In 1915 the Advisory Board of Athletics of Boston College proposed the idea of a Catholic women’s auxiliary organization. Several prominent women became interested, and under the direction of the Advisory Board formed the society known as the Philomatheia Club in March 1915. The leading figure and first president of the Club was Mary K. Shuman (Mrs. Edwin Arthur Shuman). The organization originally began as an aid to the Boston College Athletic Association, but after its first successful social event, expanded its efforts to the social and academic activities of Boston College. Formal constitutions were adopted in 1916, stating the object of the Club to be threefold: to increase an interest in Catholic education, to foster the scholastic, athletic, and social interests of Boston College, and for the intellectual advancement of Club members.

Under the dedicated leadership of its third president, Mary Werner Roberts (Mrs. Vincent P. Roberts), who directed the Philomatheia Club for a half century, the organization raised funds for the College, sponsored lecture programs, established scholarships for Boston College students who lived locally, and saw its numbers grow to more than 1,500 members by the early 1930s. As membership in the Club expanded, in 1931 its “Junior” section for younger women was founded.

Both the Philomatheia Club and the Junior Philomatheia Club played a prominent role in numerous fundraising efforts for the advancement of Boston College. For instance, the organization spearheaded the Two Million Dollar Building Campaign for Boston College in 1921 when William Devlin, SJ was president. In 1928 the Ramsbottom Estate on Commonwealth Ave was purchased by the Club and would become Philomatheia Hall; it was later donated to Boston College around 1970, and in 1988 was razed to make space for a new residence hall. The Club also played a role in the purchase of Bellarmine House in Cohasset in 1932, as well as the Simpson Estate in 1937, which would become the College’s Museum of Anthropology. Massachusetts Governor Leverett Saltonstall attended the annual Philomatheia Ball at Copley Plaza in 1939. Some notable lecturers at the Club include Francis X. Talbot, SJ, editor of America, and Catholic novelist Kathleen Thompson Norris, whose works include Mother and The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne. In addition, the organization donated money to Boston College in the form of medals and trophies for athletic and academic prizes, and scholarships and financial aid for students, including Boston College’s first annual student prize, the General Excellence Award. In 1935 the club gifted to Boston College President Louis J. Gallagher, SJ an original letter written in 1552 by Francis Xavier.

Although Club officers continued to meet into the 1980s, the Philomatheia Club’s influence at Boston College slowly began to decrease after the 1940s. Growing numbers of women were joining the workforce after World War II, and women were increasingly permitted to have new roles at the College, including as students, faculty members, and administrators.

Sources:

Historical background notes and articles, Box 1, Folder 6, Philomatheia Club records, BC.1998.031, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

Mrs. Edwin Arthur Shuman's (Mary K. Shuman) history of the Philomatheia Club, Box 2, Folder 1, Philomatheia Club records, BC.1998.031, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

O'Connor, Thomas H. The Spirit of the Heights. Chestnut Hill, Mass.: Linden Lane Press, 2011.

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 nearby, all-girls boarding school, 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. Subsequent acquisitions have included a Hammond Pond Parkway site (2016) and the Pine Manor College campus (2020), the latter the future home of 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.