Корнелл университетіндегі Сейдж Холл тарихы

Sage Hall was built in 1875 at Cornell University's Ithaca, New York campus. Originally designed as a residential building, it currently houses the Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Although women had previously enrolled in Cornell as early as 1870, the absence of a women's dormitory was problematic in attracting and retaining female students. Sage Hall was built in 1875, financed by Ithaca businessman Henry W. Sage, to fill this need. "When you are ready to carry out the idea of educating young women as thoroughly as young men," Sage told his friend Ezra Cornell in 1868, "I will provide the endowment to enable you to do so." Sage and Andrew Dickson White toured Oberlin College to study facilities being used there to successfully undertake coeducation. With Sage's $250,000 donation, construction started in 1872 under the guidance of professor of architecture Charles Babcock. In 1875, Sage College welcomed 25 female students, making the university a pioneer in coeducation and attracting many applications. Early graduates included two college presidents, Julia Josephine Thomas Irvine (Wellesley) and Martha Carey Thomas (Bryn Mawr); a prominent women's suffragist, Harriet May Mills; a publisher and author, Ruth Putnam; and the noted Cornell professor and scientist, Anna Botsford Comstock. Sage Hall was not equally accessible to all female students, however. In 1929, two Black female students, Pauline Davis and Ruth Peyton, were denied residency at Sage by the Dean of Women, R. Louise Fitch. The decision was upheld by Cornell President Livingston Farrand, who wrote in a letter to Ruth Peyton's mother that " unfortunate as it may be, the placing of a colored student in one of the dormitories inevitably causes more embarrassment than satisfaction for such a student." His predecessor, Jacob Gould Schurman, did involve himself in a similar controversy in 1911, when he had ruled in favor of admitting two Black female students to Sage College after 269 of their white peers had petitioned against it, declaring, “University doors must be open to all students irrespective of race or color or creed ” By the time the decision was made, however, the two students had already left Cornell.

When the building opened, it offered some of the most luxurious accommodations of any college dormitory in the United States. Residents had access to a swimming pool, gym, botanical conservatory, indoor plumbing, and elegant furnishings. The building contained features that defined it as a residential college (as opposed to a traditional dormitory) such as a dining hall, classrooms, a library, and professorial offices. It could house up to 120 students. In the 1930s, Sage became a graduate student dormitory. As most University run student housing was consolidated into the West and North Campus areas, Sage became something of an anomaly: it was the only student living facility in the central campus area, and the only building that combined living and classroom space. It also housed the Cornell Career Center in its eastern wing. While Sage rooms were spacious compared to other dorms, by the 1990s the facility was significantly run down, as the University, which planned to transform the entire building into classroom space, did little more than basic maintenance. The 1994–1995 school year was the last in which Sage housed students.

Between April 1996 and August 1998, the university undertook a renovation, at the cost of $38 million, to convert the building into the new home for the Johnson Graduate School of Management. The top segment of the building's iconic spire that had been removed years before was rebuilt. A glass ceiling was constructed over the inner courtyard, changing it into an atrium, using a design inspired by the main exhibition hall at the Oxford University Museum. Babcock's original design of Sage Hall had been influenced by that same museum's design.