History of Georgetown University

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stained glass image of the Georgetown seal used from 1844-1977

The history of Georgetown University spans over four hundred years, and is closely tied to that of America.^[1] Georgetown University has grown with Washington, D.C. and the United States, each of which date their founding to the period from 1788 to 1790.^[2] Georgetown's origins are in the establishment of the Maryland colony in the seventeenth-century. John Carroll established the school at it present location, and the Society of Jesus oversaw the expansion of educational opportunities on campus, around the city, and abroad.

[edit] Founding

Above the door of White-Gravenor Hall are the two dates. Further up are the five seals, which mark the three prior incarnations of Jesuit schools in Maryland, the year John Carrol attended the Bohemia Manor school, and the present school at Georgetown Heights

The founding of Georgetown University took place on two main dates, 1634 and 1789. Until 1851, the school used 1788, the start of construction on the Old South building, as its founding date. In that year a copy-edit in the college catalogue began mis-labeling the construction as beginning in 1789. This was discovered in preparation for the centennial celebration in 1889, at which point rather than correct the annual, the date of Georgetown's "foundation" was fixed to the date 1789-01-23.^[3]

[edit] First Establishments

On 1633-11-22 Jesuits Andrew White, John Altham Gravenor, and Thomas Gervase set sail on The Ark for America under the leadership and financing of the Lord Baltimore, Leonard Calvert.^[2] Their landing on 1634-03-25 on St. Clement's Island marks the birth of the Maryland colony, this anniversary now celebrated as Maryland Day. These Jesuits were joined in 1637 by Thomas Copley and Ferdinand Poulton, together establishing near St. Mary's City some means of Christian education for the native Yaocomico tribe.^[1] Inquiring about patronage for their school, Poulton wrote to superiors in Rome, who on 1640-09-15 approved the institution of a school in principle. That year they moved to a permanent building at Calverton Manor on in the Wicomico River. This early establishment was burnt in 1645 as part of the English Civil War, and the remaining Jesuits were brought to trial in England. The new protestant administration had their school outlawed, though it was functioning by 1648, when Thomas Copley managed to return there.

Newtown Manor, also known as "Bretton's Neck", near modern-day Leonardtown, Maryland, become available to the Jesuits in 1677. This house served as the Jesuit schoolhouse until 1704 when it's existence was alerted to British authorities. The school afterwards conducted itself periodically and in secrecy at the new Jesuit colony of Bohemia Manor. John Carroll attended this school in 1745 for one year at the age of twelve.^[4] Carroll left for studies in Europe, but was forced to return to Maryland in 1774, when Pope Clement XIV ordered the suppression of the Jesuit order.^[5] This put Carroll in the right place at the right time, when the American Revolution pushed out the English administration, opening up new possibilities for scholastic expansion.

[edit] Georgetown Heights

After returning in 1774 to live on the Rock Creek in Maryland, Carroll established Saint John the Evangelist Church, in Silver Spring, Maryland. In 1776, his cousin, Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence invited John to join him, Samuel Chase, and Benjamin Franklin in traveling to Quebec and attempt to persuade the French Canadian population to join the revolution. The mission was unsuccessful, but John Carroll's association with Benjamin Franklin proved useful. In 1784, Franklin, as ambassador to France, recommended Carroll to the papal nuncio in Paris as the head of the Catholic Church in American, and on June 9, 1784 Carroll was anointed Superior of Missions in the United States of North America. On November 6, 1789 Carroll's authority was confirmed after being elected by the clergy as the first Bishop of Baltimore.^[6]

In 1785, Carroll convened a meeting of area clergy, mostly ex-Jesuits in White Marsh, Maryland, and this body resolved on on November 13, 1786, that "a school be erected for the education of youth."^[7] By March 1787, they formed a fund raising committee, and Carroll solicited formal proposals for an "academy, at George-town, Patowmack-River, Maryland."^[8] In April 1788, construction on Georgetown's first building, "Old South", began, leading Carroll to write "We shall begin the building of our Academy this summer. On this Academy are built all my hopes of permanency and success of our holy religion in the United States."^[9] On January 23, 1789, John Carroll, Robert Molyneux and John Ashton completed the purchase for "seventy five pounds current money" of the acre and a half on which construction had already started.^[8] This land became the core of Georgetown's campus. As a result, the University celebrates this date as its founding.^[10] The first student, William Gaston, was admitted in 1791, and classes commenced on November 22, 1791.^[11][12]

[edit] Early growth

Archbishop Leonard Neale overlooking Georgetown College in 1798

Carroll had difficulty filling the position of president of the university, with many candidates declining the job before Robert Plunkett first took the office in 1791, though he only served 18 months. He oversaw the division of the academy into "college", "preparatory", and "elementary", with the youngest starting at age eight. Georgetown's second building, Old North, which survives to this day, began construction in 1794. At three times the size of Old South, it greatly increased the number of classrooms and sleeping space on campus.^[13] Upon the building's completion, George Washington visited and spoke from the porch, a position since reserved for sitting US Presidents.

In its early years, Georgetown College suffered from considerable financial strain, relying on private sources of funding and the limited profits from local Jesuit-owned lands.^[14] By September 1792, tuition had to be increased for the first time.^[8] In 1796, Louis William Valentine Dubourg arrived and became president. He would later become the first bishop of the Louisiana Territory. Dubourg brought with him a collection of books from his own collection and others from St. Mary's Seminary, the Baltimore Society of Saint-Sulpice, and these books formed the nucleus of Georgetown's library.^[15] The first board of directors organized in 1797, and quickly became antagonized with Dubourg because of his preference for French faculty, and forced him to resign in December 1798.^[16]

Leonard Neale and his brother Francis Neale oversaw the growth of the university as presidents for a combined eleven years, beginning in 1798. Leonard Neale acted in the dual capacity of president and tutor for several years and under his guidance the institution was developed from an academy into a college in 1801. Carroll applied to Rome to name Neale as his coadjutor, and Neale was appointed coadjutor in 1800. He remained as president of Georgetown until 1806 when succeeded by Robert Molyneux. In 1809, Leonard Neale's brother, Francis Neale, became president of Georgetown College.^[17]

The suppression of the Jesuits in Maryland ended in 1805. In 1806 the school commenced a novitiate for Jesuit recruits from Russia, which had harbored the Society during the suppression.^[18] John Carroll didn't seek civil recognition for Georgetown until after the suppression of the full Society ended in 1814. Instead of seeking a state charter, he went to the federal government, then in charge of the District of Columbia. Now Congressman William Gaston sponsored the legislation, and Georgetown received the first federal charter on March 1, 1815.^[19] Founder John Carroll died December 3, 1815, and in his will he left Georgetown four-hundred pounds sterling, which marked the beginning of Georgetown's endowment.^[15]

The college as it appeared in 1828

The college's first two graduates, a pair of brothers from New York named Charles and George Dinnies, were awarded the degree of bachelor of arts in 1817.^[19] Other Jesuit school would confer degrees under Georgetown's charter for many years afterwards.^[20] Graduate degrees were awarded for the first time in 1821.^[8] In 1833, the Holy See empowered Georgetown to confer degrees in philosophy and theology. On 1844-06-10, the school was incorporated by Congress under the name The President and Directors of Georgetown College. Georgetown's Observatory, completed in 1844, was used in 1846 to determine the latitude and longitude of Washington, D.C., which was the first such calculation for the nation's capital.^[21]

[edit] Early student life

Georgetown from its beginning was not intended to be exclusively Catholic, and over its first ten years, nearly one-fifth of students were Protestant. A fifth of students were also from the Caribbean. By 1830, Jews were attending.^[22] The first student society, the Sodality was founded in 1810 as a religious devotional group.^[23] In 1830, the Philodemic Society was founded as the schools debating society, the oldest of its kind in America and the oldest secular group at Georgetown. Other debating societies were founded in its model, or in opposition to it in later years, such as the Phileleutherian Society from 1836 to 1838, and the Philonomosian Society from 1839 to 1935.^[15][24]

The Dramatic Association of Georgetown College, renamed the Mask and Bauble Dramatic Society after World War I, was founded in 1852, and is itself the oldest continuous dramatic society in America. John Barrymore was a member of the group, as was the playwright John Guare, and director Jack Hofsiss, who was the youngest person ever to win Broadway's Tony Award for Best Director when he received the prize for The Elephant Man.^[25]

There were three student organized rebellions against the Georgetown administration in the antebellum period. The most notable of these occurred in January 1850, against the administration of James A. Ryder over the school food. Students damaged the dormitories and took charge of a local hotel.^[26]

[edit] The Civil War

Union soldiers across the Potomac River from Georgetown University

The Civil War was an important and tragic time for the University. Beginning on December 11, 1859 the Philodemic Society debated whether or not the southern states should secede. The debate lasted weeks, and after the Society affirmed secession, a brawl ensued, and debates were canceled for the rest of 1860.^[27] Fist fights on campus between northern and southern students soon became common. Beginning in 1861, many students left their studies to join the war. 925 students ultimately enlisted with the Confederate Army and 216 with the Union Army; between them 106 died in the war. In 1861, new student enrollment dropped from 313 in 1859 to only 17.^[22] By 1862, Georgetown only had 120 total students, about ten percent of what it was just a few years earlier.^[28] Only seven students graduated in 1869, down from over 300 a decade prior.

Responding to lack of adequate hospital beds and housing for soldiers needed to protect the District, the north sequestered University buildings, and by the time of President Abraham Lincoln's May 1861 visit to campus, 1,400 Union Army troops were stationed in temporary quarters there.^[29] 1,300 of them were from the 69th Infantry Regiment, which established itself in Maguire Hall from May 4, 1841 to June when the unit was replaced by the 79th New York Volunteer Infantry. The occupation ended in July when the unit left to fight in the First Battle of Bull Run, but the university remained home to soldiers as an infirmary for the remainder of the war.^[27]

Student David Herold at the Washington Navy Yard after his arrest

Georgetown would later be connected to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. While John Wilkes Booth was not a student, he was active in the school's dramatic society, and familiar with many students, like David Herold, who accompanied him in his escape, and Samuel Arnold, who conspired with Booth to kidnap Lincoln. Dr. Samuel Mudd, a Georgetown alumnus, set Booth's broken ankle, and Charles Lieberman, one of the founders of the medical school, treated Lincoln.

The war drastically changed Georgetown, making it both more northern and more Catholic.^[22] Increasingly larger percentages of the student body came from northern cities, more populated with Catholic immigrants, while the student body had been primarily southern in before the war.^[8] This dynamic is expressed in Georgetown's official school colors. In 1876, Georgetown College Boat Club, the school's rowing team, adopted blue, color of the northern army, and gray, color of the southern army, as their colors in order to signify the peaceful unity between students from the North and those from the South. Students at Georgetown Visitation wove the first blue and gray uniforms for the team.^[30]

[edit] Expansion

After the founding of the Law Department, Healy and his successors sought to bind the professional schools into a university, and focus on higher education.^[22] In 1870, Healy first had Georgetown Preparatory School raise the minimum age of enrollment from eight to twelve. This was raised again in 1894 to thirteen. In focusing on the University, Georgetown Preparatory School relocated from campus in 1919 and fully separated from the University in 1927.^[31] Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School has remained attached to the University campus.

[edit] Medical School

Main article: Georgetown University School of Medicine

In 1830, construction of an infirmary in the new Gervase Building brought the first hospital beds to Georgetown. In 1849, four Catholic doctors, frustrated with discriminatory practices at neighboring Columbia University, petitioned Georgetown President James Ryder to found a medical program.^[32] A building for this purpose was purchased at 12th and F Streets, and the School of Medicine was founded in 1850, holding its first classes the following year.^[33] In 1898, Georgetown University Hospital was established on campus, and in 1930, classes moved to the main campus.

Georgetown obtained the Washington Dental College in 1901 as an expansion of the School of Medicine.^[22] A new Medical-Dental Building on Reservoir Road was completed in 1930 to house the school, and in 1951 the School of Dentistry separated form the School of Medicine as an independent unit of Georgetown University.^[34] In 1987, the University decided to close the school following the class of 1990 for financial reasons, as the number of dental students dropped nationwide.^[35] Supplies and equipment from the school were sent to Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá, Colombia.^[36]

[edit] Law Center

Main article: Georgetown University Law Center

The Law School sign, preserved from the E Street building.

A school of law was approved in March 1870, and graduated their first students in 1872. In 1884 they moved the school to at 6th and F Streets, not far from the Medical School, and again in 1891 to 506 E Street. In 1971, following the completion of the Bernard P. McDonough Hall, the school moved to its present location at 1st and F Streets at 600 New Jersey Avenue. In 1989, the school added the Edward Bennett Williams Law Library. In 1993, the Gewirz Student Center opened, providing on-campus living for the first time. The "Campus Completion Project", finished in 2005, brought the addition of the Hotung International Building and the Sport and Fitness Center.

[edit] Nursing School

Main article: School of Nursing and Health Studies

[edit] School of Foreign Service

Father Edmund A. Walsh, S.J. Founder and first dean of SFS

Main article: Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service

The School of Foreign Service (SFS) was founded in 1919 by Edmund A. Walsh, to prepare students for leadership in foreign commerce and diplomacy.^[37][22]

[edit] School of Languages and Linguistics

The School of Languages and Linguistics was organized in 1949. In 1994, it was folded into the College, and is now the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics.

[edit] School of Business

Main article: McDonough School of Business

The School of Business Administration was created out of the SFS in 1955, and in 1999 was renamed the McDonough School of Business in honor of alumnus Robert E. McDonough.^[38]

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

[edit] Present position

The School of Nursing has admitted female students since its founding, and most of the university was made available on a limited basis by 1952.^[39] With the College of Arts and Sciences welcoming its first female students in the 1969–1970 academic year, Georgetown became fully coeducational.^[40]

On October 4, 1966, a bill passed in Congress that recognized the school's name as "Georgetown University" for the first time.^[8] The 1844 bill still in effect had referred only to "Georgetown College", which at that point was known as the College of Arts and Sciences and was just one branch of the university.

In 1970 Lauinger Library was completed bringing space for a rapidly growing library collection.^[15]

The 1980s produced many changes on campus.^[41] The 1984 victory of Georgetown's men's basketball team helped make Georgetown University a household name. Georgetown ended its bicentennial year of 1989 by electing Leo J. O'Donovan as president. He subsequently launched the Third Century Campaign to build the school's endowment.^[42]

In December 2003, Georgetown completed the campaign, joining only a handful of universities worldwide to raise at least $1 billion for financial aid, academic chair endowment, and new capital projects.^[43] John J. DeGioia, Georgetown's first non-Jesuit president, has led the school since 2001, has continued its financial modernization, and has sought to "expand opportunities for intercultural and interreligious dialogue."^[44]

[edit] Traditions

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

[edit] Georgetown in fiction

Georgetown, as a major world University, has been featured in many media over the years.

• The 1973 horror film The Exorcist was set and filmed in Georgetown. It was based on a novel by William Peter Blatty, who received an English degree from Georgetown in 1950. Blatty wrote the script in a room in Holy Trinity Church's school, a Catholic parish adjacent to Georgetown University.
• The 1985 "Brat Pack" movie St. Elmo's Fire revolved around a group of students who had just graduated from Georgetown. The bar that much of the film takes place in is based on The Tombs, a bar and restaurant known for its large student clientele and rowing decòr, located one block from Georgetown's front gates. The university denied the producers the rights to film on campus, so parts of the film were shot at the nearby University of Maryland.
• In the NBC television series The West Wing, President Bartlet's daughter Zoey attended Georgetown. In the show's fourth season, an episode entitled "Commencement" was filmed on campus, with current Georgetown students used as extras.
• In the movie National Treasure, Benjamin "Ben" Gates (played by Nicolas Cage) is said to have a degree in American History from Georgetown.
• In The Girl Next Door, one of the main character's (Matthew) goals is to get into Georgetown, although the university shown at the film's conclusion is not Georgetown.
• In Save the Last Dance, one of the main character (Derek) receives an acceptance letter to Georgetown University early in the movie.
• On The Steve Harvey Show, Romeo tells Steve about his ambitions to go to college by saying, "I don't wanna be one of those guys that just WEARS the Georgetown jacket!"
• In Above the Rim, the main character, Kyle-Lee, hopes to get a scholarship to play basketball at Georgetown.
• A second season sub-plotline of The Sopranos concerns Meadow Soprano's ambition to gain acceptance to Georgetown, and her mother Carmela's machinations on her behalf. Rumor has it that the school denied the show permission to film on campus, leading to a somewhat abrupt switch of college choice to Columbia.
• In Election, the main character, Tracy Flick (played by Reese Witherspoon), ends up at Georgetown.
• In 24, one of the main characters, President David Palmer attended Georgetown where he played on the basketball team. Dennis Haysbert, the actor who plays David Palmer, is the uncle of Nazareth Haysbert who graduated from Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in 2005.
• In Syriana, Prince Nasir al-Subaai says: "I studied at Oxford. I have a Ph.D from Georgetown."
• Memento was written by a Georgetown alumnus, and the main character's nemesis, John G., is said to be named after John Glavin, a professor of creative writing at Georgetown.
• In Stargate Atlantis, the main character, Dr. Elizabeth Weir taught a political science course at Georgetown before going to Atlantis.
• In Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Milo Thatch's grandfather, Thaddeus Thatch, and the eccentric millionaire, Preston B. Whitmore, are both members of the Class of 1866.
• In Enemy of the State, Will Smith's character is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center.
• In The Pelican Brief, several scenes are shot inside the Georgetown University Law Center and the Edward B. Williams Law Library.
• In the later Jason Bourne novels, such as The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Legacy, Jason Bourne becomes a professor at Georgetown.
• Jack Ryan, the main character of several Tom Clancy books, received his Ph.D from Georgetown.
• In Young Indiana Jones and the Plantation Treasure, Jones' father, a professor of Medieval history, lectures at Georgetown while Indiana explores the underground railroad in the Carolinas.

[edit] See also

• List of Presidents of Georgetown University

[edit] Notes