In 1857 Rev. John McElroy, SJ, purchased land on Harrison Avenue, in Boston’s South End, with plans to establish a Catholic college on the site. In 1858, ground was broken for the construction of a church and a college building. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was constructed out of white New Hampshire granite and designed by architect Patrick C. Keely. The college building, designed by a Mr. Wissiben, was built of red brick. Adjacent land was later acquired, expanding the college’s presence in the area, and, in 1863, Boston College received its university charter. The 1870s saw an enlargement of the existing buildings and the opening of a new college hall.

As Boston College expanded, it began to outgrow its original South End campus and a new location was sought. In 1907, land was purchased on the site of Lawrence farm in the village of Chestnut Hill on the border of Boston and Newton. A competition to design the new university campus was won by the firm Maginnis and Walsh who designed a campus master plan in the English Collegiate Gothic style. The first building to be erected was the centerpiece of the design: the Recitation, or Tower, building, now known as Gasson Hall. Named after Rev. Thomas Ignatius Gasson, SJ, President of Boston College between 1907 and 1914, Gasson Hall contains an ornate rotunda featuring a white marble statue of the Archangel Michael overcoming Lucifer. The building’s tower houses four bells named after prominent Jesuits.

The second building to be completed on the Chestnut Hill campus was St Mary’s Hall. Between 1914 and 1917, the Jesuit faculty of Boston College had to commute from the original South End campus, which contained Jesuit lodgings, to the Chestnut Hill campus to teach. St Mary’s Hall was built to give the Jesuits residence facilities at the new campus and included living and dining arrangements and a chapel.

The construction of St Mary’s was followed by Devlin Hall and the Bapst Library in the 1920s. Devlin Hall was constructed between 1921 and 1924 to house the expanding science departments. Later on, as the science departments expanded even further, the Physics and Biology departments moved into Higgins Hall, constructed for that purpose in 1965. Later still, in 1991, the Chemistry Department moved to the state-of-the-art Merkert Center on Beacon Street. The Bapst Library still inhabits its original Maginnis and Walsh designed building on Middle Campus. After extensive renovation in the 1980s, it now shares the building with the Burns Library, a research and archival facility.

The campus continued to grow throughout the twentieth century, both through new construction and through the acquisition of adjacent property. One such addition was O’Connell House, built at the turn of the twentieth century on the estate of the former drugstore baron Louis K. Liggett. The building and its surrounding land were later donated to Cardinal O’Connell, who used the house as a residence. After his death, the Church donated O’Connell House to Boston College, where it has been used as, variously, a Jesuit residence, a football dorm, the base for the nascent School of Management, and, since 1972, as the home of the student union.

Other important additions to the Chestnut Hill campus include O’Neill Library, designed by Walter Gropius’s firm, the Architects Collaborative, and opened in 1981; and the Robsham Theater Arts Center, also opened in 1981, which contains a main auditorium that seats 600, as well as smaller theaters and classroom space. The early twenty-first century has seen further large-scale construction in the form of Stokes Hall, an 183,000 square foot building that opened in 2013 to house the humanities departments.

Boston College In-town

A Boston College downtown center was opened at 11 Beacon Street, in the center of Boston, in the late 1920s to cater to graduate and law school students. An extension school was begun, too, at the original Boston College campus in the South End, offering a four year BA degree. In 1933, the downtown center became a college of the university, and in 1935 it merged with the extension school to become Boston College In-town. The newly merged college moved to larger facilities at 126 Newbury Street in the Back Bay. In the mid-1950s, Boston College In-Town was relocated to the Chestnut Hill campus, where it became the Evening College. In 1996, it become the College of Advancing Studies, and in 2002, it was renamed the Woods College of Advancing Studies. Boston College no longer owns the 126 Newbury Street facilities.

Newton Campus

Newton College of the Sacred Heart was a women’s undergraduate college that joined with Boston College in 1974 after suffering declining applications and financial difficulties. The Newton College campus buildings were built in a Federal style and were expanded and renovated to house the Boston College Law School, which moved to the Newton Campus from Thomas More Hall in 1975. The Law Library was added in 1996. The Newton Campus also houses undergraduate dormitories for freshmen.

Brighton Campus

In 2007, Boston College completed their agreement to purchase over 60 acres of land from the Boston Archdiocese. The grounds include a number of buildings, many of which are now in use by University administrative departments and by the School of Theology and Ministry. The campus includes 2101 Commonwealth Avenue, the former Archbishop’s residence, a forty room Italian Renaissance style structure now used for university functions; and the Theology and Ministry Library, a concrete, modernist structure set in a wooded section of the campus, designed by Architectural Planning Associates Architects in the mid-1960s.

Sources

“A Brief History of Boston College,” Boston College. Accessed April 3, 2020. https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/publications/factbook/pdf/03_04/2003_04_brief_history.pdf.

Donovan, Charles F., S.J., Dunigan, David R., S.J., FitzGerald, Paul A., S.J. History of Boston College: From the Beginnings to 1990. Chestnut Hill, MA: The University Press of Boston College, 1990.

Oslin, Reid, “Stories Behind the Bricks and Mortar: History Professor’s Walking Tours of Brighton Campus Prove Popular,” The Boston College Chronicle, November 1st, 2007.

Voosen, Paul, “Overview: The New Land,” Boston College Magazine, Summer 2004. Accessed June 21 2013, http://bcm.bc.edu/issues/summer_2004/ft_overview.html