Tulane
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
PAUL, an American philanthropist; born near Princeton, N. J., in May, 1801, son of a French immigrant. He received a common school education, and in 1818 he went to New Orlean Orleans , opened a store for general merchandise, and by by 1828 he had amassed a fortune of over $150,000. This business he continued to carry on for nearly 40 years, engaging at the same time in cotton and real estate speculations, and in 1857 he retired with a large fortune. About this time he bought the Stockton place at Princeton, where he subsequently re- 1852 under the auspices of the Univer-sided. For many years he gave liberally to the charitable institutions of Princeton and New Orleans. In 1822 he gave to the city of New Orleans real estate, which with subsequent gifts aggregated $1,100,000, intending to add about $1,000,000 to the amount, but dying intestate, it fell to his heirs. This gift was used to found TULANE UNI- VERSITY (q. v.). He died near Princeton, N. J., March 27, 1887. TULANE UNIVERSITY OF LOU- ISIANA, an institution for higher education, organized in 1884, at New Orleans, leans, when the existing University of Louisiana was placed in the care of the administration of the Tulane Educational Fund. It was established largely through gifts of PAUL TULANE (q. v.). The university includes the Graduate Department, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Technology, and other professional schools. In 1919 there were 348 instructors and 2,908 students. President, A. B. Dinwiddie, LL. D.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The 2,908 students Collier's counted in 1919 have become roughly 14,000, and the institution is now firmly private rather than the state-chartered University of Louisiana it grew out of. Two things the 1921 account could not foresee: Tulane admitted its first Black students in 1963 after litigation, and in August 2005 Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans and shut the campus for an entire semester, scattering undergraduates to host universities across the country. The recovery plan that followed reorganized the university, folding the women's Newcomb College into a single undergraduate Newcomb-Tulane College and closing or shrinking several engineering programs — the descendants of Collier's "College of Technology." On Paul Tulane himself the entry still stands, though the date of his first great gift to New Orleans is 1882, not the 1822 the printers set.
Written for this edition, 2026.