
Maybeck submits his first unit plan to the Board of trustees which
they accept.
1928
February 4, Board
of Trustees commissions Maybeck to prepare finished plans for
the Chapel.
1930
January, February,
and April, Frederic Morgan
is again in San Francisco conferring with Maybeck on final plans
for the first unit. Maybeck will modify totally the first unit
plans.
April 30, Board of Trustees
approves the revised plan and authorizes construction to begin.
June 10, Maybeck arrives
in St. Louis for a three-week visit. He brings several versions
of the Chapel design.
October, Frederic Morgan,
who has been in San Francisco finalizing plans with Maybeck's
office, receives a telegram from St. Louis that the campus site
is now in question because a major highway may bisect the Loch
Lin property. Maybeck is delighted with the prospect of finding
a new site and suggests the bluff area which he has seen from
the train when approaching St. Louis.
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Frederic Morgan returns to St. Louis and
with Thomas Blackwell, Principia's business manager, begins
the search for a new site. The two investigate the Village of
Elsah, forty miles northeast of St. Louis, where as students
twenty years earlier, they had visited the summer home of Frederick
Oakes Sylvester, Principia's first art director. They discover
a number of Elsah properties for sale.
November
26, Principia purchases 2000 acres above Elsah with
four miles of bluff land overlooking the Mississippi River.
December
10, Maybeck visits Elsah and finds the site unrivaled.
He remarks, "Only West Point along the Hudson palisades and
the University of Heidelberg on the cliffs of the Neckar in
Germany can be compared to it."
