English: "I regard the building of The American University as the most important educational

enterprise the Methodist Church has ever undertaken. I am proud of it."

(McKinley, from a meeting of The American University Board of Trustees and university founder Bishop Hurst at the White House.)

U.S. President William McKinley (1843-1901), a close friend of Bishop Hurst, was a member of the Board of Trustees and one of the earliest supporters of the plan to develop The American University. Hurst had intended to name each building for a state, and this building was to have been called the Ohio College of Government. When President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the building on May 14, 1902, it was instead named in memory of William McKinley

who had been assassinated before the building's completion.