Johns Hopkins chose to build scholars before buildings, and invented the American research university
When Daniel Coit Gilman became the first president of Johns Hopkins in 1876, he spent the endowment on recruiting brilliant faculty rather than raising grand halls, a policy paraphrased as build men, not buildings. The result, modelled on German universities, became America's first research university.
Johns Hopkins, a childless Quaker merchant, died in 1873 and left $7 million, largely from Baltimore and Ohio Railroad stock, to found a hospital and university in Baltimore. No American philanthropic gift had been bigger; it equals about $166 million in 2024 terms. His unusual first name came from his great-grandmother Margaret Johns. Milton Eisenhower, a later president, once got introduced as head of John Hopkins in Pittsburgh and replied that he was glad to be in Pittburgh.
The trustees wanted something new: an institution devoted to discovering knowledge, following Wilhelm von Humboldt's model and Heidelberg in particular. The presidents of Harvard, Cornell, Yale and Michigan all backed Gilman, who toured Freiburg and other German schools first. He argued that the best teachers were those free and able to do original research, and hired stars such as mathematician James Joseph Sylvester and physicist Henry Rowland. It launched a publishing house in 1878, which has never stopped printing since, longer than any rival campus press in the country.
Money soon ran short. Hopkins had barred spending the principal on construction, and the railroad shares meant to produce interest collapsed in value. The school started downtown instead of on his Clifton estate, only moving after locals acquired the Homewood estate in north Baltimore, transferred on 22 February 1902. Its Federal-style 1801 mansion, once owned by the family of Declaration signer Charles Carroll, set the campus look, unlike the Gothic of older rivals.
Medicine made its reputation. The hospital opened in 1889 and the medical school in 1893, with William Osler and William Halsted among its faculty. Thanks to Mary Garrett, who endowed it at Gilman's request, it became the first medical school to admit women on equal terms and to require a bachelor's degree. Hopkins founded the nation's first school of public health in 1916 and has led American universities in federal research funding every year since 1979. In 2018 Michael Bloomberg pledged $1.8 billion to fund need-blind admission.
Source: Johns Hopkins University
