Early History of The Johns Hopkins University

The 140-acre wooded Homewood Campus of The Johns Hopkins University is the site of the School of Arts and Sciences, the G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering, and the School of Continuing Studies. These remain at the heart of a small but unusually diverse coeducational university. Mr. Hopkins left his trustees with little idea of his vision for the university. Its founding in 1876, however, is commonly taken as the beginning of the modern university system in America, where undergraduates are taught by a faculty that pursue scholarly research in their fields while training graduate students as well. This form of education, established at Hopkins by its first president and faculty, was modelled after the European university, which had traditionally included graduate education. Among the educational innovations at Hopkins were an emphasis on teaching laboratories, student research, the seminar method, and scholarly publication.

In October 1876, the new University opened for classes in a modest collection of buildings located at the intersection of Howard and Monument streets in downtown Baltimore. Hopkins boasted a small but distinguished faculty attracted to this new venture in higher education by the University's equally distinguished first president, Daniel C. Gilman. This original faculty included such outstanding scholars as classicist Basil Gildersleeve, mathematician J. J. Sylvester, physicist Henry A. Rowland, chemist Ira Remsen and biologist H. Newell Martin. Early students and junior faculty included John Martin Vincent, John Franklin Jameson, Jacob Harry Hollander, Westel Woodbury Willoughby, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Baxter Adams.

Although Johns Hopkins is most noteworthy as a pioneer in graduate education, Gilman also introduced innovations at the collegiate level, including rigorous admissions standards, more demanding than those of the leading collegiate institutions of the day, Yale and Harvard. Because students matriculated with the equivalent of a year or two of collegiate study already completed, it generally took them only three years to fulfill the requirements for an undergraduate degree; it was not until 1907 that Hopkins formally moved to a regular four-year program.

One of Gilman's last achievements was securing the gift of the Homewood Campus, which was formally presented on February 22, 1902, when Ira Remsen was inaugurated as second president. Remsen planned the move of the undergraduate, graduate and extension schools from downtown, and the inauguration of the University's third president, Frank J. Goodnow, in May 1915 coincided with the dedication of the two first major buildings: Gilman and Maryland Halls. Another of Remsen's major accomplishments was obtaining aid from the state of Maryland to establish a School of Engineering, which welcomed its first class in 1914. In 1907, also during Remsen's administration, the trustees approved the admission of women to graduate study. It was not until 1970, however, that the University admitted women to the undergraduate schools.

While Hopkins enjoyed a decade of prosperity and growth in the 1920s, the Depression years and the presidency of Joseph S. Ames were spent battling a growing deficit. In 1935, however, Isaiah Bowman began his presidency with a renewed (and very successful) fundraising effort and plans to improve the quality of research and education. The Second World War soon transformed the University. Classes were held year round to graduate as many students as possible, faculty not serving in the military were forced to carry overloaded teaching schedules, and many of the scientists on campus were engaged in military research, including the Manhattan Project. Even President Bowman was actively involved in the war effort, serving the State Department and participating in the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, where proposals for the United Nations charter were drafted.