In the year 1960, just 22 women were admitted to MIT, in comparison to 914 men. After decades of feeling pressure to admit more female students, President James Killian and his Chancellor Julius Stratton made the decision not only to admit more women to the university, but to actively work to improve the environment and resources available for female students.
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!”
An early and vocal advocate for women’s rights and increased visibility of women at MIT, Katharine Dexter, (1875-1967) graduated from MIT 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 as well as supporting women’s right to vote as 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. Starting in the 1940s, 120 Bay State Road in Boston was occupied as a women’s dormitory (the only such dormitory for female MIT students at the time), and it housed approximately 19 graduate and undergraduate women students from the early 1950′s until McCormick opened. The Bay State Road dorm was over a mile from campus, which was less than ideal. As a result, Katharine funded a taxi service to shuttle the students to campus on poor weather days.
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 constructed 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 MIT’s architecture faculty and principal of the firm Anderson, Beckwith and Haible. Elizabeth McMillin Beckwith, Herbert’s wife, also an architect in the firm, assisted with the design. The dorm 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 upwards of 255 students.
To learn more about McCormick Hall, feel free to make a research appointment with us by emailing histcomm@cambridgema.gov.
