History of Lewis & Clark College

Lewis & Clark College has a proud tradition of excellence in teaching, scholarship, and public service. The College traces its beginning to 1867, when Albany Collegiate Institute was founded by a group of Presbyterian pioneers in Albany, Oregon. The Reverend William J. Monteith served as the school’s first president. At the time, 40 students were enrolled.

The institute’s first alumnae, four women students, graduated in 1873. The following decade, Richard Hopwood Thornton began teaching the first law students at the state’s Northwestern College of Law, in Portland. Its first two students graduated in 1886.

In the early 1890s, the students of Albany Collegiate Institute selected orange and black as the school colors to honor President Condit’s alma mater, Princeton University. In 1905, the institute changed its name to Albany College.

In 1915, the Oregon Legislature decided to relocate the Northwestern College of Law to Eugene, but the law school instead reorganized itself as a private institution and continued operation as an evening school in downtown Portland for 50 years.

In the mid-1930s, Albany College opened a lower-division extension campus in Portland. By 1938, Portland enrollments had outstripped those of the Albany campus. The Board of Trustees closed the Albany campus permanently and focused on developing the Portland campus. Remaining students and faculty moved with the school.

In 1942, a gift sale on behalf of the Lloyd Frank family gave the College its current home. College trustees purchased the 63-acre Fir Acres Estate for $46,000, appointed Morgan Odell as president, and changed the institution’s name to Lewis & Clark College as a “symbol of the pioneering spirit that had made and maintained the College.” That same year, classes started on Palatine Hill with 135 students and eight faculty members, and the student newspaper, The Pioneer Log, began publication. Four years after moving to Fir Acres, the College saw an enrollment increase as veterans returned from World War II. Students adopted for themselves the name Pioneers.

By 1960, the College was thriving, and in 1962 the Overseas and Off-Campus Study Program added a new dimension to the school. Then in 1965, the Northwestern College of Law merged with Lewis & Clark College and was renamed Northwestern School of Law. The law school built a new campus just west of the Fir Acres campus and initiated its Day Division.

As Lewis & Clark grew in reputation and size, it faced new challenges. In 1962, the Columbus Day storm rocked the Pacific Northwest, destroying the biology building and downing campus trees. In 1966, the College gymnasium burned down. At the same time, new buildings were being added to the campus. In 1967 the Aubrey R. Watzek Library and Agnes Flanagan Chapel opened. Meanwhile, the College decided in 1966 to discontinue its formal affiliation with the Presbyterian Church.

In 1984, the College’s postgraduate programs in education, counseling psychology, and public administration were consolidated into the Graduate School of Professional Studies. The school also became home to the Northwest Writing Institute.

The Lewis & Clark community celebrated the College’s 125th anniversary in 1992 and 1993. Trustees approved the awarding of a single degree, the bachelor of arts, to graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences, and they adopted a new College seal, shield, and motto: Explorare, Discere, Sociare (to explore, to learn, to work together).

The several years following the anniversary commemoration encompassed the public phase of the Campaign for Lewis & Clark (1994-1997). Donors generously contributed $76 million toward the endowment, professorships, scholarships, and building projects. The College expanded the Aubrey R. Watzek Library and constructed two new buildings—the Fred W. Fields Center for the Visual Arts and the James F. Miller Center for the Humanities. Also during this time, the College’s graduate program in public administration moved to Portland State University, and the Law School’s Paul L. Boley Law Library earned designation from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as Oregon’s depository library. It is the first and only law school library to carry this distinction.

In 2000, Lewis & Clark purchased from the Sisters of St. Francis an 18-acre estate immediately south of the Fir Acres campus, now called South Campus. With generous funding from the Mary Stuart Rogers Foundation, the College completed extensive renovations to one of the main buildings on the estate and consolidated the programs and staff of the renamed Graduate School of Education to Rogers Hall, its new South Campus home. The following year, the College received the gift of the Cooley House. Located in the nearby Dunthorpe neighborhood, it has become the presidential residence.

The graduate school has established itself as a center for the preparation of leaders through programs in teacher education, counseling psychology, educational administration, and school counseling. In 2004, the school initiated a program leading to a doctorate in educational leadership, Lewis & Clark’s first doctoral offering.

Improvements to the Fir Acres and law school campuses kept pace with these developments, and the three schools of the College and their supporting offices today occupy a campus of 137 acres. In 2002, the College dedicated the law school’s Louise and Erskine Wood Sr. Hall and an impressive renovation and enlargement to Boley Law Library. Later that year, the College opened three new apartment-style residence halls, Roberts Hall, East Hall, and West Hall, and renamed its art gallery the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art.

In 2003, Lewis & Clark completed the renovation and expansion of Albany Quadrangle, an original building of the Fir Acres estate. This year, the College opened John R. Howard Hall, a 50,000-square foot teaching and research building. Lewis & Clark has emerged as an innovator in constructing facilities that feature adaptive, advanced technologies and green building techniques. Howard Hall, for example, received a 2002 Honor Award for Environmental and Sustainable Design from the Oregon Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Devoted to excellence in the arts and sciences, education, counseling, and the law, Lewis & Clark actively prepares students for civic leadership. In 2002, it was one of only four colleges in the nation to receive a Truman Foundation Honor Institution Award, which recognized the College’s commitment to encouraging outstanding young people to pursue public service careers.

Four presidents have succeeded Morgan Odell. John Howard was president from 1960 to 1981, James Gardner served from 1981 to 1989, and Michael Mooney from 1989 to 2003. Thomas J. Hochstettler became president on August 16, 2004.