page_title: Kirkland College
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Kirkland College / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Kirner-Johnson building, Hamilton College NY. Built for Kirkland College in 1972, now part of Hamilton College. "Kirner-Johnson's exterior is faced primarily with copper panels from Revere Copper Products in nearby Rome, N.Y. The material has been aged to give it a greenish tint like copper that has weathered for many years."
context_page_description: Kirkland College was a small, private liberal arts women's college located in Clinton, New York, from 1968 to 1978. It was named for Samuel Kirkland, who founded Hamilton College. Hamilton absorbed Kirkland on June 30, 1978, and now maintains its archives and financial endowment, and supports its alumnae community.
context_section_description: Planning for Kirkland began during the 1962-1963 academic year through the influence of then-Hamilton College president Robert W. McEwen.  It was named after the nearby town of Kirkland, in turn named for Samuel Kirkland, the founder of Hamilton.  Hamilton was a men's college. Kirkland College, a college for women, was envisioned as the first of several institutions which would form a cluster similar to the Claremont Colleges.  Though the "cluster" vision was never achieved, two factors led to a more innovative and experimental nature at Kirkland: first, the introduction of progressive views of undergraduate education on the part of Millicent Carey McIntosh, former President of Barnard College, who came on as a member of the first Board of Trustees, and second, the mandate to "make a fresh attack on introducing major fields of learning" without being constrained by the more traditional patterns at Hamilton – a mandate embraced by Kirkland's president, Samuel F. Babbitt.  The untimely passing of Hamilton President McEwen, also a member of the first Kirkland Board, led to the more independent development of the new institution.
  Kirkland opened in 1968 on its own campus, adjacent to Hamilton College. The Kirkland faculty and students operated in a more diverse and transparent community than had been the norm at Hamilton, and, although the new college got off to an exciting start,  the many differences in educational and community functioning inevitably led to small and large conflicts between the two institutions. Meantime, the economic climate, which had been very positive during the planning stages for Kirkland, began to deteriorate. As a result, the debt service accruing to build Kirkland's entirely new campus exerted a tremendous burden on its finances. Construction costs in one year increased by 10%. Planning a large endowment fundraising effort ("The Campaign for the Second Decade") Kirkland turned to Hamilton for a guarantee of potential loss of annual funds. In 1977, with the planned resignation of President Babbitt, Hamilton refused such assistance, and the two colleges were merged under protest  into a single, coeducational Hamilton in 1978.
  A study and consideration in the form of an 'intimate history' by Samuel Fisher Babbitt, Kirkland's only president – Limited Engagement: Kirkland College 1965-1978, An Intimate History of the Rise and Fall of a Coordinate College for Women – provides an in-depth, first-person account of Kirkland's brief existence.  In addition to personal records and recollection, Babbitt was able to employ archival materials housed in the Hamilton College and Columbia University libraries. Despite its dissolution, Kirkland College, through faculty who remained to teach at Hamilton, and through the active influence of its graduates and former trustees, has had a profound influence on the surviving coeducational institution. One wag has commented: "Kirkland lost the battle, but they won the war".
caption: The Kirner-Johnson building was built in 1968 as the main building of Kirkland College, and was renovated by Hamilton College in 2009.[2]
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