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A GREATER GETTYSBURG inaugurated a building fund, which from time to time thereafter its members tried to reactivate. The 1904 and 1905 Spectrums reproduced proposed floor plans for the building. During the Hefelbower administration both faculty and trustees gave their blessing to the proposal, but the amount available in cash and pledges remained far from what was required to complete it. In the fall of 1913 President Granville included a "Christian Social Hall" on the list of needed buildings which he announced to the students in chapel. However, it was not one of the four proposed structures which the trustees decided upon when they authorized a new fund-raising campaign two months later. Granville found an opportunity to advance the priority of a Y.M.C.A. building when the Woman's League asked him to recommend to them one major College project on which they might work. "This seems to be the psychological moment for choosing some one large object on which to concentrate your efforts," he told them in a letter dated September 1, 1915. Urging the women to raise the money needed for a Y.M.C.A. hall (his estimate of what it would take was about $15,000), he predicted that "just your beginning a campaign for the securing of such a building will have a stimulating effect on our College Y.M.C.A. and produce an uplift in the moral tone of the institution."151 At its annual convention in November, the Woman's League accepted Granville's proposal and called upon students and alumni to come to its aid. A month later the board of trustees approved the project. The 1916 catalogue announced that the league had begun a campaign to secure $30,000 (not $15,000) for a "College Y.M.C.A. Hall to serve as a religious and social center for the student body." During their convention in November 1916, the women dedicated the site chosen for the future building - just north of the chemistry laboratory along Washington street - and placed a sign on the spot as a reminder to all passersby of their intentions. Few at this time realized that within a matter of months the country would become an active participant in World War I and that the government would quickly discourage most building. The women soon found that the war was making it difficult for them to carry on their usual ways of raising money.152 Between 1916 and 1918 prices increased about 40 percent. The war in general and an influenza epidemic in particular led to cancellation of the 1918 league convention. However, these difficulties only delayed the women. It did not weaken their resolve. In June 1919 they held a groundbreaking 151The letter appeared in the Gettysburgian for September 29, 1915. 152Were it not for the war, Granville told the board in June 1918, the building 'would now be nearing completion." 51