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Syracuse University, commonly referred to as Syracuse, 'Cuse, or SU, is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York. The institution's roots can be traced to the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary (later becoming Genesee College), founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in Lima, New York, in 1831. Following several years of debate over relocating the college to Syracuse, the university was established in 1870, independent of the college. Since 1920, the university has identified itself as nonsectarian, although it maintains a relationship with The United Methodist Church.
The campus is located in the University Hill neighborhood of Syracuse, east and southeast of downtown, on one of the larger hills. Its large campus features an eclectic mix of buildings, ranging from nineteenth-century Romanesque Revival structures to contemporary buildings. SU is organized into 13 schools and colleges, with nationally recognized programs in information studies and library science, architecture, communications, business administration, sport management, public administration, engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences.
Syracuse University athletic teams, known as the Orange, participate in 20 intercollegiate sports. SU is a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference for all NCAA Division I athletics, except for women's ice hockey, and the rowing team. SU is also a member of the Eastern College Athletic Conference.
The Genesee Wesleyan Seminary was founded in 1831 by the Genesee Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Lima, New York, south of Rochester. In 1850, it was resolved to enlarge the institution from a seminary into a college, or to connect a college with the seminary, becoming Genesee College. However, the location was soon thought by many to be insufficiently central. Its difficulties were compounded by the next set of technological changes: the railroad that displaced the Erie Canal as the region's economic engine bypassed Lima completely. The trustees of the struggling college then decided to seek a locale whose economic and transportation advantages could provide a better base of support.
The college began looking for a new home at the same time that Syracuse, ninety miles to the east, was engaged in a search to bring a university to the city, having failed to convince Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White to locate Cornell University there rather than in Ithaca. Syracuse resident White pressed that the new university should locate on the hill in Syracuse (the current location of Syracuse University) due to the city's attractive transportation hub, which would ease the recruitment of faculty, students, and other persons of note. However, as a young carpenter working in Syracuse, Cornell had been twice robbed of his wages, and thereafter considered Syracuse a Sodom and Gomorrah insisting that the university be located in Ithaca on his large farm on East Hill, overlooking the town and Cayuga Lake.
Meanwhile, there were several years of dispute between the Methodist ministers, Lima, and contending cities across the state, over proposals to move Genesee College to Syracuse. At the time, the ministers wanted a share of the funds from the Morrill Land Grant Act for Genesee College. Eventually, they agreed to a quid pro quo donation of $25,000 from Senator Cornell in exchange for their (Methodist) support for his bill. Cornell insisted the bargain be written into the bill and Cornell became New York State's Land Grant University in 1865. In 1869, Genesee College obtained New York State approval to move to Syracuse, but Lima got a court injunction to block the move, and Genesee stayed in Lima until it was dissolved in 1875. By that time, however, the court injunction already had been made moot by the founding of a new university on March 24, 1870. On that date the State of New York had granted the new Syracuse University its own charter, independent of that of Genesee College. The City of Syracuse had offered $100,000 to establish the school.[24] Bishop Jesse Truesdell Peck had donated $25,000 to the proposed school and was elected the first president of the Board of Trustees.
Rev. Daniel Steele, a former Genesee College president, served as the first administrative leader of Syracuse until its Chancellor was appointed. The university opened in September 1871 in rented space downtown. George F. Comstock, a member of the new University's Board of Trustees, had offered the school 50 acres of farmland on a hillside to the southeast of the city center. Comstock intended Syracuse University and the hill to develop as an integrated whole; a contemporary account described the latter as "a beautiful town ... springing up on the hillside and a community of refined and cultivated membership ... established near the spot which will soon be the center of a great and beneficent educational institution."
First Annual Class of Syracuse University.
Stephen Crane (front row, left) sits with baseball teammates on the steps of the Hall of Languages, Syracuse University, 1891. (Photo courtesy of the SU Special Collections Research Center) The university was founded as coeducational, and President Peck stated at the opening ceremonies, "The conditions of admission shall be equal to all persons... there shall be no invidious discrimination here against woman.... brains and heart shall have a fair chance... " Syracuse implemented this policy with a high proportion of women students. In the College of Liberal Arts, the ratio between male and female students during the 19th century was approximately even. The College of Fine Arts was predominantly female, and a low ratio of women enrolled in the College of Medicine and the College of Law. Men and women were taught together in the same courses, and many extra-curricular activities were coeducational as well. Syracuse also developed "women-only" organizations and clubs.
Coeducation at Syracuse traced its roots to the early days of Genesee College where educators and students like Frances Willard and Belva Lockwood were heavily influenced by the Women's movement in nearby Seneca Falls, NY. However, the progressive "co-ed" policies practiced at Genesee would soon find controversy at the new university in Syracuse. Colleges and universities admitted few women students in the 1870s. Administrators and faculty argued women had inferior minds and could not master mathematics and the classics. Dr. Erastus Otis Haven, Syracuse University chancellor and former president of the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, maintained that women should receive the advantages of higher education. He enrolled his daughter, Frances, at Syracuse where she joined the other newly admitted female students in founding the Gamma Phi Beta sorority. The inclusion of women in the early days of the university led to the proliferation of various women's clubs and societies. In fact, it was a Syracuse professor who coined the term "sorority" specifically for Gamma Phi Beta.
In the late 1880s the University engaged in a rapid building spree. Holden Observatory (1887) was followed by two Romanesque Revival buildings – von Ranke Library (1889), now Tolley Administration Building, and Crouse College (1889). Together with the Hall of Languages, these first buildings formed the basis for the "Old Row," a grouping which, along with its companion Lawn, established one of Syracuse's most enduring images. The emphatically linear organization of these buildings along the brow of the hill follows a tradition of American campus planning which dates to the construction of the "Yale Row" in the 1790s. At Syracuse, the Old Row continued to provide the framework for growth well into the twentieth century.
From its founding until through early 1920s, the University grew rapidly. It offered programs in the physical sciences and modern languages, and in 1873, Syracuse added one of the first architecture programs in the U.S. In 1874, Syracuse created the nation's first bachelor of fine arts degree, and in 1876, the school offered its first post-graduate courses in the College of Arts and Sciences.[29] SU created its first doctoral program in 1911. SU's school of journalism, now the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, was established at Syracuse in 1934.
The growth of Syracuse University from a small liberal arts college into a major comprehensive university were due to the efforts of two men, Chancellor James Day and John Archbold. James Roscoe Day was serving the Calvary Church in New York City where he befriended Archbold. Together, the two dynamic figures would oversee the first of two great periods of campus renewal in Syracuse's history.
John Dustin Archbold was a capitalist, philanthropist, and President of the Board of Trustees at Syracuse University. He was known as John D. Rockefeller's right-hand man and successor at the Standard Oil Company. He was a close friend of Syracuse University Chancellor James R. Day and gave almost $6 million to the University over his lifetime. Said a journalist in 1917:
Mr. Archbold's ... is the president of the board of trustees of Syracuse University, an institution which has prospered so remarkably since his connection with it that its student roll has increased from hundreds to over 4,000, including 1,500 young women, placing it in the ranks of the foremost institutions of learning in the United States.
In addition to keeping the university financially solvent during its early years, he also contributed funds for eight buildings, including the full cost of Archbold Stadium (opened 1907, demolished 1978), Sims Hall (men's dormitory, 1907), the Archbold Gymnasium (1909, nearly destroyed by fire in 1947, but still in use), and the oval athletic field.