King of Cornell

For nearly 150 years, the 130-foot tower of King Chapel, crowned with a railing of Victorian ironwork, has dominated the Cornell landscape. As the first feature of Mount Vernon you see when approaching town, it adds a sort of European gothic academic flair to the Hilltop.

The Chapel was the product of an over-enthusiastic Board of Trustees who chose a Chicago architect who misjudged the costs so much that construction nearly bankrupted the college. The key factor in saving the school was the strict management and frenetic fundraising of Cornell’s third president, William Fletcher King, who also donated 40% of his own salary toward paying the debt.

An Ohio native, King was associated with Cornell as an instructor, acting president, president, and Trustee for 60 years. His presidency, 1863–1908, is the longest in Cornell history. As a widower whose only child died at age 11, he donated his home to the college for the use of future presidents and gifted the college with a fortune—earned through shrewd real estate investments—that was approximately double the salary he had been paid.

King was a gifted administrator with a knack for hiring talented faculty to whom he could delegate authority and who, in turn, respected him for his personal integrity, fairness, personal warmth, and complete devotion to the college he led.

He was every inch the proper Victorian gentleman: 5-foot-10 with a beard and frock coat, serious, dignified, and reserved, but also generous, humble, never pompous, and capable of making bad puns. He was a fixture of the college until his death, 100 years ago this fall, on Oct. 23, 1921. In 1943 Cornell named the most prominent landmark on campus, the chapel, for King.

On the centennial of his death, we remember King—husband, father, classical scholar, educator, administrator, world traveler, writer, fundraiser, minister, and investor. King should be remembered as more than a name on a building. He was a visionary who saw the tides of changes in education and who took Cornell from a tiny regional college into an established national institution of higher education. For over 60 years he truly gave everything in service to the college, and town, that he loved. During that time, William Fletcher King was not just the president of the college; in many ways, he WAS Cornell.

Peter Hoehnle ’96 holds a Ph.D. in history from Iowa State University. He assisted professors William Heywood and Richard Thomas in researching “Cornell College: A Sesquicentennial History.”