First MIT dorm for women was far from campus, in the home of a grad who also provided shuttles
Republished with permission from Cambridge Historical Commission, today’s guest Did You Know? bloggers.
Katharine Dexter McCormick in 1913. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
In the year 1960, just 22 women were admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in comparison with 914 men. President James Killian and his chancellor, Julius Stratton, made the decision not only to admit more women to the university, but to work to improve the environment and resources available for female students.
MIT figures from the 1960s shows disparity in women and men entering the school and those disqualified and withdrawn.
The shift to admit and provide better education to young women was described years later in 1970 in a report written by professor Emily Wick, associate dean of students and the first woman promoted to tenure at MIT:
Until the institute could commit itself to educating women in significant numbers, and could provide suitable living conditions, coeds were not overly “successful” … Before 1960 women entered MIT at their own risk. If they succeeded – fine! If they failed – well, no one had expected them to succeed … The class of 1964 entered in 1960 knowing that MIT believed in women students. It was the first class in which coeds, as a group, matched the proportion of B.S. degrees earned by their male classmates!
Katharine Dexter (1875-1967) graduated from the institute in 1904 in biology. She married Stanley McCormick, whose mental illness emerged soon after. Throughout her life, she tried to find a biological basis and cure for schizophrenia; she was also a strong proponent of the suffrage movement. Later in life, she turned her full attention to the construction of the first women’s dormitory at MIT, which coincided with the institute’s newly established goals for admitting more women. She donated her house at 120 Bay State Road, Boston, for a women’s dormitory (the only such dormitory for female students), and it housed approximately 19 graduate and undergraduate women students from the early 1950s until McCormick opened. Katharine even funded a taxi service to shuttle the students to campus on poor weather days.
Update on Jan. 7, 2021, from History Cambridge: McCormick did not own the townhouse at 120 Bay State Road, Boston. While McCormick Hall was the first dormitory built by MIT to house female students, the dormitories at 120 Bay State Road and Bexley Hall had rooms provided for female students, but were not purpose-built for them. The construction of McCormick Hall was a big step for the university in validating the place at MIT. For information on the 120 Bay State Road house, please visit this link.
McCormick Hall construction circa 1966. (Photo: Cambridge Historical Commission)
In 1963, the west wing of Stanley McCormick Hall was dedicated and named after her late husband. Just three years later, the second wing (a second tower) was built and dedicated just after her death. Both phases of the building were bankrolled by Katharine Dexter McCormick and were to house women studying at MIT. McCormick Hall was designed by Herbert Beckwith, a member of the institute’s architecture faculty and principal of the firm Anderson, Beckwith & Haible. Beckwith’s wife, Elizabeth Beckwith, assisted with the design. The dorms could today be classified as Brutalist in design. The two concrete and glass towers front Memorial Drive and are connected by a low-rise community space. The buildings are used today as all-female dorms housing upward of 255 students.
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This post was updated Jan. 7, 2021, with information about Elizabeth Beckwith assisting with the design of Stanley McCormick Hall.
I’m curious about the house at 120 Bay State Rd — that address no longer exists in the assessor’s database. Could that address now be a parcel on Field St (Bay St Rd changes names at the bend by Cambridge Self-Storage) or might the house have been on Bay St Rd in Boston?
That would be 120 Bay State Road in Boston, not Cambridge. Many MIT fraternities are still located in that area; this address is an outpost of Beta Theta Pi.
It’s Bay State Road in Boston, but the registry of deeds tells a somewhat different story. I’m confused. MIT is definitely associated with properties at 119 and 120 Bay State Road in Boston Both appear to be dormitories or frat houses, and are owned by Beta Upsilon Association, which was incorporated in 1926 as the Beta Upsilon Chapter of Beta Theta Pi, which was founded at Miami University in 1839. They were bought in two different transactions, one from MIT and one not, in 1964 and 1946, respectively.
MIT bought 120 Bay State Road from Florence B. Rothwell in 1945. She got it from her husband James Mason Rothwell in 1927, and he bought it from Alice N. Bunting in 1922. She bought it from William H. Clarke in 1920, and he bought a much larger parcel from Ida D. Lewis in 1913 and subdivided it. I’m not seeing any McCormicks anywhere in there, nor, as far as I can tell, in 119 Bay State Road.
A little more digging reveals a property Katharine Dexter McCormick did own, 393 Comm Ave and 442 Marlborough Street. Her mother bought it in 1899 and conveyed it to her in 1924. She left it to MIT in her will when she died in 1967. MIT sold it to the Jesuits in 1971. They sold it to a developer in 1981. Today it is the Dexter House Condominium.
Thanks for correcting the error in the original piece. I thought it smelled fishy that the women’s dorm was located on Cambridge’s Bay State Rd, which in the 1950s was adjacent to the city dump (now Danehy Park).
There are several oversights in the article on MIT’s and Mrs Kathryn Dexter McCormick’s role in expanding women’s enrollment and accommodations at MIT. .
Prior to 1960 there were already extensive discussions about the desirability of encouraging more women to apply to MIT. Bexley Hall ( now demolished ) on Massachusuetts Avenue was added to the list of Housing opportunities for women.
Mrs McCormick had an continuing interest in helping women at MIT and a chance visit to the campus in 1959 provided an opportunity for The President of MIT, Dr Julius Stratton to seek her out and request her assistance in building housing for women on the MIT campus .
She made her gift of $1.5 million with the intent that MIT would expand opportunities for the growing number of women applicants that had been encouraged to study science and technology in high schools around the country in the post Sputnick era . The success of the first building in aiding recruitment led her to fund a second building which was completed in 1966
The designer of the First dormitory was actually Elizabeth Beckwith, an architect and wife of Herbert Beckwith the partner in charge of the Project for the Firm of Anderson Beckwith .