Hamline University history

Students moved into the Red Wing building in January 1856.

Seventy-three students enrolled in the opening year, and Hamline graduated its initial class in 1859: two sisters, Elizabeth A. Sorin and Emily R. Sorin, who were not only Hamline’s first graduates but also the first graduates of any college or university in Minnesota.

On July 6, 1869, the Red Wing location was closed.

The first building at the Red Wing site was torn down in 1872.

Construction began in 1873, but by then an economic depression had overtaken the planners, and there were repeated postponements and delays.

The doors opened on September 22, 1880, and Hamline's history in Saint Paul began.

Emergency space for classrooms was provided by Ladies' Hall, which had opened in 1882.

He coordinated basketball as an intramural sport at Hamline in 1894, leading to the first intercollegiate game and a women’s basketball team the following year.

On February 9, 1895, Hamline University hosted the first-ever intercollegiate basketball game, only four years after the sport was created.

The Martinsburg Free Library first opened its doors on December 1, 1912 in a room in the residence of co-founder Doctor M. Anstice Harris.

Voluntary military drill for men continued, and by May of 1917, 75 women were meeting four times a week to learn the principles of first aid.

In the fall of 1918, a unit of the Students' Army Training Corps was established at Hamline, and almost every male student became an enlisted member.

In 1924, William H. Bush of Chicago, IL, a native of Martinsburg, purchased a house and property in the village to permanently house the library.

Bush died in 1931, but had made financial provision for the library in his will through an endowment that has provided income for the library ever since.

In the meantime, the portion of the college endowment invested in farmlands turned unproductive, and the university's income fell following reductions in tuition. It was not until 1935 that Hamline began to recover from the depression.

The city of Red Wing turned the site into a park: a plaque was dedicated on June 14, 1939, and placed on the Methodist Church, which stands across the street.

Hamline and the Asbury Methodist Hospital of Minneapolis launched a new venture in 1940 when they collaboratively established the Hamline-Asbury School of Nursing, which offered a five-year program leading to a Bachelor of Science in nursing.

The first reached the campus in the fall of 1946, when registrations passed 1,000 for the first time.

In 1949, the Mounds-Midway School of Nursing joined the school, and the newly enlarged institution took the name of the Hamline University School of Nursing.

The School of Nursing was discontinued in 1962 following the decision to concentrate resources and staff on the liberal arts program.

In 1969, black students on campus founded PRIDE—Promoting Racial Identity, Dignity, and Equality.

Hamline broke ground in May 1970 for the $2.6 million Bush Memorial Library.

The library, a three-story, 83,210-square-foot (7,730 m) building housing some 240,000 volumes, opened in the fall of 1971.

The Paul Giddens Alumni Learning Center, linked to the Carnegie library and named for a former university president, opened in October 1972.

The roots of the modern law school lay in the Midwestern School of Law, an upstart, unaccredited school that came searching for classroom space in February 1974.

The law school began publishing the Hamline Law Review in 1978.

In July 1980, the library board opened their new building that mirrored the instructions of Mr.

In 1983, in collaboration with the Council on Religion and Law at Harvard University Divinity and Law Schools, the Hamline School of Law launched a faculty-edited journal, the Journal of Law and Religion.

The $1.3 million Sundin Music Hall opened in October 1989.

In October 1990, workers began a $290,000 renovation.

After four years of planning, ground was broken on October 18, 1996, for an $8.5 million sports, recreation, and health complex—Lloyd W. D. Walker Fieldhouse—though construction did not begin until the following spring.

Hamline began construction on a $7.7 million student apartment building at 1470 Englewood for 142 graduate and law students on September 2, 1998.

Klas Center, a modern, $7.1 million multi-use facility which includes the football field and a track, was built in 2003 to replace the aging Norton Field.

In 2004, Hamline celebrated its 150th anniversary.

Launching the Hamline MBA program in 2008 and realigning undergraduate and graduate programs into the School of Business and School of Education.

Building the Anderson University Center in 2012, which has become a prominent symbol of the university and dramatically expanded Hamline's capacity to accommodate and serve its community.

In June 2014, Hamline's adjunct professors voted to form a union as part of the SEIU, making Hamline the first private university in Minnesota where adjunct faculty formed a union.

In April 2015, Hamline University announced that Doctor Fayneese Miller would become the 20th President of Hamline on July 1, 2015.