declined and the gas boom ended in Indiana around 1910, Muncie was well established as an industrial town and a commercial center for east-central Indiana, especially with several railroad lines connecting it to larger cities and the arrival of automobile industry manufacturing after 1900. Numerous civic developments also occurred as a result of the city's growth during the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, when Muncie citizens built a new city hall, a new public library, and a new high school. The city's gasworks also began operations in the late 1870s. The Muncie Star was founded in 1899 and the Muncie Evening Press was founded in 1905. A new public library, which was a Carnegie library project, was dedicated on January 1, 1904, and served as the main branch of the city's public library system. The forerunner to Ball State University also arrived in the early twentieth century. Eastern Indiana Normal School opened 1899, but it closed after two years. Several subsequent efforts to establish a private college in Muncie during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also failed, but one proved to be very successful. After the Ball brothers bought the school property and its vacant buildings and donated them to the State of Indiana, the Indiana State Normal School, Eastern Division, the forerunner to Ball State University, opened in 1918. It was named Ball Teachers College in 1922, Ball State Teachers College in 1929, and Ball State University in 1965. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, in tandem with the gas boom, Muncie developed an active cultural arts community, which included music and art clubs, women's clubs, self-improvements clubs, and other social clubs. Hoosier artist J. Ottis Adams, who came to Muncie in 1876, later formed an art school in the city with fellow artist, William Forsyth. Although their school closed with a year or two, other art groups were established, most notably the Art Students' League (1892) and the Muncie Art Association (1905). By the early twentieth century several railroads served Muncie, which helped to establish the city as a transportation hub. The Cincinnati, Richmond and Muncie Railroad (later known as the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway) reached Muncie in 1903. The Chicago, Indiana, and Eastern Railroad (acquired by a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad system) and the Chicago and Southeastern (sometimes called the Central Indiana Railroad) also served the city. In addition to the railroads, Muncie's roads connected