OCCASIONAL PAPERS ON THE HISTORY OF BOSTON COLLEGE BOSTON COLLEGE'S MOVE TO CHESTNUT HILL Rev. Charles F. Donovan, S.J. University Historian November, 1983 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/bostoncollegesmoOOdono BOSTON COLLEGE archives Boston College’s original building on Harrison Avenue was completed in 1860. It received the first students in September 1864. Between that academic year and the close of the century was a span of thirty-five years, not a long period in the life of an institution or of a collegiate build- ing. Yet in 1900 the realty firm of Mere- dith and Grew recommended to the then president. Father W. G. Read Mullan three parcels of land, all in the Brighton- Chestnut Hill area — those now occupied by St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and Mt. Alver- nia Academy plus the University’s pre- sent central campus — as possible sites for a relocated Boston College. 1 The archives provide no antecedents to the Meredith and Grew communication. In the absence of documents giving the rea- sons that led Father Mullan and his advi- sors to explore an alternate location, we are left to speculate about the reasons. What factors in the Harrison Avenue setting made it inadequate or inappropriate for the College after only thirty-five years? The most obvious possible explanation is enrollment. The preparatory school and the College were housed in the same build- ing. Were their combined numbers out- growing available space? This does not seem to have been the case. Up to 1900 the combined enrollment never reached 500. The year the College moved to Chest- nut Hill, 1913, more than a thousand stu- dents attended Boston College High School in the former collegiate building. So it is unlikely that a preparatory-collegiate en- rollment of under 500 was overcrowding the facilities on Harrison Avenue. 2 Even if in 1900 the Jesuit Fathers were optimistic about future growth in num- bers, they would have had to ljave second thoughts on that score as the first decade of the new century unfolded. The prepa- ratory division experienced a 14% enroll- ment decline between 1900 and 1904, from 277 to 238. More ominous was the dip in the college enrollment, from 206 in 1900 to 1 13 in 1904, a 47% drop. Today an en- rollment loss of such proportions would be reason for drastic cutbacks or even the closing of a college. But it doesn’t seem to have fazed Boston College’s administra- tion, since Father Gasson purchased the Chestnut Hill property in 1907. Boston College was not unique in the temporary decline in students in the early years of the present century. A table in George Pierson’s history of Yale compar- ing freshman enrollments at Harvard, Yale and Princeton from 1859 to 1937 shows that Harvard and Princeton experi- enced a drop between 1900 and 1910, while Yale hit a plateau. 3 Samuel Eliot Morison noted this phenomenon in his history of Harvard. Writing of President Eliot’s era, he commented: “Enrollment continued to swell until about 1903, when the progressive advance in numbers stopped, with the immediate result of a deficit.” 4 [ 2 ] If a crush of students was not a reason for contemplating a new site for the col- lege, what about the dimensions of the campus? We know that Father McElroy had tried to purchase a lot containing 115.000 square feet on Harrison Avenue, an entire block, but an outcry about the “audacious attempt on the part of eccle- siastical authorities to acquire undue and colossal power” 5 led McElroy to make a more modest purchase. The eventual Harri- son Avenue site, for the spacious Church of the Immaculate Conception, the faculty residence, and the college building, was 65.000 square feet. The land did not have adequate recreational space, which led Father Timothy Brosnahan, president in the 1890s, to purchase a large but rough tract of land of over 400,000 square feet about a mile from the College on Massa- chusetts Avenue in Dorchester. The Col- lege did not have funds for any elaborate development of this property for athletic or recreational purposes. Parts of it were used as playing fields for a decade. There is no evidence that College authorities ever contemplated erecting buildings at that location. The land was sold during the construction of Gasson Hall to help defray the building costs. The most illuminating insight as to the attitude of some Jesuits to the Harrison Avenue location is contained in a letter written by Father Gasson in 1928 to Father James Dolan, then president. Father Gasson was giving his recollections con- cerning a large bequest to the College from a member of a prominent Boston family, a convert who became a Jesuit, Father Edward Holker Welch. The gift was made during Father Brosnahan’s presidency, [ 3 ] 1894-1898. In the letter Father Gasson remarked: “Father Welch was anxious for Boston College to forge ahead and to emerge from the circumscribed limits of the Harrison Avenue property.” 6 Welch, a Harvard graduate, no doubt had more in mind than playing fields in considering the South End property circumscribed. Gasson’s ambitious plans for the Chestnut Hill campus only a dozen years later show that people at Boston College were think- ing and talking of expanded facilities and property, even though there are no re- cords of such discussions. Another matter that must have entered into the deliberations of the faculty and administration as the nineteenth century drew to a close was the juxtaposition of the preparatory school and the college on the same property and in the same build- ing. The Jesuits would have been aware of an article published in 1898 in the Wood- stock Letters , a journal by, for, and about American Jesuits, that criticized the com- mingling of high school and college stu- dents. The Jesuit author wrote: “Some of our colleges, which twenty years ago stood the proud rivals of local colleges and universities, have lost their old pres- tige on account of the predominance of small boys. Larger boys have told us re- peatedly that they would be only too will- ing to attend our classes were it not that they were ashamed to be seen in the com- pany of so many 'kids'.” 7 In 1900 the president of Georgetown urged the moving of the Jesuit Theologate from Woodstock, Maryland, a rural setting, to Georgetown, adding that should this happen the preparatory division would be abolished. The historian of Georgetown [ 4 ] comments on this proposal: “This was an interesting suggestion. Many had long felt the presence of the ‘small boys’ on a cam- pus destined for mature university stu- dents was a drag on Georgetown’s pro- gress. ” x A similar observation is made by the historian of a west coast Jesuit col- lege, Santa Clara, citing an early twentieth century document to the effect that the faculty “resented the intolerable anomaly of a University frequented by boys in Knickerbockers. ” 4) It is significant that the Boston Pilot of September 10, 1898 in an article on de- velopments at Boston College reported: “The preparatory school of the college, which from its inception enjoyed an un- restrained commingling with the colle- giate department, is now confined ex- clusively to the southern wing of the col- lege, and the college men are located in the northern wing.” The following year the college catalogue, which for thirty years had included the names of the teachers and students of the preparatory division along with their curricula, regula- tions, and prizes, limited itself to data re- garding the four college classes. These steps toward the separation of the col- lege from the preparatory division un- doubtedly presaged the geographical separation that was to follow. In 1907 Father Thomas Gasson, who had been a professor of philosophy at Boston College for the preceding twelve years, became president and at once pressed with zeal for a new site and a new vision of academic prestige for the College. The Chestnut Hill property was purchased that year. Gasson Hall was under construc- tion from 1909 to 1913 and the College moved to its new home in September 1913. [ 5 ] The preparatory division and the College both seem to have prospered by the separa- tion. The enrollment of Boston College High School, which had slipped to 238 in 1904 rose to 550 the year of the purchase of the Chestnut Hill property for the Col- lege and to double that number the year after the College moved from the South End. To be sure high school attendance was on the rise nationally at that time but state and city records show that between 1900 and 1914 attendance at public high schools in Massachusetts and in the City of Boston just about doubled, 10 whereas Boston College High School’s 1914 stu- dent body was 5!4 times that of 1900. At the same time the collegiate enroll- ment began to swing back. By 1910 it was almost at the 200 mark it had reached in 1900. The first Freshman class of over 100 entered in 1911. The year of the move to Chestnut Hill the student body was 387; three years later it was 578; in 1919 it rose to 697; it reached 900 in 1923; and finally in 1925 it topped a thousand. The enrollment of 1925 was 5 l A times that of 1910. It is ironic that when Father McElroy failed to get clearance to start the College in the North End and purchased the Har- rison Avenue property, some of the clergy and laity were upset. 11 They wanted Bos- ton College in the North End where they lived rather than in the South End two and a quarter miles away. Yet a few decades later when the decision was made to move the College out of the City of Boston there is no recorded murmur of protest. Un- doubtedly the mid-century concentration of the Irish population in the North End and the core city was a factor in the initial [ 6 ] negative reaction to the South End set- ting, but transportation may also have been a consideration. The South End was a new development in the 1860s and trans- portation was just getting organized, al- though by the mid-80s Dexter Smith’s Cyclopedia of Boston and Vicinity noted after the entry on Boston College: “Take Norfolk House horse-cars.” 12 It was a different story with the Chestnut Hill location. The extension of the streetcar line to Lake Street in the late ’nineties made the campus readily accessible to a commuting student body. One who made the daily trek from South Boston to Chest- nut H ill during the College’s first four years on the Heights, Father Maurice Dullea of the Boston College Jesuit Community, gives assurance that for him and the other students the longer ride to Newton in com- parison to what it would have been to Harrison Avenue was not seen as a burden. The cost was the same, a nickel, and spirits were lifted by what was at the end of the line — a rural setting, a spacious campus, and the imposing tower of Gas- son looking down on the then twin reser- voirs. Naturally in the half century between 1864 and 1914 the Catholic population began moving out of th^e crowded inner city as transportation extended and new neighborhoods developed. Such movement was reflected in the Boston College stu- dent body. For instance in 1900 17% of the students lived in the inner city — Bos- ton proper. North End, West End, South End. By 1905 this dropped to 7% and by 1915, when the College was in Newton, to 3%. In 1900 51% of the students came from some part of Boston, 49% from out- [ 7 ] side of Boston. By 1915 the balance was reversed, with 44% from Boston and 56% from outside of Boston. One might think that this shift was due to the move of the College out of Boston, but that does not seem to be the case, since the shift to a majority of non-Boston students took place while the College was still in the South End. For instance in 1905 57% of the students commuting to Harrison Avenue were non-Bostonians. That the move to Chestnut Hill had very little impact on the geographical origin of Boston College students may be seen by comparing percentages of students coming from selected areas in 1900 and 1915. Percentages afford a readier com- parison because actual numbers of stu- dents were rising during this period. Percentages of Boston College Students Coming from Selected areas in 1900 and 1915 South Boston Roxbury Dorchester Brighton-Allston Cambridge Somerville Newton Lawrence Lowell 1900 3 9 4 1 4 2 4 3 1915 4 9 1 1 4 1 1 4 4 2 3 Despite the more complicated trans- portation from South Boston, Dorchester, Cambridge, Somerville, and Lowell to Newton as compared to the South End, the percentages of students from those districts increased. Roxbury, the imme- diate neighbor of the South End, sent the same proportion of students to Chestnut Hill as it had to Harrison Avenue. The in- crease of students from the Brighton- Allston area may have been due rather to increase of population there, as in Dor- chester, than to proximity, since the pro- portion of students from Newton did not rise when the College moved to Newton. As we look back from the vantage point of nearly three quarters of a century to Father Gasson’s unhesitating decision to acquire property in Chestnut Hill and locate there an imposing college campus, we applaud his daring and imagination. It would seem that his natural clientele of the time, the Catholic families of the Greater Boston area, had the same reac- tion, because when the College was re- located, their sons found their way to Gasson’s tower on the hill in increasing numbers. [ 9 ] The original arrangement of the build- ings at the old Boston College. Photo- graphed sometime before 1875 by Oliver Wendell Holmes. [ 10 ] NOTES 'David R. Dunigan, S.J., A History of Boston College (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1947), p. 183. Enrollment and other student data are taken from the annual Boston College catalogues. Enrollment data for Boston College High School was supplied by the administrative office of the High School. 3 George Wilson Pierson, Yale College: An Educational History , 1871-192 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), Vol. 1. p. 723. 4 Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Cen- turies of Harvard (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946), p. 365. 5 Dunigan, p. 31. 6 Copy of Father Gasson’s letter in Boston College Archives. ''Woodstock Letters, 1898, 27, No. 2, p. 183. s Joseph T. Durkin, S.J., Georgetown University: The Middle Years, 1840-1900 (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univer- sity Press, 1963), p. 187. 9 Gerald McKevitt, S.J., The University of Santa Clara (Stanford: Stanford Uni- versity Press, 1979), p. 204. ''’Massachusetts data from Annual Re- ports of the Board of Education, Public Document No. 2. Boston data from Docu- ments of the School Committee of the City of Boston, Document No. 9. "Dunigan, p. 30. l2 Dexter Smith, Cyclopedia of Boston and Vicinity (Boston: Cashin and Smith, 1886), p. 48. [ 12 ]