Emory Campus Master Plan: History

Emory College and Oxford, Georgia

The decade of 1830's gave witness to the foundation of a large number of colleges affiliated with religious denominations. Meeting in 1836, the Georgia Methodist Conference founded Emory College named in honor of Bishop John Emory of Maryland. In 1837, 1,452 acres of land were purchased by the Conference for the purpose of establishing both a college and town. By May of 1837, a survey of the lands had been completed by Edward Lloyd Thomas and a plat of the Town of Oxford had been drawn. Three hundred-thirty acres of land had been set aside as a site for the college.

The original plan for Oxford shows the College located in an open square at the southern most terminus of Wesley Street, the central thoroughfare of the town-plan. A single building is depicted in alignment with Wesley Street at the center of the square (in the location of the present day Seney Hall). Four streets extend in a radial pattern from the college square. The plan of the town of Oxford falls into the genre of planning popularized following the adoption of the L'Enfant/Ellicott plans for Washington, D.C. in the 1790's. Numerous plans for new-towns throughout the country adopted a combination of radial and orthogonal street configurations following the lead of the capital city's Baroque plan (see John Reps, Monumental Washington). The marriage of the grid-iron plan and the radial street configuration at Oxford, albeit more modest in pretensions than its precedent, follows in the steps of numerous Washington "spin-off" plans. Another capital city may also have served as a precedent for situation of Oxford and Emory College. As originally planned, the Anglican College of William and Mary provided the terminal feature at the western end of Williamsburg's Duke of Gloucester Street. Perhaps, in siting Oxford and Emory College, members of the Georgia Methodist Conference drew upon the image of William and Mary.

Plan of Washington, D.C., McMillan Commission

Plan of Washington, D.C., McMillan Commission

Both a College and a Town

Since the new college was to be located at a significant distance from existing settlements, it was necessary to plan for both a college and a town. The planning of Emory College and the Town of Oxford follows in a tradition begun by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1795. Following the dominant philosophy of the day, North Carolina located its state university at a considerable distance from the corrupting influences of urbanized areas, which necessitated planning for both a town and college. At Oxford, the original 125 lots laid out by Thomas were initially offered under a 999 year lease, but were later sold to private owners. Under the terms of the original lease agreement "no intoxicating liquors" were to be sold, nor were any "games of hazard" permitted on the lots.

Plan of Emory College and the town of Oxford

Many early buildings on Emory campus were rendered in the Greek Revival style. The temple-like Phi Gamma and Few Halls are illustrations of a campus architecture tradition that has its origins with the construction of the Whig and Cliosophic Society buildings at Princeton University (1837) and later the building of Eumenean and Philanthropic Halls at Davidson College, in Davidson, North Carolina (1849). In each case, twin Greek-Revival temple buildings designed to house debating and literary societies were sited in direct relation to one another about a significant campus axis. At Princeton, Whig and Clio Halls are disposed to either side of the axis created by Nassau Hall and Cannon Green. At Davidson and Emory the porticoes of the debating society buildings face-off from opposite sides of the campus lawn while straddling a significant campus axis. At Emory College, Phi Gamma and Few Halls occupy the north-western and north-eastern corners of the campus quadrangle. The south-west and south-east corners are anchored by The Chapel and Humanities Hall respectively. It is apparent from the siting of the original buildings on the campus at Oxford that the intention was to define the center and the edges of the college's lawn at the earliest possible opportunity.

The War Between the States

Between 1861 and 1866, Emory College closed and many students fought on the side of the Confederacy. Buildings on the Emory campus were used as hospitals during the Battle of Atlanta. Following the War Between the States, the small college reopened with an enrollment of 20 students. Financial problems plagued the small institution through the 1870's and fundraising schemes were developed to rebuild the college's main building, destroyed during the war. Rebuilding of the college continued into the 1880's when George I. Seney, a New York banker and Methodist layman, responded to President Atticus Greene Haygood's sermon entitled "The New South," a plea for vigorous reconstruction, by donating $130,000 to the institution. Since the 1867, Emory College had offered a three-year degree as a response to the need for a "practical" education. Under President Haygood's administration the college began to offer technical and professional subjects in addition to the courses required for degrees. Isaac Stiles Hopkins, who served as president between 1884 and 1888, served to further the cause of technical subjects. He eventually resigned his post at Emory to become the first president of the Georgia School of Technology (now Georgia Institute of Technology).