Old program St. John's College traces its origins to King William's School, founded in 1696. King William's School was founded with an affiliation to the
Church of England. In 1784, Maryland chartered St. John's College, which absorbed King William's School when it opened in 1785. The college took up residence in a building known as Bladen's Folly (the current McDowell Hall), which was originally built to be the Maryland governor's mansion but was not completed. There was some association with the
Freemasons early in the college's history, leading to speculation that it was named after
Saint John the Evangelist. The college's original charter, reflecting the Masonic value of religious tolerance as well as the religious diversity of the founders (which included
Presbyterians,
Episcopalians, and the
Roman Catholic Charles Carroll of Carrollton) stated that "youth of all religious denominations shall be freely and liberally admitted". Later it was thought that the college was named after
St John's College, Cambridge. The college always maintained a small size, generally enrolling fewer than 500 men at a time. In its early years, the college was at least nominally
public—the college's founders had envisaged it as the Western Shore branch of a proposed "
University of Maryland"—but a lack of enthusiasm from the
Maryland General Assembly and its
Eastern Shore counterpart,
Washington College, made this largely a paper institution. After years of inconsistent funding and litigation, the college accepted a smaller annual grant in lieu of being funded through the state's annual appropriations process. The college closed during the
Civil War, and its campus was used as a military hospital. In 1907, it became the undergraduate college of a loosely organized "University of Maryland" that included the
professional schools located in Baltimore. By 1920, when Maryland State College (founded in 1857 as Maryland Agricultural College) became the
University of Maryland at College Park, St. John's was a free-standing private institution. Garey and the Navy instituted a
Naval Reserve unit in September 1924, creating the first-ever collegiate Department of
Naval Science in the United States. But despite St. John's successfully pioneering the entire
NROTC movement, student interest waned, and the voluntary
ROTC disappeared in 1926 with Garey's departure. The Naval Reserve unit followed by 1929.
New program In 1936, the college lost its
accreditation. The Board of Visitors and Governors, faced with dire financial straits caused by the
Great Depression, invited educational innovators
Stringfellow Barr and
Scott Buchanan to make a completely fresh start. They introduced a new program of study, which remains in effect today. Buchanan became dean of the college, while Barr assumed its presidency. In his guide
Cool Colleges, Donald Asher writes that the New Program was implemented to save the college from closing: "Several benefactors convinced the college to reject a watered-down curriculum in favor of becoming a very distinctive academic community. Thus this great institution was reborn as a survival measure." In 1938,
Walter Lippman wrote a column praising liberal arts education as a bulwark against fascism and said, "In the future, men will point to St. John's College and say that there was the seed-bed of the American renaissance." In 1940, national attention was attracted to St. John's by a story in
Life entitled "The Classics: At St. John's They Come into Their Own Once More". The constant threat of eviction discouraged Stringfellow Barr. In late 1946, Forrestal withdrew the plan to take over St. John's in the face of public opposition and the disapproval of the
House Naval Affairs Committee. Still, Barr and Scott Buchanan were already committed to leaving St. John's and launching
Liberal Arts, Inc., a new, similar college in
Stockbridge, Massachusetts; that project eventually failed—but thinking about other sites for the college eventually led to the opening of St. John's second campus in Santa Fe in 1964. St John's had been founded as an all-white institution and continued as such in the early years of the New Program, with Barr actively discouraging black students from applying. However, by 1948, faculty and student sentiment had shifted, and students, with the support of the faculty and administration, persuaded a reluctant Board of Visitors and Governors to integrate the college and St. John's became one of the first previously all-white colleges south of the
Mason-Dixon line to admit black students voluntarily. In 1949, Richard D. Weigle became president of St. John's. Following the chaotic and difficult period from 1940 to 1949, Weigle's presidency continued for 31 years, during which time the New Program and the college itself became well established. In 1951, St. John's became
coeducational, admitting women for the first time in its 254-year history. Some students objected because they had not been involved in—nor even aware of—the decision before it was announced to the media, and some believed that the college could not remain a serious institution if it admitted women. Martin Dyer reported that women who were admitted quickly proved they were the academic and intellectual equals of their male counterparts. As enrollment grew during the 1950s, and facing the coming larger
baby-boom generation, thoughts turned again towards opening another campus—but this time in addition to, not instead of, the one in Annapolis. Serious talk of expansion began in 1959 when the father of a student from
Monterey, California, suggested to President Weigle that he establish a new campus there.
Time ran an article on the college's possible expansion plans, and 32 offers came into the college from
New Hampshire,
Oregon,
Georgia,
Alaska,
Florida,
Connecticut, and other states. A group from the
Monterey Peninsula told Weigle that they were interested, though funding was a problem, and suitable land was a big question. There was also an offer of land in
Claremont, California, but competition with the other colleges there for students and financial contributions was a negative. The Riverside
Mission Inn (in
Riverside, California) was another possibility, but with only of land and many renovations needed to the inn, funding was again a significant issue. The three California locations were all still major contenders when Robert McKinney (publisher of
The Santa Fe New Mexican and a former SJC board member) called and told Weigle that a group of city leaders had long been looking for another college for Santa Fe. During a lunch Weigle attended at
John Gaw Meem's house on the outskirts of Santa Fe in late January 1961, Meem volunteered that he had a little piece of land () that he would gladly donate to the college. After lunch, Weigle looked at the land and instantly fell in love with it. A committee of four faculty members (Robert Bart, Barbara Leonard, Douglas Allanbrook, and William Darkey) later visited the four sites in contention and, after much deliberation, recommended Santa Fe. In 1961, the governing board of St. John's approved plans to establish a second college at
Santa Fe. Groundbreaking occurred on April 22, 1963, and the first classes began in 1964. Immediately afterward, land on the Monterey Peninsula was also donated to the college on the condition that a campus be developed there by a certain date. ==Academics==