© 1997 Lawrence University Press
Introduction
On the northwest corner of Hartford and Downer Avenues in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, stands a group of buildings that now is part of the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The thoroughly modern interiors of these buildings, housing university offices and classrooms, stand in juxtaposition to their red sandstone and St. Louis pressed-brick façades done in "English Domestic Gothic" architectural style.
An historical marker on the site explains that, until 1964, these buildings, of which only the original façades remain, were home to another educational institution, Milwaukee-Downer College. This was a college for women only, a product of the merger, in 1895, of two earlier women's colleges that had roots going back to the middle 19th century. In 1964, with profound reluctance and regret, Milwaukee-Downer sold its campus to the University of Wisconsin, using the proceeds from the sale, along with its endowment funds, to effect a consolidation with Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.
To understand the legacy of Milwaukee-Downer College is to understand the nature of what, during the span of its 19th- and 20th-century history, the college produced -- namely the "Milwaukee-Downer Woman." This was a woman characterized by independence of mind and action, possessing the ability to take on and successfully meet all manner of challenges. Yet, attractive though we may find her to be, it is fascinating to realize that there are strong reasons for believing that this kind of woman was actually the unintended consequence of the Milwaukee-Downer education.
We will, in this volume, glimpse the historical record of Milwaukee-Downer College. In so doing, we will find that the college operated in accordance with an ideology that viewed women's role as delimited by identifiable boundaries, clearly distinct from, yet complementary to, the role of men. Indeed, the rhetoric and restrictions of the school explicitly sought to limit students and alumnae to activities related to home and family, those having a legitimate place within women's own "separate sphere."
What we also will find is that there were other particular forces at work in the Milwaukee-Downer environment that were actually much more powerful in shaping Milwaukee-Downer students and alumnae, such that they actually became women of independent mind and action, a result quite different from that which the college intended. Among these forces were the character of the faculty and administration of the school and the impact of its institutional rituals and traditions. Above all, the force that produced the individual we identify as the "Milwaukee-Downer Woman" was the liberal arts education that students at the college received.
Part I: The Character of Milwaukee-Downer College, 1895-1921