Thehistory of Georgetown University spans nearly 400 years, from the early European settlement of America to the present day.Georgetown University has grown with both its city,Washington, D.C., and theUnited States, each of which date their founding to the period from 1788 to 1790. Georgetown's origins are in the establishment of theMaryland colony in the seventeenth century.Bishop John Carroll established the school at its present location by thePotomac River after theAmerican Revolution allowed for free religious practice.
The role of theSociety of Jesus in the school's operation has evolved from that of founders and financiers to faculty and advisers. Their focus on liberal studies andreligious pluralism have helped to give the school its identity. Georgetown was also affected by its times, including theAmerican Civil War, which disrupted the growing school and significantly changed its student body.University presidents likePatrick Francis Healy modernized the institution into an active research university with several graduate and undergraduate schools, and oversaw the expansion of educational opportunities on campus, around the city, and abroad.
The history of Georgetown University traces back to two formative events, in 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 catalog began mislabeling 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 January 23, 1789.[3]
On November 22, 1633JesuitsAndrew White,John Altham Gravenor, and Thomas Gervase set sail onThe Ark forEnglish America under the leadership and financing of theLord Baltimore,Leonard Calvert.[4] Their landing on March 25, 1634, onSt. Clement's Island marks the birth of theMaryland colony, this anniversary now celebrated asMaryland Day. These Jesuits were joined in 1637 byThomas Copley andFerdinand Poulton, and together established a missionary fort next to a series of native dwellings nearSt. Mary's City on land purchased from the localYaocomico tribe, which they paid for with hatchets, axes, hoes, and cloth.[5][6]
Inquiring about patronage for a school at this site, Poulton wrote toVincenzo Carafa, theSuperior General of the Society of Jesus in Rome underPope Urban VIII, who on September 15, 1640, approved the institution of a school in principle.[7] That year they moved to a permanent building at Calverton Manor on in theWicomico River. This early establishment was burnt in 1645 as part of theEnglish Civil War, and the remaining Jesuits were brought to trial bythe Crown. The new Protestant administration had their school outlawed, though it was functioning by 1648, when Thomas Copley managed to return there.[6]
Newtown Manor, also known as "Bretton's Neck", near modern-dayLeonardtown, Maryland, become available to the Jesuits in 1677. This house served as the Jesuit schoolhouse until 1704 when its existence was alerted to the colonial authorities. The school afterward conducted itself periodically and in secrecy at the new Jesuit colony ofBohemia Manor.Bishop John Carroll attended this school from 1745 until 1748.[8] Carroll then left for studies in Europe. He joined the Jesuits in 1753, and was ordained in 1769, but in 1774Pope Clement XIV ordered the suppression of the Jesuit order, forcing Carroll to return to Maryland.[9] This put Carroll in the right place at the right time, when theAmerican Revolution pushed out the British administration, opening up new possibilities for scholastic expansion.[citation needed]
After returning in 1774 to live on theRock Creek in Maryland, Carroll establishedSaint John the Evangelist Church, inSilver Spring, Maryland. In 1776, his cousin,Charles Carroll, a signer of theDeclaration of Independence, invited John to join him,Samuel Chase, andBenjamin Franklin in traveling toQuebec and attempt to persuade theFrench Canadian population to join the revolution. The mission was unsuccessful, but John Carroll's association with Benjamin Franklin proved useful. In 1784, Franklin, asambassador to France, recommended Carroll to the papalnuncio inParis as the head of the Catholic Church in America, and on June 9, 1784, Carroll was anointedSuperior 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 firstBishop of Baltimore.[10]
Beginning in 1783, Carroll convened meetings of area clergy, mostly ex-Jesuits, atSacred Heart Church atWhite Marsh Manor, outsideAnnapolis, Maryland. This body, known as the General Chapters, resolved on November 13, 1786, that "a school be erected for the education of youth" and that the location for the school would be inGeorgetown.[11][12] The site was influenced by Carroll's experience with Jesuit colleges in Europe, which were located in urban centers.[13] Port towns were used by Jesuits because of their missionary focus. By March 1787, they formed a fund raising committee, and Carroll solicited formal proposals for an "academy, at George-town, Patowmack-River, Maryland."[14] TheDistrict of Columbia's borders wouldn't be defined until the passage and implementation of theResidence Act in 1790.[15]
On April 24, 1787, Georgetown landowner John Threlkeld donated a plot of land to Carroll, which was ultimately where he foundedHoly Trinity Church.[16] In April 1788, construction began at a larger neighboring plot on Georgetown's first building, later called "Old South", 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."[17] On January 23, 1789, John Carroll,Robert Molyneux andJohn Ashton completed the purchase from Threlkeld and William Deakins, Jr. for "seventy five pounds current money" of the acre and a half on which construction had already started.[14] This land became the core of Georgetown's campus. As a result, the university celebrates this date as its founding.[18]
Carroll had difficulty filling the position ofpresident of the Academy, with many candidates declining the job beforeRobert 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. Jean-Edouard de Mondésir became the first teacher in late October 1791, and the first student,William Gaston, was enrolled on November 22, 1791.[19] Classes commenced on January 2, 1792, with around 69 students attending in its first year.[20] 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.[21] Upon the building's completion under President Rev.William Matthews,George Washington visited and spoke from the porch, a position since reserved forU.S. Presidents.
In its early years, Georgetown suffered from considerable financial strain, relying on private sources of funding and the limited profits from local plantations had been donated to the Jesuits by wealthy landowners.[22] Some of these included enslaved African-American workers.[23] By September 1792, tuition had to be increased for the first time.[14]
In 1796,Louis William Valentine DuBourg arrived and became president. DuBourg brought with him a collection of books from his own collection and others fromSt. Mary's Seminary, the BaltimoreSociety of Saint-Sulpice, and these books formed the nucleus of Georgetown's library.[24] On January 1, 1798, DuBourg released the first prospectus to advertise the college abroad, but also drove the school into debt by hiring numerous new faculty, including fencing teachers, and by buying silver and a school piano.[25] The first board of directors organized in 1797, and quickly became unhappy about DuBourg's spending and preference for French faculty, particularly during theQuasi-War. The board forced him to resign in December 1798.[26]
Beginning in 1798,Leonard Neale and his brotherFrancis oversaw the growth of the university as presidents for a combined eleven years. At Carroll's request, Neale was also appointedcoadjutor bishop byPope Pius VI in 1800. In 1799 Neale invited three sisters of theOrder of the Visitation of Holy Mary to open a monastery at Georgetown. On June 24, 1799, the youngGeorgetown Visitation Monastery under MotherTeresa Lalor began a Saturday school for young women.[27] This developed into an academy, nowGeorgetown Visitation Preparatory School, in 1802. Leonard Neale served as president of Georgetown until 1806, when he was succeeded byRobert Molyneux, who died in 1808. Leonard Neale's brother, Francis Neale, became president of Georgetown College in 1809.[28]
When thesuppression of the Society of Jesus in Maryland ended in 1805, several former Jesuits rejoined, including Leonard Neale. Carroll commenced a series of agreements to ensure Jesuit involvement in the school. Carroll, however, never rejoined the society. In 1806 the school began anovitiate for Jesuit recruits moving fromRussia, which had harbored the society during the suppression.[29]
Carroll did not seek civil recognition for Georgetown after the suppression of the international society ended in 1814. Instead of a state charter, he went to the federal government, thendirectly in charge of the District of Columbia. William Gaston, then aCongressman, sponsored the legislation for acongressional charter, which passed theThirteenth Congress. Georgetown received the first federaluniversity charter on March 1, 1815, signed into law by PresidentJames Madison.[30] This allowed Georgetown to grant academic degrees, and the college's first two recipients, a pair of brothers fromNew York City named Charles and George Dinnies, were awarded the degree ofBachelor of Arts in 1817.[30] Graduate degrees were first awarded in 1821,[14] and other Jesuit schools conferred degrees under Georgetown's charter for many years afterward.[31] In 1833, theHoly See empowered Georgetown to confer degrees inphilosophy andtheology.[32]
Founder John Carroll died December 3, 1815, at age 80, and in his will he left Georgetown $400.00, which marked the beginning of Georgetown's endowment.[24] In 1830, construction of an infirmary in the new Gervase Building brought the first hospital beds to Georgetown.
In 1838, the Maryland Jesuitssold 272 slaves from a Jesuit-owned tobacco plantation in Maryland to a plantation inMaringouin, Louisiana; a small portion of the funds from that sale were used to repay debts from recent college expansion.[23][33] Upon completion of the sale, the Maryland Jesuits ended their time as slaveholders.[34] One of the organizers, a former president of the university,Thomas Mulledy was later disciplined in Rome by the Society of Jesus for ignoring their order to keep families of slaves intact in any sale.[35] The slaves were shipped to the Deep South in thedomestic slave trade, sold primarily to two sugar cane plantations.[36] Some of the money was used to found two Catholic high schools inNew York City andPhiladelphia, as the Jesuits believed there was a demand for urban ministry to serve the increasing number of immigrants from Europe, includingCatholics from Ireland.[37]
On June 10, 1844, the growing school was reincorporated by Congress under the nameThe 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.[32] In 1849, four Catholic doctors frustrated with what they felt were discriminatory practices at neighboringColumbian College petitioned Georgetown President James Ryder to found a medical program.[38] A building for this purpose was purchased at 12th and F Streets, and theSchool of Medicine was founded in 1850, holding its first classes the following year.[39]
From its beginning, Georgetown 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 theCaribbean. By 1830,Jewish students were known to be attending. European immigrants andNapoleonic War refugees also made up significant parts of the early student body.[9] School rules were harshly enforced. Leonard Neale, a strict moralist, regulated students' movements such that founder John Carrol accused him of running Georgetown "on the principles of a convent."[25] There were three student organized rebellions against the Georgetown administration in theantebellum 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.[40]
The first student society, theSodality of Our Lady, was founded in 1810 as a religious devotional group.[41] A strict revision of school rules in 1829 forbade personal conversations or particular associations.[25] Despite this thePhilodemic Society was founded in 1830 as the school's debating and literary 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 short lived Philisorian Society and the Philonomosian Society, which lasted from 1839 until 1935.[24][42] The College Cadets were officially organized in 1836, becoming the oldest military unit native to the District of Columbia.[43] The Dramatic Association of Georgetown College, renamed theMask and Bauble Dramatic Society afterWorld War I, was founded in 1852, and is itself the oldest surviving student dramatic society in America.[44][45] The firstChristmas tree was introduced to campus in December 1857.[46]
The Civil War was an important and tragic time for the university. Beginning on December 11, 1859, thePhilodemic 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.[47] 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 theConfederate Army and 216 with theUnion Army; between them 106 died in the war. Enrollment dropped from 313 students in 1859 to only 17 late in 1861.[9] By 1862, Georgetown only had 120 total students, about ten percent of what it was just a few years earlier.[48] 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 Union commandeered University buildings, and by the time of PresidentAbraham Lincoln's May 1861 visit to campus, 1,400 Union Army troops were stationed in temporary quarters there.[49] Of these 1,300 were from the69th Infantry Regiment, which established itself in Maguire Hall from May 4, 1861, to June when the unit was replaced by the79th New York Volunteer Infantry. The occupation ended in July when the unit left to fight in theFirst Battle of Bull Run, but the university remained home to soldiers as an infirmary for the remainder of the war.[47]
Georgetown would later be connected to theassassination of Abraham Lincoln. Several ofJohn Wilkes Booth's conspirators had associations to Georgetown:David Herold, who accompanied Booth in his escape, attended the school between 1855 and 1858 and received a certificate in pharmacology in 1860, whileSamuel Arnold, who conspired with Booth to kidnap Lincoln, attended in the mid-1840s, and Dr.Samuel Mudd, who set Booth's broken ankle following the assassination, studied medicine between 1851 and 1854.[50]Charles H. Liebermann, one of the founders of themedical school, was among the doctors who treated Lincoln the night he died.[51]
The years after the war drastically changed Georgetown College, making it both more northern and more Catholic.[9] Increasingly larger percentages of the student body came from northern cities, and were Catholic immigrants or their descendants. Before the war, the student body had been primarily Southern and Protestant.[14] This dynamic is expressed in Georgetown's official school colors. In 1876, Georgetown College Boat Club, the school's rowing team, adopted colors symbolizing changed times: blue, from theuniform of the Union Army, and gray, from theuniforms of the Confederate States military forces, as their team colors in order to signify the peaceful unity between students from the North and those from the South. Students atGeorgetown Visitation wove the first blue and gray uniforms for the team.[52] Georgetown's mottoUtraque Unum, "both into one", though used before the war, helped capture the postwar unity spirit.[53]
In 1874,Patrick Francis Healy became president of Georgetown University. He is now known as the first African-American president of a predominantly white university, but at the time he was generally taken to be Irish American (his father was from Ireland and he had been educated in largely white institutions, includingBoston College and in France).[54] Healy's influence on Georgetown was so far-reaching that he is often referred to as the school's "second founder". He modernized the curriculum by requiring courses in the sciences, particularly chemistry and physics. Healy and his successors sought to bind the professional schools into a university, and concentrate onhigher education.[9] The most visible result of Healy's presidency was the construction of a large building begun in 1877 and first used in 1881, later namedHealy Hall in his honor.
Aschool of law was approved by the board of directors in March 1870, and graduated its first students in 1872.[55] In 1884 the "Law Department" moved to 6th and F Streets, N.W., not far from the Medical School, and then again in 1891 to 506 E Street, N.W.[56] In 1870, Georgetown raised the raise the minimum age of enrollment atGeorgetown Preparatory School from eight to twelve. This was raised again in 1894 to thirteen. As part of the focus on higher education, Georgetown Preparatory School relocated from campus in 1919 to nearbyNorth Bethesda, Maryland. It fully separated from the university in 1927.[57]Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School has remained attached to the university campus, and while independently run, the two occasionally share facilities.
Numerous new schools were founded during the twentieth century. TheSchool of Foreign Service (SFS) was founded in 1919 byEdmund A. Walsh to prepare students for leadership in foreign commerce and diplomacy.[9] Its creation was inspired by the Frenchgrande écoleSciences Po.[58] Following World War I, the U.S. Army created theReserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and the Georgetown Corps of Cadets was reorganized into the Hoya Battalion.[43] The Institute of Languages and Linguistics (ILL - later renamed School of Languages and Linguistics - SLL) was organized in 1949[59] and the School of Business was created out of the SFS in 1957.[citation needed] New developments also came toSchool of Medicine. In 1898,Georgetown University Hospital was first established on campus. Georgetown obtained the Washington Dental College in 1901, and integrated it with the medical school.[9] In 1903, Georgetown University began an undergraduate medical program with theSchool of Nursing. A new Medical-Dental Building on Reservoir Road was completed in 1930 and classes then moved to the main campus. In 1951 theSchool of Dentistry separated from the School of Medicine as an independent unit of Georgetown University.[60]
On October 4, 1966, Congress passed a bill that recognized the school's name as "Georgetown University" for the first time.[14] The 1844 bill in effect until then had referred only to "Georgetown College", which at that point was known as theCollege of Arts and Sciences and was just one branch of the university. In 1970Lauinger Library was also completed, bringing space for a rapidly growing library collection.[24] In 1971, following the completion of the Bernard P. McDonough Hall, the law school moved to its present location at 1st and F Streets at 600 New Jersey Avenue.
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The 1950s and 60s saw major changes in administration as well as in the student body.[61] Female students have been admitted to the School of Medicine since 1880, to the School of Nursing since its founding, to theGraduate School since 1943,[62] and to the School of Foreign Service since 1944.[63] While most of the university was made available to women on a limited basis by 1952, it wasn't until the College of Arts and Sciences welcomed its first female students in the 1969–1970academic year that Georgetown became fullycoeducational.[64][65]
PresidentLawrence C. Gorman phased outracial segregation, with Samuel Halsey Jr. becoming the first Black undergraduate in 1950.[66] The Black Student Alliance was formed in 1968, and in 1969 Georgetown named the first Black member of the board of directors sincePatrick Francis Healy.[67][68]
Freshmen hazing rituals, long tolerated by the administration, were banned in 1962 after one student brought suit against the school for injuries he sustained.[69]
Modern Georgetown is largely a product of substantial changes during the 1980s.[70] In 1982, the School of Foreign Service moved into its new home in theEdward B. Bunn S.J. Intercultural Center.[71] The1984 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament championship byGeorgetown's men's basketball team helped make Georgetown University a household name with stars such asPatrick Ewing andDikembe Mutombo under CoachJohn Thompson. Georgetown ended its bicentennial year of 1989 by electingLeo J. O'Donovan as president. He subsequently launched the Third Century Campaign to build the school's endowment.[72] In December 2003, Georgetown completed the campaign, joining twenty other universities worldwide to raise at least$1 billion in a single fund drive. The campaign supported financial aid, academic chair endowment, and new capital projects.[73]
In 1987, the university decided to close the School of Dentistry following the class of 1990 for financial reasons, as the number of dental students dropped nationwide.[74] Supplies and equipment from the school were sent toPontifical Xavierian University inBogotá, Colombia.[75] In 1994, the School of Languages and Linguistics was folded intothe college, and is now the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics. On October 7, 1998, the School of Business was renamed theMcDonough School of Business in honor of alumnus Robert Emmett McDonough and in 2009, it moved into the newly constructed Rafik B. Hariri Building.[76] In 1999 the School of Nursing added three other health related majors and appended its name to become theSchool of Nursing and Health Studies.[77]
John J. DeGioia, Georgetown's first lay president, led the school from 2001 to 2024. DeGioia continued its financial modernization and sought to "expand opportunities for intercultural and interreligious dialogue."[78] In October 2002, Georgetown University began studying the feasibility of opening a campus of theEdmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service inQatar, when the non-profitQatar Foundation first proposed the idea. TheSchool of Foreign Service in Qatar opened in 2005 along with four other U.S. universities in theEducation City development. That same year, Georgetown began hosting a two-week workshop atFudan University's School of International Relations and Public Affairs inShanghai, China. This later developed into a more formal connection when Georgetown opened a liaison office at Fudan on January 12, 2008, to further collaboration.[79]
DeGioia also founded the annual Building Bridges Seminar in 2001, which brings global religious leaders together, and is part Georgetown's effort to promote religious pluralism.[80] In 1974,Woodstock College was refounded as theWoodstock Theological Center on Georgetown's campus. TheCenter for Contemporary Arab Studies was opened on September 3, 1975, with grants fromOman, theUnited Arab Emirates,Egypt, andMobil Oil.[81] In 1993 the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding was opened and after a $20 million grant fromSaudi PrinceAl-Waleed bin Talal in 2005, the center was renamed the "Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding".[82] TheBerkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs was begun as an initiative in 2004, and after a grant from William R. Berkley, was launched as an independent organization in 2006.[80] Additionally, TheCenter for International and Regional Studies opened in 2005 at the new Qatar campus.[83]
Georgetown, as a major world university, has been featured in many media over the years. The most prominent example is the 1971horror novel,The Exorcist, written byWilliam Peter Blatty, who received an English degree from Georgetown in 1950. The novel is loosely based on a series of 1949 exorcisms conducted on a fourteen-year-old boy atGeorgetown University Hospital, nearbyMaryland, and inSt. Louis, Missouri. In 1973, Blatty's bestselling novel was made into a film, also titledThe Exorcist. Like the novel, the film was set at Georgetown and filmed on campus during the fall semester in 1972.[84] The climactic scene uses a steep staircase between Prospect Street and Canal Road, previously know popularly as the "Hitchcock Steps" for their spooky appeal. However, since the film's release they have been called the "Exorcist steps".[85]
The 1985 "Brat Pack" filmSt. Elmo's Fire also 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 in a historic university owned house.[86] Georgetown denied the producers the rights to film on campus, so parts of the film were shot at the nearbyUniversity of Maryland, College Park.[87] Additionally, Georgetown University has been a destination for characters in films such asAbove the Rim,Save the Last Dance,Election, andThe Girl Next Door, as well as television shows such asThe Sopranos andThe West Wing, which also filmed scenes on campus.[88] The filmMemento was written byJonathan Nolan, a Georgetown alumnus, and the main character's nemesis, John G., is said to be named after John Glavin, a full professor of Victorian literature and screenwriting in Georgetown's Department of English.[89][90]
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