Homewood Campus Tour

When Johns Hopkins died on December 24, 1873, he left $7 million to be divided equally to found a University and a Hospital, both bearing his name. To the University, he also bequeathed his country estate, Clifton, in the expectation that the rolling 300- acre site would become the campus. Hopkins's will forbade the trustees to pay for buildings out of the endowment, but the income from the principal was not enough to attract quality faculty and students and create elm-shaded quadrangles as well. Thus, the trustees decided to acquire a temporary site in downtown Baltimore, near the Peabody Library, to house the University until enough capital was accumulated to construct a campus at Clifton. Toward this end, the trustees purchased a lot between North Howard Street and North Eutaw Street, improved by two residences that were converted into a single structure, known as the Administration Building; behind this the University erected another building, named Hopkins Hall. These two buildings comprised The Johns Hopkins University when formal instruction began in October 1876.

Shortly after the opening of classes, a Chemical Laboratory, sometimes known as Dalton Hall, was added west of Hopkins Hall. In 1883, the University acquired a tract of land at the corner of Eutaw and Little Ross streets (directly behind the Chemical Laboratory), on which was built the Biological Laboratory. This was followed, in 1885, by the purchase of another plot of land on the northwest corner of Monument Street and Linden Avenue, where a Physical (Physics) Laboratory was erected. Upon his death in 1889, John W. McCoy, a wealthy Baltimore merchant, left the University a bequest of $500,000. The bequest was used, in 1892- 94, for the construction of a four-story building, known as McCoy Hall, which contained a large assembly hall, examination rooms, department libraries, and seminar rooms.

Other buildings erected by Hopkins on its downtown campus were a Power House and Levering Hall. Levering Hall, built in 1889 after the noted Baltimore Prohibitionist and moral reformer Eugene Levering provided $20,000, served as a YMCA and student activities building. Levering Hall was originally constructed on the site of McCoy Hall, but when the funds were received for McCoy Hall, the trustees purchased a second, adjacent lot, at the northeast corner of Eutaw and Little Ross streets. They then had Levering Hall lifted on jacks and rotated ninety degrees, which made room for the much larger McCoy Hall and generated a great deal of local amazement in the process.

With the exceptions of the Physical Laboratory and the Power House, both of which were located north of Monument Street, all of the early buildings were bounded by Monument Street on the north, Howard Street on the east, Eutaw Street on the west, and Centre Street on the south. Bisecting the campus, east to west, was a one-block-long alley known as Little Ross Street, Running north and south between Little Ross and Monument streets was another alley, Little Garden Street.

Although Hopkins had built a gymnasium in 1883 on the corner of Little Ross and Little Garden streets, the University's urban location allowed no room for outdoor athletic activities. Consequently, practice and playing fields were laid out at Clifton. Until Homewood was acquired, Hopkins athletic teams utilized the Clifton fields, riding out to them via streetcars or horse-drawn wagons. Except for those athletic fields, the Clifton grounds were never utilized by the University.

By the early 1890s, the University began to run out of space, and President Daniel Coit Gilman (pictured at left) and the trustees were forced to consider moving to a new location. Sections of Clifton had been condemned for a reservoir and a railroad right-of-way. Then, in 1894, after a collapse in the value of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad stock that comprised a large portion of the University's endowment, the trustees were compelled to sell the rest of the estate to the city of Baltimore in order to raise operating funds.

In November 1894, Gilman asked William Keyser, a trustee and former president of the Baltimore Copper Company, for his assistance in securing another site. In 1898 Keyser's cousin, William Wyman, approached him with an offer to donate to the University 60 acres, situated west of Charles Street and south of the intersection with University Parkway (then known as Merryman's Lane). The two men, together with a group of four friends, worked in secrecy over the next three years to secure options on adjacent tracts, and in early 1901 offered 179 acres to the University, on the condition that it add one million dollars to its endowment. There was a delay as the University proved unable to raise the money, but after renewing their options, the donors offered the land again. This time the only condition was that not less than thirty acres of the property be given to the city for use as a public park. The trustees accepted the offer on February 22, 1902, and the University had a new campus, Homewood. The origins of the name "Homewood" are obscure, but the property was known by that name at least as early as the Carroll ownership (1800). [See Homewood House description.]

In August 1902, trustee R. Brent Keyser offered to pay the costs of a "general scheme determining what style of architecture should be used and what arrangement of the property can best be made looking into its gradual development... so that in years to come the groups of buildings, campus, athletic grounds, dormitories, etc., will form a symmetrical whole." After seeking advice from other colleges and universities, the Board of Trustees appointed a permanent architectural advisory committee, consisting of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Walter Cook, and J.B. Noel Wyatt. As its first act, the committee invited five architectural firms to enter a competition to create an overall campus plan for the University to follow into the indefinite future.

The plan finally selected, in November 1904, was that of the firm of Parker and Thomas. It called for a circular main drive running between 33rd and 34th streets, leading up to a roughly square quadrangle. The main academic building, containing the library and graduate seminar rooms, was to be on the north side of this quadrangle, facing south toward a second, rectangular quadrangle, which was to be bordered by buildings containing the University's scientific laboratories. The plan also called for the main axis of the campus to run approximately 30 degrees east of north, rather than on a north-south line as it currently does.

Due to a lack of space downtown, and the sale of the Clifton estate, Homewood Field and two botanical laboratories were constructed on the Homewood campus between 1907 and 1912. Because the University did not have enough money to move all operations to Homewood immediately, only these structures were built according to the original Parker and Thomas plan.

In 1910 the General Education Board, a philanthropic organization founded by John D. Rockefeller, offered to give the University $250,000 if it could raise another $750,000. Hopkins began a major campaign, the Endowment and Extension Fund, which raised a total of just over $1.2 million by 1912. Half a million dollars of this money was retained for the endowment, while the rest was placed in a building fund for the Homewood campus. At the same time, the state of Maryland agreed to pay for the construction of two buildings for the newly created School of Engineering.

With these funds now available, the University began its preparation in earnest. Parker and Thomas revised the campus plan, taking into account the comments of the faculty on the proposed arrangement. The two most significant changes were the decision to build on a line parallel with Charles Street, rather than at an angle, and to move the academic building (Gilman Hall) from the north to the west side of the main quadrangle, where it would face the University's entrance and Charles Street. Construction began on both the Mechanical and Engineering Building (Maryland Hall) and Gilman Hall in 1913, and they were completed in 1914 and 1915 respectively.

The School of Engineering moved to the new campus in the fall of 1914, but the administration and the School of Arts and Sciences remained at the Howard Street campus until the summer of 1916, when it was decided to house most of the science departments in extra space in Maryland, Gilman, and the soon-to-be-completed Latrobe Hall, rather than wait for the separate laboratories to be built. The only department that did not move at this time was chemistry, which remained at the campus until Remsen Hall was completed in 1924.

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