Category: Hopkins History
When Johns Hopkins Was Ready for Some Football
September 2, 2008
When the varsity football team charges from its locker room to play its season opener on Homewood Field this Saturday, they might want to raise their helmets in salute to the Class of 1884, founders of the sport at Johns Hopkins.
Woodrow Wilson, PhD 1886, and the 1912 Democratic Convention
August 18, 2008
It was a generous gesture — the president of The Johns Hopkins University inviting a distinguished alumnus to share his home when he comes to Baltimore toward the end of June 1912 for an important meeting of political figures.
Presidential Fund Raising
July 21, 2008
Raising money for Johns Hopkins has always been high on the “to do” list for every president since the university’s first, Daniel Coit Gilman. The need to bring in financial support was especially critical in the 1935-36 academic year.
Searching for Johns Hopkins University Presidents
March 21, 2008
Searching for a new president, as the Johns Hopkins trustees are doing now, is the board’s most important task, and it never is easy. A look back over the past 60 years confirms that.
In December 1948, President Isaiah Bowman, a distinguished international geographer and adviser to U.S. presidents, retired after leading the university through the Great Depression and World War II.
Mr. Shriver’s Elocution Class
March 16, 2008
Just over 70 years ago, in January 1938, Alfred Jenkins Shriver (class of 1891) wrote to university President Isaiah Bowman with “some facts about the Elocution course” he had taken 50 years earlier.
President Gilman and the Selection of First Faculty
February 25, 2008
If Johns Hopkins’ first board of trustees had even the slightest doubt about their new president’s ability to create a university without guidelines from them or the founder, they probably heaved a collective sigh of relief in one of their earliest meetings with Daniel Coit Gilman. He knew that assembling an outstanding faculty was a first priority, and he knew how to do it.
The D.C. Days of Professor ‘Doc’ Long
January 28, 2008
In the 1950s, freshman students who gathered, sleepily, for an 8 a.m. Elements of Economics class in room 101 of Homewood’s Mergenthaler Hall would never have guessed that their professor would become a well-known U.S. congressman. They would have been astonished to know that he would be portrayed by actor Ned Beatty in the 2008 hit movie Charlie Wilson’s War.
Strange Presidential Visitors
December 17, 2007
President Milton S. Eisenhower (1956-67/1971-72) was a superb public speaker. He appeared as a featured guest at many gatherings around the country. That provided some positive attention for Johns Hopkins and for him, but it had a downside. Often, shortly after the media covered one of his talks, strange people would appear at his office asking to see him.
The WPA
December 3, 2007
For many Americans in the 1930s and 1940s, mere mention of the federal Works Progress Administration conjured up cartoon images of men repairing roads or building public facilities: If 10 men were working on a project, eight of them would be depicted as resting on their shovels while two worked.
Commencement: The Way It Was
May 14, 2007
In the 1940s the university occasionally held Commencement exercises in the auditorium of the old Maryland Casualty Co. on West 40th Street, the site of today’s Rotunda.