Tulane University - Jambalaya Yearbook (New Orleans, LA)

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( . ; iiMHiiftiili ' iiiiii 1 he History of the 1 ulane University of Louisiana ULANE UNIVERSITY looks back for its beginning to the Medical College of L ouisiana, which was organized in 1834 and chartered in the spring of 1835. It issued its first degree in March, 1836, the first degree in Medicine or Science ever issued in Louisiana. Tulane University, as it stands to-day represents the contract, giving to the Tulane Administrators perpetual control of the University of Louisiana, which the men, to whom Paul Tulane entrusted his donations, entered into with the State of Louisiana. In the opening of his letter to the Administrators, dated Princeton, May 2, 1882, he writes: A resident of New Orleans for many years of my active life, having formed many friendships and associations dear to me and deeply sympathizing with its people in whatever misfortunes or disasters may have befallen them, as well as being sincerely desirous of contributing to their moral and intellectual welfare, I do hereby express to you my intention by an act of donation inter vivos all the real estate I own and am possessed of in said city of New Orleans, State of Louisiana, for the promotion and encouragement of intellectual, moral and industrial education among the white young persons in the city of New Orleans, State of Louisiana, and for the advancement of learning and letters, the arts and sciences therein Mr. Tulane ' s first gift amounted in value to $363,000, and subsequent donations raised the total value of real estate donated to $1,050,000, with an annual rental of $75,000. The result of other donations since the time of Mr. Tulane ' s generosity have been the Richardson Memorial Building, the Josephine Hutchinson Memorial Building, the F. W. Tilton Memorial Library, the endowment of the chair of Botany by Mrs. Ida A. Richardson, the donor of the fund with which the present Richardson Memorial Building was erected, and, very recently, the establishment of the Department of Tropical Medicine, Hygiene and Pre- ventative Medicine by means of a donation of $25,000 by the United Fruit Company, and the erection of a new engineering building, the Stanley Thomas Hall, made possible by a bequest of $60,000 by Stanley Thomas. The H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College was the result of a donation of $100,000, in October, 1886, by Mrs. Josephine Louise Newcomb to the Tulane Admin- istrators for the establishment of a memorial of her only daughter. Newcomb College has since been the recipient of a bequest of F. Walker Calleander of $65,000. Under Article 320 of the Constitution of 1879, the Legislature of the State recog- nized the three departments — Law, Medical and Academic — of the University and Page thirteen