WashU began as a free night school whose first students ranged from 8 to 46
Washington University in St. Louis had no endowment, no church backing and no buildings when it opened in 1854. Classes met in a borrowed schoolhouse lit by gas, tuition was free, and the first year's 270 students ranged from an 8-year-old to a 46-year-old. Today it counts 26 Nobel laureates among faculty and alumni.
Seventeen St. Louis business, religious and political leaders founded the university in 1853, worried that the Midwest lacked places of higher learning. State Senator Wayman Crow secured the charter and the Unitarian minister William Greenleaf Eliot chaired the trustees. The founders first called it Eliot Seminary, but Eliot objected, wanting a nonsectarian school. Because the charter had been granted on February 22, George Washington's birthday, a committee proposed naming it after him, and the board agreed unanimously.
Early growth was improvised. The first lessons took place on October 22, 1854, inside the Benton Schoolhouse, lent by the public school board, which even paid for the lighting. A preparatory department for boys followed in 1856 and one for girls in 1859, named the Mary Institute after Eliot's daughter. The law school admitted two women in 1869, Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins, and in 1879 the university opened the first manual training school in the United States, splitting pupils' days between workshop and classroom.
Medicine arrived through mergers: the St. Louis Medical College became its medical department in 1891, a dental college affiliated in 1892, and in 1899 the Missouri Medical College, the oldest medical school west of the Mississippi, joined too. As the city grew, the university bought land beyond Forest Park and hired the Olmsted landscape firm. Busch Hall's cornerstone was laid on October 20, 1900, but the move waited until 1905 because the new buildings were leased to the 1904 World's Fair and Olympics.
The motto, Per veritatem vis, or strength through truth, dates from 1915, and the university joined the Association of American Universities in 1923. It now spans 355 acres across two campuses with 10 schools. For the Class of 2028 it received over 32,750 applications and admitted 12 per cent, and its endowment of $12.0 billion ranks among the fifteen largest in the country. Its teams, the Bears, play in NCAA Division III.
Source: Washington University in St. Louis
