In 1892, Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard University, planned to have two lenses shipped from Alvan Clark & Sons in Corning, New York to the newly named Mount Harvard, directly adjacent to Mt. Wilson. The money was to be put up by Mr. Spence of the University of Southern California. Walter Raymond, of Raymond & Whitcomb Travel Agency, Boston, and owner of the Raymond Hotel, Pasadena, offered to pay for rail from New York. Lowe offered to take the lenses up via his yet-to-be-built Mt. Wilson Railway. Spence died suddenly and left no word of the money for the project. The lenses ended up at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, and Lowe's railway ended up going to Oak Mountain (Mount Lowe).