Stanford University was founded in the late 19th century by Leland and Jane Lathrop Stanford, in honor of their late son Leland Stanford Jr. After Leland's death a lawsuit was pursued against his estate, and alongside the Panic of 1893 put Stanford's continued existence in jeopardy. The university persevered, in part due to the Stanford family donating the equivalent of over $1 billion in 2010 dollars to the university. The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake damaged several buildings, and took the lives of two people on campus.
In the mid-20th century, Stanford became an important institution in the development of science in the United States. Frederick Terman, dean of engineering and later the provost, is often called the "Father of Silicon Valley," who helped several early technology companies in the area develop. It is the site of several physics laboratories such as SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and the Stanford Positron Electron Asymmetric Ring (SPEAR). Additionally, the SRI International was one of the four original nodes of ARPANET, the predecessor to the internet.
Origins and early years (1885–1906) The university officially opened on October 1, 1891 to 555 students. On the university's opening day, Founding President David Starr Jordan (1851–1931) said to Stanford's Pioneer Class: "[Stanford] is hallowed by no traditions; it is hampered by none. Its finger posts all point forward." However, much preceded the opening and continued for several years until the death of the last founder, Jane Stanford, in 1905 and the destruction by the 1906 earthquake.
Foundation Stanford was founded by Leland Stanford, a railroad magnate, U.S. senator, and former California governor, together with his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford. It is named in honor of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who died in 1884 from typhoid fever just before his 16th birthday. His parents decided to dedicate a university to their only son, and Leland Stanford told his wife, "The children of California shall be our children." The Stanfords visited Harvard's president, Charles Eliot, and asked whether they should establish a university, technical school or museum. Eliot replied that they should found a university and an endowment of $5 million would suffice (in 1884 dollars; about $ today).
The university's founding grant of endowment from the Stanfords was issued in November 1885. Besides defining the operational structure of the university, it made several specific stipulations:
Though the trustees are in overall charge of the university, Leland and Jane Stanford as Founders retained great control until their deaths.
Despite the duty to have a co-educational institution, in 1899, Jane Stanford, the remaining Founder, added to the Founding Grant the legal requirement that "the number of women attending the University as students shall at no time ever exceed five hundred". She feared the large numbers of women entering would lead the school to become "the Vassar of the West" and felt that would not be an appropriate memorial for her son. In 1933, the requirement was reinterpreted by the trustees to specify an undergraduate male:female ratio of 3:1. The "Stanford ratio" of 3:1 remained in place until the early 1960s. By the late 1960s the "ratio" was about 2:1 for undergraduates, but much more skewed at the graduate level, except in the humanities. In 1973 the university trustees successfully petitioned the courts to have the restriction formally removed. As of 2014 the undergraduate enrollment is split nearly evenly between the sexes (47.2% women, 52.8% men), though males outnumber females (38.2% women, 61.8% men) at the graduate level. In the same petition they also removed the prohibition of sectarian worship on campus (previous only non-denominational Christian worship in Stanford Memorial Church was permitted).
Stanford was also mostly white though the first Black graduate was Ernest Houston Johnson in 1895 who received a degree in economics. He was admitted on the insistence of Jane Stanford. Black students over the next few decades seem to have been very scarce. Stanford did have a more substantial population of students from China or Japan or of Chinese or Japanese ancestry. Stanford graduated its first Chinese student, Walter Ngon Fong (), in 1896. The Chinese Students Club was established in 1916 (before then most Chinese students belonged to the Cosmopolitan club). Five students from Japan were members of the founding class in 1891. The Japanese Students Association was created in 1903.
Physical layout
The Stanfords chose their country estate, Palo Alto Stock Farm, in northern Santa Clara County as the site of the university, so that the university is often called "the Farm" to this day.
The campus master plan (1886–1914) was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and later his sons. The Main Quad was designed by Charles Allerton Coolidge and his colleagues, and by Leland Stanford himself. The cornerstone was laid on May 14, 1887, which would have been Leland Stanford Junior's nineteenth birthday. The web page includes a picture of the ceremony.
In the summer of 1886, when the campus was first being planned, Stanford brought the president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Francis Amasa Walker, and the Boston landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted westward for consultations. Olmsted worked out the general concept for the campus and its buildings, rejecting a hillside site in favor of the more practical flatlands. The Boston firm of Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge were hired in the Autumn and Charles Allerton Coolidge then developed this concept in the style of his late mentor, Henry Hobson Richardson. The Richardsonian Romanesque style, characterized by rectangular stone buildings linked by arcades of half-circle arches, was merged with the Californian Mission Revival style desired by the Stanfords. However, by 1889, Leland Stanford severed the connection with Olmsted and Coolidge and their work was continued by others. The red tile roofs and solid sandstone masonry are distinctly Californian in appearance, and most of the more recent campus buildings have followed the Quad's pattern of buff-colored walls, red roofs, and arcades, giving Stanford its distinctive style.
Early faculty and administration In Spring 1891, the Stanfords offered the presidency of their new university to the president of Cornell University, Andrew White, but he declined and recommended David Starr Jordan, the 40-year-old president of Indiana University Bloomington. Jordan's educational philosophy was a good fit with the Stanfords' vision of a non-sectarian, co-educational school with a liberal arts curriculum, and he accepted the offer. Jordan arrived at Stanford in June 1891 and began recruiting faculty for the university's planned October opening. With such a short time frame he drew heavily on his own acquaintance in academia; of the fifteen original professors, most came either from Indiana University or his alma mater Cornell. The 1891 founding professors included Robert Allardice in mathematics, Douglas Houghton Campbell in botany, Charles Henry Gilbert in zoology, George Elliott Howard in history, Oliver Peebles Jenkins in physiology and histology, Charles David Marx in civil engineering, Fernando Sanford in physics, and John Maxson Stillman in chemistry. The total initial teaching staff numbered about 35 including instructors and lecturers. For the second (1892–93) school year, Jordan added 29 additional professors including Frank Angell (psychology), Leander M. Hoskins (mechanical engineering), William Henry Hudson (English), Walter Miller (classics), George C. Price (zoology), and Arly B. Show (history). Most of these two founding groups of professors remained at Stanford until their retirement and were referred to as the "Old Guard".
Edward Alsworth Ross gained fame as a founding father of American sociology; in 1900 Jane Stanford fired him for radicalism and racism, unleashing a major academic freedom case.
Early finances
When Leland Stanford died in 1893, the continued existence of the university was in jeopardy. A $15 million government lawsuit against Stanford's estate, combined with the Panic of 1893, made it extremely difficult to meet expenses. Most of the board of trustees advised that the university be closed temporarily until finances could be sorted out. However, Jane Stanford insisted that the university remain in operation. When the lawsuit was finally dropped in 1895, a university holiday was declared. Stanford alumnus George E. Crothers became a close adviser to Jane Stanford following his graduation from Stanford's law school in 1896. Working with his brother Thomas (also a Stanford graduate and a lawyer), Crothers identified and corrected numerous major legal defects in the terms of the university's founding grant and successfully lobbied for an amendment to the California state constitution granting Stanford an exemption from taxation on its educational property—a change which allowed Jane Stanford to donate her stock holdings to the university.
Jane Stanford's actions were sometimes eccentric. In 1897, she directed the board of trustees "that the students be taught that everyone born on earth has a soul germ, and that on its development depends much in life here and everything in Life Eternal". She forbade students from sketching nude models in life-drawing class, banned automobiles from campus, and did not allow a hospital to be constructed so that people would not form an impression that Stanford was unhealthy. Between 1899 and 1905, she spent $3 million on a grand construction scheme building lavish memorials to the Stanford family, while university faculty and self-supporting students were living in poverty. On the other hand, in 1899, Jane Stanford authorized university trustees to have her jewelry collection auctioned off to support Stanford University, and in 1908 the trustees established the "Jewel Fund", which was initially valued at $500,000. The collection included a precious gold Patek Philippe pocket watch which was given to Jane Stanford by Leland Stanford in 1868 as a New Year's gift, and in 2005 the watch was sent back to the university by Pierre Schwob who purchased the watch from Pennsylvania jeweler William Paul.
In 1901, she transferred $30 million in assets, nearly all her remaining wealth, to the university; upon her death in 1905, she left the university nearly $4 million of her remaining $7 million. In total, the Stanfords donated around $40 million in assets to the university, over $1 billion in 2010 dollars.
Post-founders (1906–1941)
The year after Jane Stanford's death, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake damaged parts of the campus and caused new financial and structural problems, though only two people on campus were killed. Some of the early construction, especially from the second phase between Leland Stanford's death in 1893 and Jane Stanford's death in 1905, was destroyed by the earthquake. The university retains the Quad, part of the Museum, the old Chemistry Building (now, after extensive remodeling, the Sapp Center for Science Teaching and Learning), and Encina Hall (then the men's undergraduate dormitory). The earthquake destroyed parts of the Main Quad, including the original iteration of Memorial Church and the gate that first marked the entrance of the school, as well as a partially built main library. Rebuilding on a somewhat less grandiose scale began immediately.
In 1908 the university acquired the already existing Cooper Medical College in San Francisco and it became the Stanford University Department (later School) of Medicine though it remained in San Francisco until the late 1950s. For the full story see History of Stanford Medicine.