The Greater Georgetown Project

As Georgetown entered the twentieth century, the university sought to physically expand the campus beyond the Quadrangle. The Greater Georgetown Project was a plan to dramatically grow the campus. After decades of stagnation, Father Coleman Nevils, president of Georgetown from 1929-1935 took matters into his own hands. He commissioned the building of a grand quad with neo-gothic buildings resembling those of ancient European universities. Part of the motivation for the quad was to make Georgetown appear older than it actually was in order to firmly establish its national and global standing. Another motivation was to respond to assert the grandeur of Georgetown's Catholicity during a time of nativist sentiment and secularizing schools.

Nevils' "Greater Georgetown" also included extending the school's history back three centuries. In 1634, the first American Catholic priests sailed on the boats The Ark and The Dove to settle the first Catholic settlement in America at St. Mary's, Maryland. The Jesuits eventually started schools that indirectly inspired the founding of Georgetown itself. Therefore, Father Nevils considered the first American Jesuits to be the actual founders of Georgetown. He claimed that 1634 was the true founding date of Georgetown, making it the oldest collegiate institution in the country and proving the superiority of Catholic education in America.

Nevils planned to use the quad to memorialize these "founders." Copley Hall, finished in 1932, was named after Thomas Copley, who is credited with drafting the Act for the Toleration of Religion. The White-Gravenor Building, finished the following year, was named after Andrew White and John Gravenor. A third building to honor Ferdinand Poulton was planned to be built on the opposite side Copley, but was never started due to the Great Depression. Copley and White-Gravenor were even more explicitly Catholic in their design than Healy Hall. Looking at White-Gravenor, one can see a cross atop the building along with the motto of the Society of Jesus "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam": for the greater glory of God.

The construction of these buildings in pursuit of a "Greater Georgetown" started to encroach upon a hallmark of Georgetown's campus throughout the nineteenth century. "The Walks" as they were commonly referred to were paths throughout an expansive forested area beside the built campus. There were bridges, waterfalls, and trails where students would spend their free time. The Walks existed up until the middle of the twentieth century when development gradually eliminated the greenspace.

GEORGETOWN TODAY

Learn more about the 1634 Society here.