President: 1888-1898
Fr. Joseph Havens Richards, S.J., served as Georgetown's 31st president from 1888-1898. Fr. Richards oversaw the completion of much of Healy Hall's interior and enacted significant academic reforms.
Early Jesuit and academic career
Fr. Richards entered the novitiate in Frederick, Maryland in August 1872. After completing his novitiate and juniorate, Fr. Richards studied Philosophy at Woodstock College. In 1878, he was sent to teach physics and mathematics at Georgetown for five years. After returning to Woodstock to study Theology, Fr. Richards was ordained in 1885. On August 15, 1888, Fr. Richards succeeded Fr. James Doonan and became the University’s thirty-first president.1
Healy Hall construction
Upon assuming the office, Fr. Richards was faced with two pressing tasks: completing Healy Hall and celebrating the University’s one hundredth anniversary. A month into his appointment, Fr. Richards wrote his mother that “I am from morning to bedtime in a perfect whirl of business that leaves me no time to even so much as think, and that sends me to bed with the consciousness of a mountain of work still undone. I have begun work again on the new building, and am about to receive bids for further work in completion of the College.”2
Fr. Patrick Healy had begun work on Healy Hall in December 1877, and two years later, the building’s exterior was completed but the interior was left unfinished. The building remained unfinished throughout Fr. Doonan's tenure as president. Under Fr. Richards, a large stone porch was added to the main entrance, the first floor received four large classrooms, large reception rooms and six smaller parlors, the treasurer’s office and the president’s rooms on the second floor were completed. In the basement, large recreation rooms were added including a billiard room, smoking room, and apartment for the baseball club. E. Francis Riggs donated $10,000 for the creation of the Riggs Library as a memorial to his late father and his brother who had attended Georgetown.3
Fr. Richards was anxious to have Healy close to completion for the centennial celebration. Someone wrote that when Fr. Richards started, “the College looked like a poverty stricken school, when he finished it looked like a prosperous Institution.”4
Although the three day centennial celebration beginning on February 20, 1887 was a mere six months after Fr. Richards had become president, much of Healy was completed by that date. The centennial celebration included a Faculty Day, an Alumni Day, and a University Day filled with receptions, reunions, and entertainment.5 Fr. Richards also commissioned a memorial volume of Georgetown’s hundred year history which was compiled by the American Catholic historian John Gilmary Shea and published in 1891.
Academic reforms
Fr. Richards spent much of his presidency revamping the University’s curriculum. He raised the University’s standing in scientific circles by placing Fr. Hagen in charge of the Observatory. Jesuits from Spain and Germany soon followed to study astronomy at Georgetown. One Jesuit student went on to run the Spanish government’s observatory in the Philippines.6 In 1889, Fr. Richards reopened graduate courses in philosophy and science, and in 1890, he had the Medical School, previously an independent legal corporation, transferred to the President and Directors of Georgetown. The University spent $12,000 to establish a new bacteriology department, add instructors in anatomy, physiology, and surgery, and extend the course of study to four years. Fr. Richards dreamed of building a hospital to attach to the Medical School, and in 1898, after years of convincing faculty and donors, the Georgetown University Hospital was completed. At the law school, a new course in Civil Law was added, the moot court was reorganized, the postgraduate course was extended to cover practical work, and the campus received a new building in 1892.
Catholic identity and Harvard Law
During this time, Harvard Law School directly challenged the quality of education at both Georgetown and other Catholic institutions around the country. After requiring a bachelor’s degree for admission in the 1870s, Harvard Law restricted regular admission even further in 1893 by requiring bachelor’s degrees from select colleges. No Catholic colleges made the cut. Viewing this as a public attack on all Catholic colleges, Fr. Richards argued that graduates from “reputable Catholic colleges are better prepared for a course of Law, than any other class of students,” and he sent Harvard materials on Georgetown’s curriculum. Harvard then added Georgetown, Boston College, and the College of the Holy Cross to its list.7
Fr. Richards also focused on strengthening the University’s connection with its Catholic tradition. In 1892, he traveled twice to New York in order to secure John Gilmary Shea’s library which detailed the history of the Catholic Church in the United States. That same year, Elizabeth Wharton Drexel, wife of University alumnus John Vinton Dahlgren, donated $10,000 for the construction of a chapel in the center of campus. Dahlgren Chapel was completed and consecrated in 1893.8
Catholic University
Around this time, Georgetown was forced to navigate the arrival of the new Catholic University in Washington, DC. Bishop Keane, the first Rector of Catholic University, had previously approached Fr. Doonan with an offer to buy Georgetown’s property, and the compatibility of two Catholic institutions in close proximity remained in question. Fr. Richards advocated for friendship and cooperation between the two institutions, as Catholic University came with the approval of the Holy See and could bolster and coordinate Catholic education around the country.9
After two years of worsening health, Fr. Richard’s presidency ended on July 3, 1898, and he was succeeded by Fr. John D. Whitney.
- 1“Obituary: Father Joseph Havens Richards” Woodstock Letters, Vol. LIII, October 1924, p.250.
- 2Id. at p.251.
- 3Gilmary Shea, John. “Memorial of the First Century of Georgetown College, D.C.” 1891, pp.309-11.
- 4“Obituary: Father Joseph Havens Richards,” p.252.
- 5“Centennial Celebration of Georgetown University.” Georgetown College Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2. Nov. 1888, p.1.
- 6“Address of Rev. J. Havens Richards S.J..” Georgetown College Journal, Vol. 22, No. 5. Feb. 1894, p.85-86.
- 7Mahoney, Kathleen A. “Catholic Higher Education in Protestant America: The Jesuits and Harvard in the Age of the University.” John Hopkins University Press, 2003, pp.33-37.
- 8“Obituary: Father Joseph Havens Richards,” p.254.
- 9Id. at p.252.
