page_title: Pembroke College in Brown University
section_title: Founding and early history
hierarchical_section_title: Pembroke College in Brown University / Founding and early history
caption_attribution_description: English: Smith-Buonanno Hall, Brown University
context_page_description: Pembroke College in Brown University was the coordinate women's college for Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1891 and merged into Brown in 1971.
context_section_description: The founding of the Women's College Adjunct to Brown University in October 1891, later renamed the Women's College in Connection with Brown University, provided an organizational structure to allow women to attend that institution; Brown College remained as the men's college. The system resembled those at Columbia University (Columbia College for men, Barnard College for women) and Harvard University (Harvard College for men, Radcliffe College for women).
  Brown's single-sex status had first been challenged in April 1874, when the university received an application from a female. The Advisory and Executive Committee decided that admitting women at the time was not a good proposal, but they continued to revisit the matter annually until 1888.  Subsequent discussions led to the creation of the Women's College October 1, 1891.
  The first women students were: Maude Bonner, Clara Comstock, Nettie Goodale Murdoch, Elizabeth Peckham, Anne T. Weeden, and Mary Emma Woolley. Their classes were held at a grammar school that had once been associated with Brown. After the boys went home at two o’clock, the women arrived to learn from their professors in a classroom on the second floor. The school had no lights, so the women worked until the daylight was too dim to read by. One of the major advocates for admitting women to Brown University, Sarah Doyle raised  $75,000 to build the first permanent building for Brown's new female students; named Pembroke Hall, this structure would be renamed  Pembroke College in 1928.
  Official recognition of the college as a body of the university came in 1896.  The college received its own faculty in 1903. By 1910, 40% of students were from outside Rhode Island.
caption: Sayles Gym (1907), built as the Women's gymnasium. Later re-christened Smith-Buonanno Hall.
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