The Growth and Development of a University

"The time has not yet come--will never come--when the higher learning in America can properly devote itself to the maintenance of positions won. Its task is still to build, and the time is always now."

These words of President Pusey at the opening of what promises to be the largest fund drive in Harvard history seem particularly apt. From its inception in 1636 to today's announcement, Harvard has been attempting to perfect itself, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, sometimes actively, sometimes not. But in the sum total of these movements lies the story of Harvard's growth from a small college in a cow pasture into one of the great universities of the modern world.

The first step in establishing the College came in 1636 when the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay appropriated one quarter of its tax levy "towards a schoale or college." Over a year elapsed before any further steps were taken, but late in 1637 the first Overseers purchased a slip of land from Goodman Peyntree on the southern edge of Cowyard Row. (The present Cambridge Common is all that remains of this great cow pasture.) Around this nucleus the Yard slowly expanded until reaching its present size in the first half of the eighteenth century.

For the first two years, the College struggled to get on its feet. It very nearly failed. The John Harvard gift of books and money arrived in 1638 to help with early financial difficulties, but in 1639 the first master, Nathaniel Eaton, was dismissed on complaints of brutality. The quality of food his wife dispensed was also an issue. For the next academic year (1639-40) the College was deserted. Many thought it would never reopen.

It was in the nature of a second founding, therefore, when the Overseers appointed Henry Dunster as President of Harvard College in 1640. With Dunster came an effort to build a real college, "in the Oxford and Cambridge sense." But building required money in those days, just as it does now, and Dunster's task was made more difficult by a depression.

Numerous expedients, providing an interesting comparison with today's high-powered fund drives, were used to raise money. Harvard had no endowment at the time, but the General Court of Massachusetts granted the revenues of the Boston-Charlestown ferry to the College. This amounted to about 30 pounds a year, mostly in fake wampum. More money came from gifts and, sometimes, from community subscriptions. But the chief source of revenue was the plain generosity of the people of New England. From 1644 to 1652 enough families contributed a peck of wheat or a shilling of money to support the entire teaching staff of the College, excluding the President, and to assist ten or twelve poor scholars.

Such generosity allowed Dunster to expand the College's physical plant. At his death the Yard consisted of a strip about 110 feet wide extending from Braintree Street (Massachusetts Avenue) to the Charlestown path (Kirkland Street).

In 1650 Dunster obtained from the General Court the Charter under which the University still operates. The purposes of the College stated in this document are "the advancement of all good literature artes and Sciences." It represented an early version of a liberal education.

Less Freedom

In Dunster's day, however, the student had much less freedom than now. Everyone who wished to graduate had to follow a rigidly prescribed program. There were no courses in the modern sense, nor were three professors. Instead, the tutorial method was employed, with one tutor for each class. Students were promoted or demoted on their tutor's opinion of their industry and ability. Degrees were a more serious matter. Students had to go through searching oral examinations to get them.

Out of this curriculum and these institutions, out of the liberal arts college which Dunster left, grew the modern Harvard.

In 1707, John Leverett became President. He made no important changes in the curriculum, which continued strong in logic, rhetoric, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, ethics, and metaphysics, and remained weak in mathematics and science.

But he put the College's finances on a firm basis for the first time, chiefly by snapping up the important Hopkins legacy, which may or may not have been intended for Harvard. He also set up the College's first endowed chair through convincing Thomas Hollis, a London merchant, to support a Professor of Divinity in 1721.

Massachusetts Built

Leverett, too, had housing problems, very similar to those faced by President Pusey today. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 had inaugurated an era of peace, prosperity, and expansion in New England. Classes rose rapidly to a high of 37 members in 1721. To house the crowd, Massachusetts Hall was built at the public charge in 1720.

The Hollis Professorship of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy was endowed in 1727, and under President Holyoke the curriculum was modernized and new texts introduced. Holyoke's most essential reform, however, was doing away with the old system of each tutor taking a class through all subjects in the curriculum. Instead, he made each tutor a specialist in charge of instruction in a given area.

There was a considerable turnover of tutors, but the staff was academically inbred. Except for the French instructors, the College did not have a single teacher before the nineteenth century who was not a Harvard graduate.

Toward the end of the century, in the face of increasing difficulty to obtain state grants, the College sought to make itself financially independent. By 1793 the endowment of the College had mounted to over $182,000, with $100,000 of this in unrestricted funds.

In the 1780's, Harvard became a university. The state Constitution of 1780 recognized it as such, and two years later Harvard actually attained that status by providing instruction in medicine. Conducting the Medical School in Cambridge was difficult because of lack of clinical facilities, however, so in 1810 the "Medical Institution of Harvard University" moved to Boston, where it is today.

Under President John Thornton Kirkland, the College further solidified its claim to university status with the establishment of the Law School in 1817 and the Divinity School in 1819.

The physical appearance of the University was immensely improved during the first part of Kirkland's administration. Holworthy Hall, completed in 1812 from the proceeds of a successful lottery, became the most popular place of residence. University Hall was completed in 1815, and pigs and other undesirable objects were driven out of the Yard to be replaced by elms and a lawn.

Widespread complaints against "despicable and inexperienced" tutors had started a movement even before Kirkland's time to replace tutorial instruction with that of professors on endowed chairs. Kirkland gave this movement a big boost by setting up 15 new professorships. He also helped eliminate some of the inbred nature of the Harvard faculty by sending various tutors abroad to study.

Kirkland's successor, Josiah Quincy,

The pictures on this page were obtained with the assistance of Antonio A. Giarraputo '50 of the University Archives. Many of them can be seen at a current exhibit in Widener Library. attained his chief fame for espousing the right of free speech on the slavery question. There can be no doubt, according to Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison '08, that the outstanding reason why Harvard pulled ahead of rival colleges in 1836 and, indeed reached her present eminence and stature, was her early and faithful adherence to the principle of academic freedom.

On the curriculum, however, President Quincy's influence was not good. The recitation system, which had gradually broken down, was hardened by the adoption of a horrible "Scale of Merit." Quincy required a daily mark on recitations for his rank list, thus reducing the faculty from a teaching body to one which merely saw that the boys got their lessons.

In 1829 the Corporation appropriated the then extravagant sum of $5,000 for the purchase of books, and in 1841 Gore Hall was completed as the new library. Though full by 1863, additions kept Gore going until the construction of Widener more than 50 years later.

With the passing of Quincy, the presidency fell into a rut, from which it was only rescued when the genius of Eliot transformed a respectable university into a great one. But in this period, which Morison calls the Age of Transition, there were many fore-shadowings of later Eliot reforms.

Written Exams

In 1847 the Lawrence Scientific School was opened with an initial donation of $50,000. Perhaps an even more important change, however, was the introduction of written final examinations instead or orals. From this point it was easy to procure the more important reform of allowing instructors to substitute personal examinations for some of the daily recitation grades, thus permitting instructors to spend more hours on actual teaching.

With the advent of Charles William Eliot, the University entered upon one of its most exciting periods of change. Standards were raised in the Medical and Law Schools, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences was estab-