page_title: Rutgers University
section_title: Financial troubles and a benefactor
hierarchical_section_title: Rutgers University / History / Financial troubles and a benefactor
caption_attribution_description: English: Oil painting of Henry Rutgers by Henry Inman (1801–1846).
context_page_description: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, commonly referred to as Rutgers University, or RU, is an American public research university in New Jersey. It is the largest institution of higher education in New Jersey.
  Rutgers was originally chartered as Queen's College on November 10, 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The college was renamed Rutgers College in 1825 in honor of Colonel Henry Rutgers. For most of its existence, Rutgers was a private liberal arts college but it evolved into a coeducational public research university after being designated "The State University of New Jersey" by the New Jersey Legislature in laws enacted in 1945 and 1956.
  Rutgers has three campuses located throughout New Jersey: New Brunswick campus in New Brunswick and adjacent Piscataway, the Newark campus, and the Camden campus. The university has additional facilities elsewhere in the state. Instruction is offered by 9,000 faculty members in 175 academic departments to over 45,000 undergraduate students and more than 20,000 graduate and professional students.
context_section_description: In its early years, due to a lack of funds, Queen's College was closed for two extended periods. Early trustees considered merging the college with the College of New Jersey, in Princeton (the measure failed by one vote) and later considered relocating to New York City. In 1808, after raising $12,000, the college was temporarily reopened and broke ground on a building of its own, called "Old Queens," designed by architect John McComb, Jr. The college's third president, the Rev. Ira Condict, laid the cornerstone on April 27, 1809. Shortly after, the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, founded in 1784, relocated from Brooklyn, New York, to New Brunswick, and shared facilities with Queen's College (and the Queen's College Grammar School, as all three institutions were then overseen by the Reformed Church in America). During those formative years, all three institutions fit into Old Queens. In 1830, the Queen's College Grammar School moved across the street, and in 1856, the Seminary relocated to a seven-acre (28,000 m²) tract less than one-half mile (800 m) away.
  After several years of closure resulting from an economic depression after the War of 1812, Queen's College reopened in 1825 and was renamed "Rutgers College" in honor of American Revolutionary War hero Colonel Henry Rutgers (1745–1830). According to the Board of Trustees, Colonel Rutgers was honored because he epitomized Christian values. A year after the school was renamed, it received two donations from its namesake: a $200 bell still hanging from the cupola of Old Queen's and a $5,000 bond (equivalent to $113,000 in 2019) which placed the college on sound financial footing.
caption: Oil painting of Revolutionary War hero and philanthropist, Colonel Henry Rutgers (1745–1830), early benefactor and namesake of Rutgers University
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