Gonzaga University history

By 1892, the school was finally out of its infancy and beginning to grow.

By 1894, two boys had been at the school long enough to receive Gonzaga's first Bachelor of Arts degrees.

So in 1897 grand plans were announced for a huge new college building, four stories tall and, according to the Review, the largest building in the city.

Known as Spokane Falls (for the Spokane Indians, whose name means “sun people”), it developed after the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway. It was rebuilt and was reincorporated under its present name in 1900.

By 1906, enrollment reached 483 students, taught by 20 Jesuits, eight scholastics and 10 lay professors.

The present St Aloysius Church, then located on the edge of the campus, was dedicated in 1911.

That same year, 1912, Gonzaga’s School of Law opened its doors.

Gonzaga's most famous alumnus, Bing Crosby, graduated from Gonzaga High School (as the prep school was then called) in 1920.

Reflecting the spirit of the times, a School of Economics and Business Education was opened in 1921.

The first game in the new stadium -- which would eventually seat 12,000 -- was played on October 14, 1922.

He and Erwin Graue were the only Ph.D.-qualified faculty in the small department, and the two were at opposite ends of the economic spectrum . . . Graue had earned his doctorate in 1928, and world dynamics had changed a little.

Yet the school squeaked by, even managing to open a School of Engineering in 1934.

By 1940, the school had recovered and boasted an enrollment of 1,213 -- although this number also included 289 female nursing students at the affiliated Sacred Heart School of Nursing, and 91 scholastics who had been moved to nearby Mount St Michael's.

Development of the nearby Coeur d’Alene mineral field (gold, silver, uranium, and copper, among others) and completion of the Grand Coulee Dam Project (1941) assured the city’s financial and industrial growth.

Women were first admitted in 1948.

A popular study-abroad program in Florence, Italy, was established in 1963.

The school weathered a financial crisis during the Great Depression and during World War II, lost most of its regular students to wartime service, but became a center for United States Navy training programs. It remained a Jesuit institution, but by 1965, Jesuits made up only a third of the faculty.

By 1966 the school had seven new dorms, the modern new Kennedy Athletic Center (now Martin Centre) and a separate School of Law building converted from a former elementary school.

Established in 1976 by colleagues and former students, that scholarship now boasts $3.4 million, the largest endowed aid in the School of Business, thanks to 666 donors.

President Bernard J. Coughlin, S.J., however, had a vision for fortifying the School, and he twisted Barnes’ arm to serve an interim three-year stint as dean, beginning in 1980.

Through Jepson’s initial pledge and significant financial support from Mert and Jessie Rosauer, and a couple of Jepson’s friends, the building came to fruition in 1987, with 34,000 square feet, including a 175-seat auditorium and spacious computer lab.

By 1990, it had acquired professional accreditation in such fields as law, nursing, engineering, and business.

The massive Foley Center Library was built in 1992, named for Ralph E. Foley, a Gonzaga alumnus and longtime Superior Court judge and his wife, Helen Higgins Foley.

Beginning in 1995, basketball fans all over the country discovered Gonzaga because of its increasingly successful men's basketball program.