Robert College history

The Sultan's decree was finally granted and on July 4, 1869, the cornerstone of the first building, appropriately called Hamlin Hall, was laid.

In 1871, a school for girls was opened in Gedikpaşa with the support of a group of American philanthropists.

A large, one-storey building was added at the back of Hamlin Hall in 1873 but was pulled down when Washburn Hall was constructed thirty years later.

According to the article "A Millionaire's Will" published in The New York Times on November 27, 1878, Robert left a great portion of his wealth to the college.

The second building constructed on the College property was the residence built by Professor Alexander Van Millingen in 1881.

In 1891, a house for the President of the College was built with his donations.

Designed by Alfred Dwight Foster Hamlin, son of Cyrus Hamlin, the second academic building to be erected was completed in 1892.

In 1896 Robert College Sports Club was founded.

In the summer of 1898, when Washburn went to the United States, he visited Olivia Eggleston Phelps Stokes, the daughter of a wealthy banker from NewYork, to get her interested in donating the necessary funds for a new building.

Hamlin continued working in the United States until his death on August 8, 1900, at the age of eighty-nine.

When Gates became President in 1903, Robert College was ready for more expansion and modernization.

Following the opening of Turkey’s first sports hall, Dodge Gymnasium, in 1904, Robert College solidified its place as the center for sports.

The first basketball game in Turkey was played here in 1908.

In 1909 he went to the United States where he succeeded in getting the approval of the Trustees to go ahead with his proposed project.

New academic buildings and faculty housing were added to the Bebek campus, and following a fire in the Uskudar campus, ACG moved to a larger campus in Arnavutköy in 1914.

When Alexander Van Milligen died in 1915, he left his house, his library and one thousand pounds sterling to the school.

Founded at the time of the Ottoman Empire as an institution of higher learning serving the Christian minorities of the Empire as well as foreigners living in Constantinople, the school adopted a strictly secular educational model in accordance with the republican principles of Turkey in 1923.

In 1929, Miss Olivia Phelps Stokes also provided the funds for a gymnasium to be built behind Theodorus Hall for the Preparatory Department students.

The Van Milligen Library, which also housed administrative offices, was completed in 1932.

Orhan Pamuk, (born June 7, 1952, Istanbul, Turkey), Turkish novelist, best known for works that probe Turkish identity and history.

In 1958 he was able to obtain the necessary permission from the Turkish Government.

In March 1971, he revealed the resolution passed on January 26, 1971, by the Board of Trustees to the effect that the Turkish government should be encouraged to establish an independent university as a successor to Robert College on either of the campuses.

Pamuk began writing seriously in 1974 and eight years later published his first novel, Cevdet Bey ve oğulları (“Cevdet Bey and His Sons”), a sweeping history of an Istanbul family during and after the establishment of the Turkish republic.

In 1977 he graduated from the University of Istanbul with a degree in journalism.

A resort near Kilyos on the Black Sea coast, called Saritepe Campus, was acquired in 1985, where a new complex of buildings is under construction.

In 1986, it was renovated and tranformed into the Heritage Museum.

In Kar (2002; Snow) a Turkish poet living in exile in Germany faces the tensions between East and West when he travels to a poor town in a remote area of Turkey.

Masumiyet müzesi (2008; The Museum of Innocence) investigates the relationship between an older man and his second cousin.

Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık (2014; A Strangeness in My Mind) is a love story set in Istanbul.