H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College
H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College
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H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College

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H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College

H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College was the coordinate women's college of Tulane University, located in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It was founded by Josephine Louise Newcomb in 1886 in memory of her daughter.

Newcomb was the first women's coordinate college within a United States university. This model was later used in partnerships such as Pembroke College at Brown University and Barnard College at Columbia University.

Josephine Louise Newcomb (born Josephine Louise Le Monnier, 1816–1901) established the college as a memorial to her daughter Sophie, who died in 1870 at the age of 15. Following an initial donation of $100,000, she made gifts totaling $3 million. She wanted to support a liberal academic education for young white women. Newcomb was influenced by Ida Richardson and the college was associated with the Progressive Movement from its earliest years.

Until its move in 1918 to its Broadway campus, Newcomb College was made up mostly of day students. Its move to its current site on the uptown campus of Tulane was also the occasion of development of dormitories and more campus life. Students at Newcomb College became increasingly sophisticated and the school's reputation grew.

The university had recruited Brandt V.B. Dixon as the first president of Newcomb College. To ensure girls and young women were academically prepared for college, Dixon established the Newcomb High School, which operated from 1888 to 1920. The preparatory school ensured that girls were ready to study at the college level, as some parents tried to send girls to Newcomb who were as young as 13 or 14, with little academic preparation. Dixon worked with faculty and students to continue to raise academic standards. By 1916, Newcomb had achieved a strong regional reputation and become "one of seven Southern schools which held a standard college designation within the Southern Association of College Women."

Out of its art school, the college created the business of what became the renowned Newcomb Pottery. This reflected both a progressive interest in craft and parents' desire for their daughters to learn a practical, "industrial" skill in the economically difficult postwar years. It was first headed by Mary Given Sheerer, previously associated with the Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati. While the pottery did not employ that many women, some did find work there. Angela Gregory was artist-in-residence at Newcomb College. It produced more than 70,000 pieces before the pottery program closed in 1939. During these years, the college's art program expanded to include other arts and crafts, such as illustrated bookplates, jewelry, embroidery, and hand-bound books, the latter often given embossed leather covers and elaborate clasps.

In 2016, Women, Art, and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service and the Newcomb Art Museum was shown at the Princeton University Art Museum, ending its tour at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville.

Newcomb college founder Josephine Louise Newcomb and her family commissioned windows designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany for a chapel at the original site of Newcomb College. One of the commissions was for Resurrection, part of a triptych designed in memory of her daughter, Harriet Sophie Newcomb, for whom the college was named. Other Tiffany windows were designed for an area behind the altar of the original chapel in memory of Josephine's husband Warren Newcomb and her mother Mary Sophie LeMonnier.

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