north half of the building was partitioned into a chemical lab, a natural science collection, a library, a philosophical chamber, other common rooms, and student rooms. The south half was dorm rooms and apartments. In those early years, the University was not well-funded. Each new building required approval of funds from the Wisconsin legislature, and in its eagerness to educate and to show that the new state of Wisconsin was on a par with Michigan, the University often overextended itself. "The $20,000 cost of [South Hall] so crippled the University at the time that the purchase of books and apparatus had to be temporarily discontinued and the curriculum limited." Most of the university faculty moved into South Hall with their families, paying roughly $3 per week per person for room and board. Boarding students paid $2 per week. Professor and Mrs. Sterling managed the boarding establishment. Classics professor James Butler later wrote warmly of this era where students and faculty lived close together: "Through my classes came William Vilas, John C. Spooner, John Muir, Levi Vilas, Dwight Treadway and both the Steins. No foresight or second sight showed me to what acmes these youths were destined to climb. So while entertaining angels unawares, I very composedly eked out their shortcomings, and detected their blunders, like those of ordinary mortals." In 1856 a Normal School (teacher training) was started in South Hall. When many male students left for the Civil War, women were allowed in to keep the University afloat, and many of them lodged in South Hall starting in 1864. In that year, 119 of the 169 students in the Normal School Department were women, with 229 students in the whole university. In the early years the curriculum of the university focused on geography, English grammar, Latin and Greek. That curriculum shifted to more practical subjects as years passed. Particularly with the Morrill Act of 1862, the UW began offering instruction in "the agricultural and mechanical arts." In 1884 South Hall became home to the Department of Agriculture and was renamed Agriculture Hall. In 1890 in this building, Stephen Babcock developed the Babcock test for milk fat content. Bascom Hall (1857) What is now called Bascom Hall was the university's third major building, filling that prominent central spot which had been called "Main Edifice" on the early plan. The building was designed by Indianapolis architect William Tinsley in Italian Renaissance