In 1863, a charter from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts authorized five Jesuits of Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus to incorporate as “the Trustees of the Boston College.” Their South End school became the first chartered college to operate in Boston in September 1864, when twenty-two boys – with an average age of fourteen – enrolled and classes began. Enrollment was limited to boys but open to those of any religious background. The original grounds were cramped, consisting only of a brick classroom building, a brick Jesuit residence, and the white-granite Church of the Immaculate Conception.

Boston College’s “chief aim,” an early advertisement explained, was “to educate the pupils in the principles and practice of the Catholic faith.” The curriculum was similar to what the Jesuits had used around the globe for two centuries: a seven-year program dedicated to the liberal arts. Outside the classroom, students attended Masses and confessions and formed religious sodalities. They also established debating clubs, staged theatrical productions, and organized sports teams. The confined South End campus posed challenges, especially as enrollment swelled to nearly 500 at the close of the nineteenth century when Jesuit administrators agreed to separate the high school and the college as two, distinctive four-year programs.

In 1907, a college president purchased a thirty-six-acre farm located six miles west in Newton’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood for Boston College’s new campus. The Recitation Building opened in March 1913, followed by a football field (1915), the Jesuit residence St. Mary’s Hall (1916), and the Science Building (1924). Work on the Library Building paused due to a lack of funding, only completed in 1928, and no additional construction in Chestnut Hill occurred in the following two decades. Meanwhile, Boston College reestablished a downtown presence, renting space for new professional schools of law (1929), social work (1936) and business (1938), along with its Intown College that offered continuing education to men and women.

The end of the Second World War sparked renewed activity at Boston College. Hundreds of GI-Bill-funded students helped boost total enrollment from 236 students to more than 6,000 by September 1946. Administrators established the undergraduate and coeducational schools of nursing (1947) and education (1952). It was 1970 that women could enroll in the arts and sciences program, with the business school following suit the next year. Construction on the Chestnut Hill campus also resumed after the war, with buildings added for business, arts and sciences, law, and education between 1948 and 1955. The addition of the first dormitories (1951) on an estate donated by the local cardinal began the transformation towards a predominately residential institution. An adjacent reservoir, then no longer in use, was secured and slowly filled-in to provide land needed for a new football facility (1957) and other sporting complexes as well as several dormitories, a theater, and community space. A new library was opened in 1984.

The college’s board of trustees was reconstituted in December 1972, replacing the five-member, all-Jesuit board with one of thirty-five members: thirteen Jesuits and twenty-two laymen and women. Boston College was also separately incorporated from the local Jesuit community. Two years later, the university merged with the Newton College of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic women's college, and acquired its forty-acre property, facilities, and debts. In 2004, Boston College began the process to acquire a sixty-five-acre property in Brighton, once home to the Archdiocese of Boston, to use for a theology school (2008), a museum (2016), administrative offices, and an athletic complex. In 2020, Boston College merged with Pine Manor College, incorporating its programs as Messina College, which focuses on educational opportunities for underrepresented and first-generation students.

In 2013, Boston College marked its sesquicentennial with 14,400 students enrolled in eight academic divisions, 3,600 full-time faculty and staff, some 147 buildings across 338 acres, an operating budget of $900 million, and an endowment of more than $2 billion.

Sources:

Birnbaum, Ben, and Seth Meehan. The Heights: An Illustrated History of Boston College, 1863–2013. Chestnut Hill, Mass.: Linden Lane Press, 2014.

Dunigan, David R. A History of Boston College. Milwaukee: Bruce Pub. Co., 1947.

O’Toole, James M. Ever to Excel: A History of Boston College. Chestnut Hill, Mass.: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2022.

The seeds for the development of Newton College of the Sacred Heart were planted in the fall of 1944 when Archbishop Richard Cushing approached Mother Eleanor Kenny, the superior of Newton Country Day School, with the suggestion that the Society of the Sacred Heart start a women’s college on the Schrafft Estate in Newton, Massachusetts. In September 1945, the Schrafft estate was purchased by the Society, and, a few months later, the adjoining property, then known as the Harriman Estate, was also purchased.

On March 19, 1946, Newton College of the Sacred Heart was incorporated, with a board of trustees all drawn from the Society of the Sacred Heart: Mothers Gertrude Bodkin, Eleanor Kenny, Ursula Benziger, Elizabeth Cavanagh, Alice Egan, Ellen Green and Elizabeth Sweeney. The new college’s Advisory Board included Archbishop Cushing and John F. Kennedy, who served on the board for nine years.

On September 23, 1946 the college welcomed its first class of thirty-five students, who were paying $1300 each per year for tuition, room and board. Initially, the college was affiliated with the Catholic University of America, before becoming accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in 1953.

The college prospered, and by the late 1960s enrollment had reached over 800 students. The campus, designed largely by the firm Magginis and Walsh, also grew, with 12 buildings completed between 1948 and 1969. However, the cultural climate of the late 1960s created a number of social forces that endangered the viability of small liberal arts colleges for women. Between 1960 and 1973, the number of such colleges dropped from 300 to 146. Newton College of the Sacred Heart was not immune to these forces, and in the early 1970s it struggled with rapidly declining applications and a burdensome debt load. In 1973, a drive to raise the $6 million needed to retire the college’s debt was launched, but it only managed to a reach a third of its goal. As a result, the college’s lending institutions decided that would no longer extend unsecured credit to the college. The college could only continue to operate for a further eighteen months on its own finances, and so the college’s leadership began to examine the possibilities for affiliation with another college.

Boston College, with its campus in nearby Chestnut Hill, was considered a prime candidate for such an affiliation, in part because of the strong ties between the Society of Jesus and the Society of the Sacred Heart, and also because of the two colleges’ physical proximity. Additionally, movement between the two campuses was already somewhat commonplace, with Boston College Jesuits serving as Newton College chaplain, and Newton College students attending some science classes at Boston College.

Negotiations between the two boards of trustees and the two presidents took place throughout early 1974, and at a meeting on February 28 the Newton College trustees agreed to a cooperative agreement that would lead to the consolidation of Newton College into Boston College. Boston College trustees ratified the agreement on March 1. The agreement stated that Boston College would assume both the liabilities and assets of Newton College, and stated that, on June 30, 1974, Newton College would transfer its land, buildings and certain equipment and furnishings to Boston College. Newton College students would transfer to Boston College, and a credit transfer system was worked out, exempting them from Boston College’s core curriculum requirements. In early 1975, J. Donald Monan, the President of Boston College, announced plans for the former campus of Newton College to become the base for the Boston College Law School.

Sources

Donovan, Charles F., History of Boston College: From the Beginnings to 1990. Chestnut Hill, MA: The University Press of Boston College, 1990.

Heights. “Newton Shocks.” April 1, 1974.

Heights. “Statements by BC and Newton College Officials.” March 11, 1974.

McDonough, John. “Newton College: the Glitter Starts to Fade.” Heights, November 18, 1974.

“Newton College of the Sacred Heart, 1946 – 1975.” Newton Newsnotes. May-June 1975.

Quinlan, Joan. “Monan Announces Final Newton Plans.” Heights, March 10, 1975.