Annie Nathan Meyer’s record at the Collegiate Program
Until now, we’ve only been discussing the men’s institution known as King’s College and then Columbia. We’ll now take brief detour across Broadway to learn about the Jewish connections to Barnard College.*
In the late 19th century, a young Jewish woman named Annie Nathan Meyer was increasingly frustrated by the barriers to women attempting to take classes through Columbia’s Collegiate Course for Women. As Joanna Rios writes, “Have you ever had that nightmare where you show up to class only to find that it’s the day of the final exam and that you haven’t been to any of the lectures all semester long? For the Columbia College women students in the 1880s, that was their college experience.” The Collegiate Course was a slight nod to women fighting to take classes at Columbia since the 1870s, but it amounted to not much more than a correspondence course – without the correspondence. As Meyer described it in her book, Barnard Beginnings, women were not allowed to attend lectures, but were expected to take the same exams as the men. The exams would often feature questions from class discussions rather than the readings, and so it was quite difficult for women to actually pass the classes.
Library on the 49th Street / Madison Avenue campus. Note all the young men waiting outside! (Historical Photograph Collection, Box 157)
Additionally, there was the issue of the library. As Annie Nathan Meyer wrote:
“But there was one privilege in being a student at Columbia I was not willing to forego — the use of the Library. The policy of the College was, and is now, exceedingly liberal, extending its privileges to all who had been students even for a short period. But although theoretically young women were welcomed here on precisely the same terms as the men, it was impossible for them to move the heavy oaken doors without the assistance of masculine brawn. Even to come as far as the stone steps before it, and stand there helplessly awaiting some kind of ‘Open Sesame,’ one had survived the ordeal of approaching through a double row of grinning young men lined along the path through the campus, young torturers who emitted ironic cheers as one of their number sprang forth chivalrously to the rescue of maidenhood in distress.”
Letter from Annie Nathan Meyer to George Beekman regarding signatures for those interested “in the establishment of a College for Women.” Columbia College Papers, Box 62.
The University Archives details the story of Meyer’s work to convince the Trustees that a separate college for women should be created so that women could take proper courses to receive a degree. Some of the opposition to a women’s college was because there were many who wanted coeducation within the university, rather than moving the women to a separate college. While Columbia already offered graduate degrees for women (its first woman graduate was Winifred Edgerton, who received her Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1886), it would be almost 100 years before the undergraduate college would open its doors to women. Frederick A.P. Barnard (President of Columbia from 1864-1889) was a fierce advocate for coeducation, and thus opposed the creation of a separate college, as Meyer proposed.
Notwithstanding Barnard’s opposition, Meyer persevered. In 1888, Annie Nathan Meyer, Mary Mapes Dodge, and Melvil Dewey created a petition for a women’s “annex” to Columbia, which would function and be financed independently, and would feature instructors from Columbia College. In her memoirs, Meyer noted that she reached out to Governor Hamilton Fish, then chairman of the Board of Trustees of Columbia (as you may recall from an earlier post, Governor Fish was friends with Jonathan Meyer, Annie’s uncle), for advice on how best to present her proposal.
The petition was signed by about fifty people. In Meyer’s words:
Among them were thirteen ministers, four lawyers, an ex-Judge of the State Supreme Court, five doctors, five educators, including the Presidents of the two City Colleges, four editors, four men of importance in the world of finance, the President of the Board of Education, one representative of an old, distinguished New York family, one railroad president, one ex-Mayor of New York, two women who led in important philanthropic work, four literary women, and three women who were important only as being the wives of influential men.
Letter from Meyer to President Low, suggesting that Jacob Schiff’s recent gift of a Fellowship should be made available to the women as well as the men (Central Files, Box 662)
The Trustees ultimately approved the petition, and Barnard College would open in 1889. Barnard’s treasurer was the banker and philanthropist Jacob Schiff, who was also a great Columbia supporter. Schiff was one of the signers of the 1888 petition, and took a great interest in Barnard. He worked to attract additional donors and to ensure that the College would be fiscally stable. He recommended soliciting smaller, but repeating donations rather than larger one-time gifts, to ensure that the College could continue to thrive over time.
Schiff would have much to say about the place of Jews at Columbia in the coming years. He wrote letters to President Seth Low (1890-1901) about the importance of including a Jew on the Columbia Board of Trustees (there were none after Gershom Seixas stepped down in 1814) in order to more accurately represent both the makeup of the college, and the makeup of the city of New York. This would become very relevant once Nicholas Murray Butler would come to office as president of the university, as we will see in the next installment in this series.
Annie Nathan Meyer would continue to advocate for Barnard after it was established. The archives show numerous letters that she wrote to President Low, asking for Barnard to be treated the same as other affiliated schools such as the Medical School, in receiving equal mention in speeches and in published material. Additional letters include requests for the use of Columbia classrooms and for a Columbia bank account (to be financed with Barnard funds, of course) to allow for the purchase of needed classroom materials.
Notwithstanding her initial frustration with Columbia, Annie Nathan Meyer would also serve as a donor to the university, gifting the library an exquisite illuminated volume of prayers for circumcision.
*Interested in learning more about Jews at Barnard at the turn of the 20th century? Save the date of December 5, 2024 for our Norman E. Alexander Celebration of Collections, which will feature a presentation about the Jews at Barnard in the 1890s, alongside recent scholarship on the Inquisition in Bologna and the history of the Jews in Prague.
