Bard College began as a parish school for children on a Hudson estate
In 1854 John and Margaret Bard opened a small school in a wooden cottage on their Hudson Valley estate, teaching local children on weekdays and holding chapel services at weekends. Church leaders urged them to go bigger. Six years later the cottage became the seed of St. Stephen's College, now called Bard.
John Bard came from a well-connected family: his grandfather Samuel Bard had been George Washington's physician and helped found Columbia's medical school. With the promise of outside money, John gave an unfinished chapel and 18 acres to the Episcopal diocese in 1858, and St. Stephen's College opened in March 1860 as a place to train clergy. Early benefactors included the trustee Cornelius Vanderbilt. The school took its founder's name only in 1934.
The 20th century pushed it in new directions. In 1928 it merged with Columbia as an undergraduate college, rather like Barnard, but the arrangement brought no cash during the Depression; in 1932 Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, a trustee, wrote to wealthy donors pleading for help. A Columbia professor, Donald Tewksbury, became dean in 1933. In only four years he steered the college away from religion, gave the arts unusual weight and laid the groundwork for the Moderation and Senior Project requirements that still define it.
During the 1940s Bard sheltered scholars escaping Europe, among them the political theorist Hannah Arendt, who is buried on campus beside her husband Heinrich Blücher; the novelist Philip Roth lies there too. When wartime enrolment collapsed, the college admitted women, cut its ties with Columbia and became independent and secular in 1944. Student numbers more than doubled within three years, from 137 to 293.
Its alumni include Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan, whose 1973 song My Old School grew out of a drug raid on campus. The grounds have kept growing, absorbing neighbouring estates such as Blithewood and Montgomery Place, and now cover about 1260 acres along the river. Leon Botstein retired as president in June 2026 after 51 academic years in charge.
Source: Bard College
