History of Fordham University
[6] "Rose Hill" was the name originally given to the site in 1787 by its owner, Robert Watts, a wealthy New York merchant, in honor of his family's ancestral home in Scotland.
[7] The Reverend John McCloskey (later archbishop of New York and eventually the first American cardinal) was the school's first president, and the faculty were secular priests and lay instructors.
[9] The same year, Bishop Hughes convinced several Jesuit priests from the St. Mary's Colleges in Maryland and Kentucky to staff St.
It was also in 1847 that the American poet Edgar Allan Poe arrived in the village of Fordham and began a friendship with the college Jesuits that would last throughout his life.
[13]In the fall of 1854, the St. Johns' College Debating Society was organized,[14] and the following year, on December 3, 1855, the first student stage production, Henry IV, was presented, followed by The Seven Clerks.
[4] A Congressional act creating instruction in military science and tactics at the college level resulted in St. John's bringing a cadet corps to campus.
Moylan, a native of Ireland, had taught at Fordham prior in 1851 before relocating to teach in San Francisco, California, returning to New York in 1864.
[16] From 1885 to 1890, a veteran of the 7th U.S. Cavalry, Lt. Herbert C. Squires, built a cadet battalion to a strength of 200, which would provide the foundation for the modern ROTC unit at Fordham.
On June 21, 1904, with the consent of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, the board of trustees authorized the opening of both a law and medical school.
In September 1912, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl Jung delivered at series of lectures at Fordham which marked his historic break with the theories of his colleague Sigmund Freud.
[30] In 1944, the School of Professional and Continuing Studies was established, largely bolstered by returning veterans taking advantage of the GI Bill.
[32] In the late 1950s, as the Civil Rights Movement gathered momentum in the US, Fordham students and school officials expressed ambivalence about racial justice.
At the Rose Hill Campus, the Fordham branch of Students for a Democratic Society organized opposition to the existence of the ROTC and military recruiters.
An experimental college with no set requirements and no grades, it was studied by a wide array of educators and reported on by such large-circulation publications of the day as Look, Esquire and the Saturday Review.
In 1969, students organized a sit-in on the main road leading to Rose Hill in response to an announcement that President Richard Nixon would be speaking on campus.
[36] A year later, students stormed the main administration building, occupying it for several weeks, and set fire to the Rose Hill faculty lounge.
[25] In 1969, the board of trustees was reorganized to include a majority of nonclerical members, which officially made the university an independent institution.
It became legally independent in 1972 and moved to its own facilities on the northwest corner of the Rose Hill campus; however, the school remains connected to the university in many ways.
University officials estimated that the revenue gained from the proposed sale would not be greater than the expenses incurred maintaining and improving the campus since the merger with Marymount.
