From this time on meetings of the Regents were held with fair regularity, either in Ann Arbor or, more usually, in the capitol city, which at that time was Detroit. Occasional difficulties in obtaining a quorum are discernible, however, in the reports of the early meetings. The trip on horseback or stage from Detroit to Ann Arbor during the first two years was not always easy or convenient, while there was little to arouse enthusiasm in the slow development of the Campus. The question of a library and scientific apparatus interested the Board from the first meeting and among their early purchases was a collection of minerals made by one Baron Lederer which consisted of 2,600 specimens, purchased in January, 1838, for $4,000. In July of the same year, Dr. Asa Gray was made a Professor of Botany and Zoölogy, the first professor to be appointed. He was contemplating a trip to Europe and was entrusted by the Regents with $5,000 for the purchase of a library. This charge he performed to the great satisfaction of the Regents, sending back a collection of 3,700 volumes in all the branches ordinarily taught at that time, including many books unobtainable in America. This task ended Professor Gray's connection with Michigan. Practically all his long and distinguished career was spent as a professor in Harvard University. Another purchase of this period, probably the first acquisition for the library, which seems curiously extravagant for the officers of an "incipient" University, was Audubon's "Birds of America." At the present time it is worth many times the $970 paid for it then, but one wonders, in view of the extreme slenderness of the resources of the University, just what was the idea which led to its purchase. It was in any case an evidence of the interest of the Board in practical scientific studies and their sympathy with what was then the progressive movement in education.
Meanwhile the Regents were making haste slowly in erecting the University buildings. In accordance with the "grand design" of the University Act, a New Haven architect was commissioned to prepare what proved to be, according to Superintendent Pierce, "a truly magnificent design." The Governor and the Board of Regents approved this plan but the Superintendent of Public Instruction, with a better sense of realities, refused his assent. He maintained that a university did not consist of fine buildings, "but in the number and ability of its Professors, and in its other appointments, as libraries, cabinets, and works of art." So this scheme which would have cost five hundred thousand dollars, or twice the amount of what had at that time been realized from the University lands, was abandoned, apparently to the great disappointment of the citizens of Ann Arbor, who showed their disapproval by a public indignation meeting.