Lives Sacrificed

This paper takes Sage Hall during the period from 1872 to 1884 as its architectural subject. The former date marks its construction on the campus of Cornell University, significant for being the first accommodation made by an American east coast university for the sake of co-education. The latter date marks an incident in which the University’s Board of Trustees decreed that all women students who chose not to live in Sage Hall would be effectively expelled. Architecturally, Sage Hall was a key player in each of these episodes. As a dormitory, it programmatically mitigated what was perceived to be women’s lesser physiological capacity for academics, and trained women for their social role as men’s helpers. Sage Hall was also a clear manifestation of the difference in pedagogical obligations conferred to the male students, and was ultimately a crucial point of leverage by which the Board wrested autonomy and self-governance from the women students. In other words, Sage Hall was both a result and means of enforcing separate rules depending on students’ sex.

Volume Editors
Jasmine Benyamin, Kyle Reynolds, Mo Zell, Nikole Bouchard & Whitney Moon

ISBN
978-1-944214-28-9