Boston University
Boston University is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodists with its original campus in Newbury, Vermont. It was chartered in Boston in 1869. The university is a member of the Association of American Universities and the Boston Consortium for Higher Education.
The university has nearly 38,000 students and more than 4,000 faculty members and is one of Boston's largest employers. It offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, doctorates, and medical, dental, business, and law degrees through 17 schools and colleges on three urban campuses. BU athletic teams compete in the Patriot League and Hockey East conferences, and their mascot is Rhett the Boston Terrier. The Boston University Terriers compete in NCAA Division I.
The university is nonsectarian, though it retains its historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. The main campus is situated along the Charles River in Boston's Fenway–Kenmore and Allston neighborhoods, while the Boston University Medical Campus is located in Boston's South End neighborhood. The Fenway campus houses the Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, formerly Wheelock College, which merged with BU in 2018. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".
History
Boston University traces its roots to the establishment of the "Newbury Biblical Institute" in Newbury, Vermont, in 1839, and was chartered with the name "Boston University" by the Massachusetts Legislature when it moved there in 1869. The university organized formal centennial observances both in 1939 and 1969. One or the other, or both dates, may appear on various official seals used by different schools of the university.In Vermont and New Hampshire
On April 24–25, 1839, a group of Methodist ministers and laymen at the Old Bromfield Street Church in Boston elected to establish a Methodist theological school. Set up in Newbury, Vermont, the school was named the "Newbury Biblical Institute".In 1847, the Congregational Society in Concord, New Hampshire, invited the institute to relocate to Concord and offered a disused Congregational church building with a capacity of 1200 people. Other citizens of Concord covered the remodeling costs. One stipulation of the invitation was that the Institute remain in Concord for at least 20 years. The charter issued by New Hampshire designated the school the "Methodist General Biblical Institute", but it was commonly called the "Concord Biblical Institute".
In Beacon Hill
With the agreed twenty years coming to a close, the trustees of the Concord Biblical Institute purchased on Aspinwall Hill in Brookline, Massachusetts, as a possible relocation site. The institute moved in 1867 to 23 Pinkney Street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, and received a Massachusetts Charter as the "Boston Theological Seminary".In 1869, three trustees of the "Boston Theological Institute" obtained from the Massachusetts Legislature a charter for a university by the name of "Boston University". These trustees were successful Boston businessmen and Methodist laymen, with a history of involvement in educational enterprises, and they became the founders of Boston University. They were Isaac Rich, Lee Claflin, and Jacob Sleeper, for whom Boston University's three West Campus dormitories were later named. Lee Claflin's son, William, was then Governor of Massachusetts and signed the University Charter on May 26, 1869, after it was passed by the Legislature.
As reported by Kathleen Kilgore in her book Transformations, A History of Boston University, the founders directed the inclusion in the Charter of the following provision, unusual for its time:
Every department of the new university was also open to all on an equal footing regardless of sex, race, or religion.
Boston Theological Institute was absorbed into Boston University in 1871 as the BU School of Theology.
On January 13, 1872, Isaac Rich died, leaving the vast bulk of his estate to a trust that would go to Boston University after ten years of growth while the university was organized. Most of this bequest consisted of real estate throughout the core of the city of Boston, which was appraised at more than $1.5 million. Kilgore describes this as the largest single donation to an American college or university as of that time. By December, however, the Great Boston Fire of 1872 had destroyed all but one of the buildings Rich had left to the university, and the insurance companies with which they had been insured were bankrupt. The value of his estate, when turned over to the university in 1882, was half what it had been in 1872.
As a result, the university was unable to build its contemplated campus on Aspinwall Hill, and the land was sold piecemeal as development sites. Street names in the area, including Claflin Road, Claflin Path, and University Road, are the only remaining evidence of university ownership in this area. Following the fire, Boston University established its new facilities in buildings scattered throughout Beacon Hill, and later expanded into the Boylston Street and Copley Square area.
After receiving a year's salary advance to allow him to pursue his research in 1875, Alexander Graham Bell, then a professor at the school, invented the telephone in a Boston University laboratory. In 1876, Borden Parker Bowne was appointed professor of philosophy. Bowne, an important figure in the history of American religious thought, was an American Christian philosopher and theologian in the Methodist tradition. He is known for his contributions to personalism, a philosophical branch of liberal theology. The movement he led is often referred to as Boston Personalism.
The university continued its tradition of openness in this period. In 1877, Boston University became the first American university to award a PhD to a woman, when classics scholar Helen Magill White earned hers with a thesis on "The Greek Drama". Then in 1878 Anna Oliver became the first woman to receive a degree in theology in the United States, but the Methodist Church would not ordain her. Lelia J. Robinson, who graduated from the university's law school in 1881, became the first woman admitted to the bar in Massachusetts. Solomon Carter Fuller, who graduated from the university's School of Medicine in 1897, became the first black psychiatrist in the United States and would make significant contributions to the study of Alzheimer's disease.
Move to current campus and expansion
Seeking to unify a geographically scattered school and enable it to participate in the development of the city, school president Lemuel Murlin arranged that the school buy the present campus along the Charles River. Between 1920 and 1928, the school bought the of land that had been reclaimed from the river by the Riverfront Improvement Association. Plans for a riverside quadrangle with a Gothic Revival administrative tower modeled on the "Old Boston Stump" in Boston, England were scaled back in the late 1920s when the State Metropolitan District Commission used eminent domain to seize riverfront land for Storrow Drive.Murlin was never able to build the new campus, but his successor, Daniel L. Marsh, led a series of fundraising campaigns that helped Marsh to achieve his dream and to gradually fill in the university's new campus. By spring 1936, the student body included 10,384 men and women.
In 1951, Harold C. Case became the school's fifth president and under his direction the character of the campus changed significantly, as he sought to change the school into a national research university. The campus tripled in size to, and added 68 new buildings before Case retired in 1967. The first large dorms, Claflin, Rich and Sleeper Halls in West Campus were built, and in 1965 construction began on 700 Commonwealth Avenue, later named Warren Towers, designed to house 1800 students. Between 1961 and 1966, the BU Law Tower, the George Sherman Union, and the Mugar Memorial Library were constructed in the Brutalist style, a departure from the school's traditional architecture. The College of Engineering and College of Communication were housed in a former stable building and auto-show room, respectively. Besides his efforts to expand the university into a rival for Greater Boston's more prestigious academic institutions, such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Case involved himself in the start of the student/societal upheavals that came to characterize the 1960s.
When a mini-squabble over editorial policy at college radio WBUR-FM – whose offices were under a tall radio antenna mast in front of the School of Public Relations and Communications – started growing in the spring of 1964, Case persuaded university trustees that the university should take over the widely-heard radio station. The trustees approved the firing of student managers and clamped down on programming and editorial policy, which had been led by Jim Thistle, later a major force in Boston's broadcast news milieu. The on-campus political dispute between Case's conservative administration and the suddenly active and mostly liberal student body led to other disputes over BU student print publications, such as the B.U. News and the Scarlet, a fraternity association newspaper.
The presidency of John Silber also saw much expansion of the campus and programs. In the late 1970s, the Lahey Clinic vacated its building at 605 Commonwealth Avenue and moved to Burlington, Massachusetts. The vacated building was purchased by BU to house the School of Education. After arriving from the University of Texas in 1971, Silber set out to remake the university into a global center for research by recruiting star faculty. Two of his faculty "stars", Elie Wiesel and Derek Walcott, won Nobel Prizes shortly after Silber recruited them. Two others, Saul Bellow and Sheldon Glashow won Nobel Prizes before Silber recruited them.
In addition to recruiting new scholars, Silber expanded the physical campus, constructing the Photonics Center for the study of light, a new building for the School of Management, and the Life Science and Engineering Building for interdisciplinary research, among other projects. Campus expansion continued in the 2000s with the construction of new dormitories and the Agganis Arena.