BARNARD COLLEGE.
So manifest became the public demand for collegiate and post collegiate instruction,—from graduates of the city Normal School (which had 1600 pupils), from the pupils of the best class of private schools, where, sometimes, not less than one fourth were preparing for admission to some college,[[8]] and from graduates of other colleges,—that a movement was made, in which the efforts of leading men and women in New York City were conspicuous both for their unflagging zeal and for their judicious methods, to secure necessary funds to found and, at the outset, to maintain a college for women whose professors and instructors should be those of Columbia, and upon whose graduates Columbia College should confer the same degrees as upon her own. The woman who first approached the Trustees of Columbia College with a plan to found an affiliated college for women was Mrs. Annie Nathan Meyer, who had been one of the first young women to take advantage of the course of examinations offered by Columbia College. After the appeal for an affiliated college was made it was discovered that had such a plan, supported by the proper persons, and bearing likelihood of success, been brought before the Board, it would have met with approval some years before. The former petitions had, however, asked for co-education, and at first there was considerable opposition to the “annex movement,” as it was called, on the part of those whose battle-cry might have been almost said to have been “Co-education or no education.”
But the wiser policy prevailed, and it was acknowledged by the majority that “those co-educationalists who ignore the annex project are butting their heads against a stone wall when a nicely swarded path lies before them.”[[9]] Barnard College received official sanction from the Trustees of Columbia College, March, 1889, was chartered by the Regents of New York State, July, 1889, and formally opened October, 1889. Barnard College was appropriately named in grateful tribute to the late President Barnard of Columbia College.
The great void that it was to fill appeared in many ways,—among others in the fact that the botanical and chemical laboratories which it established were the only ones in the city open to women.
The trustees of Barnard, one half of whom are women, hope to find much of its usefulness in the encouragement and provision for graduate work which it will offer to the hundreds of women who are gathered in New York, in the pursuance of some profession.