Livingston W. Houston

Livingston Waddell Houston (January 18, 1891 – November 22, 1977) was the eleventh president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Biography

He was born on January 18, 1891 in Wyoming, Ohio.[1] He graduated from Rensselaer in 1913 with a degree in mechanical engineering and was a member of the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi[2] His first job out of school was as an assistant engineer for the Mobil Gas Company. In 1919, he joined the Ludlow Valve Company of Troy, a large manufacturer of fire hydrants, as production manager. By 1932, he rose to president of the company and he remained president until 1941, when he became chairman of the board. He was chairman of the board until 1960.[3]

In 1925, he was elected a Life Trustee of Rensselaer.[1] In 1944, he was elected president of Rensselaer. The post-war years were ones of great growth with the increased enrollment due to the return of those serving in World War II. In 1946, surplus military barracks were obtained to house them. These buildings were formally called the Rendael dormitories, but informally known as "Tin Town."[4] By 1953, these buildings were replaced by a complex of four dormitories and a dining hall, which formed what is still the heart of "Freshman Hill."[5] In 1948-1949, the institute obtained a surplus navy warehouse from the government that was remodeled to become the R.P.I. Fieldhouse, used for events and sports competitions, especially ice hockey games. In 1955, Rensselaer and United Aircraft Corp. built a branch campus in Hartford, Connecticut, called the Hartford Graduate Center. During his tenure, enrollment went from 1,200 to 4,000 students, the number of faculty tripled and the assets rose from $17 million to more than $50 million.[6] He died at Samaritan Hospital in Troy, New York on November 22, 1977.[3] After his death, the field house was named for him.

Academic offices
Preceded by
William O. Hotchkiss		 President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
1944 - 1958		 Succeeded by
Richard G. Folsom
gollark: And the slightly *hacky* logic which maps positions in the text node to position in the whole paragraph.
gollark: That's it, apart from the mildly more complex logic which will try and get more words from one end if there aren't enough on the other.
gollark: It basically looks 12 words in each direction around the link.
gollark: When it finds a wikilink, it uses algorithms™ and the full text of the paragraph to generate a short snippet of context.
gollark: And the page parsing logic iterates over the markdown AST, and uses the accursed wikilink regex to find wikilinks.

References
  1. Livingston W. Houston
  2. Tau Beta Pi College Presidents and Chancellors Archived 2010-12-22 at the Wayback Machine
  3. "Dr. L.W. Houston, Former President Of Rensselaer, 86, New York Times, November 23, 1977
  4. Rendael
  5. Freshman Residence Halls
  6. "R.P.I. Head Retires; Dr. Folsom Appointed", New York Times, March 2, 1958


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.