THE ROBERT COLLEGE:

THE BUILDING OF AN AMERICAN SCHOOL IN İSTANBUL, 1863-1971

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
OF
MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

BY

ZEKİ FURKAN SARILICAN

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR
THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
IN
THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE

AUGUST 2023
 Approval of the thesis:

THE ROBERT COLLEGE: THE BUILDING OF AN AMERICAN SCHOOL

IN İSTANBUL, 1863-1971

submitted by ZEKİ FURKAN SARILICAN in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History of Architecture, the
Graduate School of Social Sciences of Middle East Technical University by,

Prof. Dr. Sadettin KİRAZCI

Dean
Graduate School of Social Sciences

Prof. Dr. Cana BİLSEL

Head of Department
Department of Architecture

Prof. Dr. T. Elvan ALTAN

Supervisor
Department of Architecture

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ahmet ERSOY

Co-Supervisor
Boğaziçi University
Department of History

Examining Committee Members:

Assist. Prof. Dr. Pelin YONCACI ARSLAN (Head of the

Examining Committee)
Middle East Technical University
Department of Architecture

Prof. Dr. T. Elvan ALTAN (Supervisor)

Middle East Technical University
Department of Architecture

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ahmet ERSOY (Co-Supervisor)

Boğaziçi University
Department of History

Prof. Dr. Paolo GİRARDELLİ

Boğaziçi University
Department of History

Prof. Dr. Namık ERKAL

TED University
Department of Architecture
PLAGIARISM

I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and
presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare
that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all
material and results that are not original to this work.

Name, Last Name: Zeki Furkan SARILICAN

Signature:

iii
 ABSTRACT

THE ROBERT COLLEGE:

THE BUILDING OF AN AMERICAN SCHOOL IN İSTANBUL, 1863-1971

SARILICAN, Zeki Furkan

M.A., The Department of History of Architecture
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. T. Elvan ALTAN
Co-supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ahmet ERSOY

August 2023, 134 pages

This thesis investigates the American missionary school Robert College, and its
significant presence in İstanbul in not only educational but also architectural terms.
The focus is on the late Ottoman and Republican contexts, the period from 1863 to
1971 marked by the official opening of Robert College and its conversion to Boğaziçi
University. The founder Cyrus Hamlin, funder Christopher R. Robert, and Aptullah
Kuran, the last Turkish president of the college and the founding rector of Boğaziçi
University as well as the architect of the last building in the college campus, are
marking figures of this period`s beginning and end.
As the first and still the oldest continually running American school outside of the
United States of America, Robert College is distinguished from other examples of its
time via putting science at the core of education and making English the medium of
instruction. This thesis examines in detail the formation of the Robert College campus
that developed not with a master plan but rather slowly in time with the construction
of buildings as needed. The formation of the campus with the construction of the neo-
classical buildings in the late Ottoman period, and its transformation with the

iv
construction of a modern building in the Republican period will be examined in order
to understand the spatial and architectural characteristics of the campus.

Keywords: Robert College, American Missionary Schools, Aptullah Kuran, Boğaziçi

University

v
 ÖZ

ROBERT KOLEJ:

İSTANBUL’DA BİR AMERİKAN OKULUNUN İNŞASI, 1863-1971

SARILICAN, Zeki Furkan

Yüksek Lisans, Mimarlık Tarihi Bölümü
Tez Yöneticisi: Prof. Dr. T. Elvan ALTAN
Ortak Tez Yöneticisi: Doç. Dr. Ahmet ERSOY

Ağustos 2023, 134 sayfa

Bu çalışma bir Amerikan misyoner okulu olarak kurulan Robert Kolej’i ve kolejin
İstanbul’daki varlığını sadece eğitim değil mimari bağlamı içinde de inceler.
Çalışmanın odağı, geç Osmanlı ve Cumhuriyet dönemlerinde, Robert Kolej’in resmi
açılış tarihi olan 1863 ile okulun Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’ne çevrildiği 1971 tarihleri
arasını kapsar. Okulun kurucusu Cyrus Hamlin ve kuruluş için fonu sağlayan
Christopher R. Robert ile okulun son Türk müdürü, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’nin kurucu
rektörü ve aynı zamanda kampüsünde inşa edilen son yapının mimarı Aptullah Kuran,
okulun kuruluşundan dönüştürülmesine kadar geçen sürecin başlangıç ve bitişinin
önemli aktörleridir.

Amerikan toprakları dışında kurulan ilk ve eğitime devam eden en eski eğitim kurumu
olan Robert Kolej, bu özelliğinin yanı sıra bilimi merkeze alması ve eğitim dilinin
İngilizce olmasıyla döneminde kurulan okullardan ayrılmaktadır. Bu tez Robert

vi
Kolej’in kampüsünün bir master planına göre değil, zamanla ihtiyaca istinaden inşa
edilen yapılarla yavaş yavaş gelişmesini detaylı şekilde incelemektedir. Geç Osmanlı
döneminde kampüsün neo klasik üsluptaki yapıların inşasıyla oluşması ve Cumhuriyet
döneminde modern bir yapının inşasıyla yaşadığı dönüşüm, Robert Kolej kampüsünün
mekansal ve mimari karakterini anlamak için incelenmektedir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Robert Kolej, Amerikan Misyoner Okulları, Aptullah Kuran,

Boğaziçi Üniversitesi

vii
 DEDICATION

To My Dear Family,
Fatih and Esra Sarılıcan.

viii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to kindly thank my academic advisor Prof. Dr. T.
Elvan Altan and my co-advisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ahmet Ersoy. They always kept me
on track and done far more than an advisor should do. Without their help, this work
could not have been done; even in the most desperate times of my academic life, they
were my rock and always right next to me whenever I needed. If this study ended
properly, the utmost contributions on that came from my dearest advisors. I am grateful
to Prof. Dr. T. Elvan Altan, who showed great patience and always helped me
whenever I needed it; although I was far from METU most of the time, she did her
best and never left me in the dark. I am also thankful to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ahmet Ersoy
for his kindness in every sense and for providing the opportunity to a young academic
to study an almost unstudied archive. Moreover, I would also want to express my
gratitude for their mentorship apart from this study, by expanding my horizon on new
topics and projects and being always with me whenever I need.

I am grateful to all members of the examining committee, Prof. Dr. Paolo Girardelli,
Prof. Dr. Namık Erkal and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pelin Yoncacı Arslan, for their valuable
opinions and comments on this thesis. Their comments and advice will always be with
me.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the Boğaziçi Archive and Documentation Center, their
head Cengiz Kırlı and their dear archiver Mina Çakmak. Without their help, I would
not be able to begin and carry on this research. Unfortunately, this center was shut
down during my research and I hope we will learn how to treat well the things that
could save us from the darkness of ignorance.

I am also thankful to my dearest professors from MEF University, Prof. Dr. Şebnem
Yücel and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hilal Uğurlu, for their support and believing in me and
encouraging me for pushing my limits and being always a call away every now and
then since we first met. Also, I am thankful to Gonca Yılmaz who always be with me

ix
no matter how desperate I get sometimes. They all always stand by me and be the
dearest supporters of me in the writing of this thesis and building a future in academia.

I am also thankful to my colleagues and friends for their strong companionship, and
specifically to Ece Savaş as being my academic buddy and reading my articles and
sharing her valuable opinions about them.

I am more than thankful to my dear family, Fatih Sarılıcan and Esra Sarılıcan, for being
the strongest support and the rock I lean on, and to my dearest sister Ayşe Sena
Sarılıcan for doing her best to live with me. They never hesitated on their belief on me
even for a dull moment. I hope they will stand concretely by me in the future.

In the long run, I have witnessed and am ashamed of seeing how valuable professors
of one of the most respectful universities of Türkiye raise their voices and turn their
back to darkness and keep widening our horizons no matter how cruel it gets. I feel
honored to be part of two of the most respected academic institutions and had a chance
to experience how to dare to do the right thing and be able to raise voice for it. I hope
we will meet on the days when our professors will do what they are doing great.

“There is no darkness - but ignorance.” – William Shakespeare.

x
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PLAGIARISM ............................................................................................................ iii

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................ iv
ÖZ ............................................................................................................................... vi
DEDICATION .......................................................................................................... viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................... ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................ xi
LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................xiii
CHAPTERS
1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1
1.1. Aim and Scope .................................................................................................. 1

1.2. Literature Review .............................................................................................. 3

1.3. Archival Sources and Methodology .................................................................. 6

1.4. Structure ............................................................................................................ 9

2. THE ROBERT COLLEGE IN THE OTTOMAN PERIOD.................................. 11

2.1. The Foundation of the College in Late Ottoman Empire ................................ 12

2.1.1. Schools of the American Missionaries in the Ottoman Territory ............ 12

2.1.2. Cyrus Hamlin and Christopher R. Robert as the Founders ...................... 24
2.2. The Formation of the College Campus ........................................................... 32

2.2.1. The Choice of the Site .............................................................................. 33

2.2.2. The Buildings in the Campus ................................................................... 41
2.2.3. The Analysis of the Campus in Early Twentieth Century: Alfred D. F.
……..Hamlin and Caleb Gates Report (1909) ................................................... 58
2.2.4. Concluding Remarks on the Formation of the Campus ........................... 61
3. THE ROBERT COLLEGE IN THE REPUBLICAN PERIOD ............................ 65
3.1. The Adaptation of the College in Republican Türkiye ................................... 66

3.1.1. Education in Early Twentieth Century ..................................................... 66

3.1.2. Education in Mid-Twentieth Century ...................................................... 76

xi
 3.2. The Transformation of the College Campus ................................................... 80

3.2.1. The Campus in the Early Republican Period ........................................... 81

3.2.2. The Analysis of the Campus in Mid-Twentieth Century: The SOM
……..Report (1955) ........................................................................................... 87
3.2.3. The New Engineering Building and Aptullah Kuran as the Architect ..... 96
3.2.4. Concluding Notes on the Transformation of the Campus ...................... 104
Coda: From a Private American School to a Public Turkish University ............. 105

4. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 109

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 114
APPENDICIES
A. TURKISH SUMMARY/TÜRKÇE ÖZET.......................................................... 125
B. THESIS PERMISSION FORM / TEZ İZİN FORMU ........................................ 134

xii
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Robert College Campus from the Hill. ........................................................ 1

Figure 2: Founders of Robert College Cyrus Hamlin and Christopher R. Robert .... 24
Figure 3: The legal document about the land at Rumeli Fortress sold to.................. 29
Figure 4: Byzantine Imperial Palace, Tekfur Sarayı, İstanbul. ................................. 33
Figure 5: Map of the Bosphorus (Robert College site highlighted by the author).... 34
Figure 6: Yıldız Palace. ............................................................................................. 35
Figure 7: Dolmabahçe Palace. .................................................................................. 36
Figure 8: The Bosporus view from the Robert College Campus. ............................. 36
Figure 9: The original house of Robert College, built in 1798, Bebek ..................... 39
Figure 10 Aerial Photograph of the Robert College Campus and Rumeli Fortress. . 40
Figure 11: Robert College Campus, Rumeli Fortress, and Bektashi convent........... 40
Figure 12: Overlooking the Bosporus and the towers of Rumeli Fortress ............... 41
Figure 13: Robert College Master Plan, before 1955................................................ 42
Figure 14: Hamlin Hall. ............................................................................................ 44
Figure 15: Hamlin Hall Interior. ............................................................................... 44
Figure 16: Basement Plan of the Hamlin Hall. ......................................................... 45
Figure 17: Truss Details, Hamlin Hall. ..................................................................... 46
Figure 18: Roof Plan, Hamlin Hall. .......................................................................... 46
Figure 19: Alteration project for the roof of the Hamlin Hall by A. D. F. Hamlin. . 47
Figure 20: Study Hall. .............................................................................................. 48
Figure 21: Study Hall on the right of the Hamlin Hall. ............................................ 48
Figure 22: Late 1880s, View of the Campus. ........................................................... 49
Figure 23: Albert Long Hall, 1909............................................................................ 49
Figure 24: Albert Long Hall and Hamlin Hall. ......................................................... 50
Figure 25: The Roof Detail of Albert Long Hall. ..................................................... 51
Figure 26: Theodorus Hall. ....................................................................................... 52

xiii
Figure 27: Theodorus Hall, Structural Plan. ............................................................. 52
Figure 28: Washburn Hall ......................................................................................... 53
Figure 29-30: Washburn Hall, Façade and Revised Facade. .................................... 54
Figure 31: Second Floor Plan of Washburn Hall. ..................................................... 55
Figure 32: The Fourth Floor Radiator Installation Plan of Washburn Hall. ............. 56
Figure 33: Dr. Bertram Van Dyke Post at Natural History Museum,
…………...Washburn Hall......................................................................................... 56
Figure 34: Gates Hall, originally built as the Robert College
…………...Engineering Building. ............................................................................. 57
Figure 35: West Façade of Gates Hall (partially built). ............................................ 57
Figure 36: A Photo of New Construction in Robert College and At The Back of
…………..The Photograph, Giuglio Mongeri as The Architect. ............................... 59
Figure 37: Topographic Plan, 1909. .......................................................................... 60
Figure 38: Site Plan, 1909. ........................................................................................ 61
Figure 39: Local and Foreign Individuals and Firms noted on the documents. ........ 62
Figure 40: A note that shows the place of extreme filling ........................................ 63
Figure 41-42: Robert College Campus. .................................................................... 64
Figure 43: The Layout of the Proposed Athletic Field for Robert College. ............. 65
Figure 44: Turkish and American Flags at Robert College. ..................................... 78
Figure 45: Robert College Quadrangle before Co-Education. .................................. 79
Figure 46: The Property of American Colleges in Istanbul, 1920. ........................... 81
Figure 47: Entrance to Robert College, 1944............................................................ 82
Figure 48-49: Van Millingen Hall............................................................................. 83
Figure 50: Construction of Van Millengen Hall, ...................................................... 84
Figure 51: Construction of Van Millengen Hall. ...................................................... 84
Figure 52: Second Floor Plan of Van Millengen Hall. ............................................. 85
Figure 53: Construction of Van Millengen Hall with Students Around. .................. 86
Figure 54: RC Campus before 1927. Left to Right. Hamlin Hall, Washburn Hall ... 86
Figure 55: Robert College Campus Quadrangle. ...................................................... 87
Figure 56: Construction works of the Hilton Hotel in 1953. .................................... 89
Figure 57: İstanbul Hilton Hotel. .............................................................................. 89

xiv
Figure 58: Vicinity Map by SOM. ............................................................................ 90
Figure 59: SOM Report Existing Campus Map. ....................................................... 92
Figure 60: Gates Hall, Old Engineering Building Ground Floor. ............................. 93
Figure 61: New Construction Suggestions by SOM. ................................................ 94
Figure 62: SOM Standards for space requirements. ................................................. 94
Figure 63: Robert College Bebek Campus, photo from the airplane ........................ 95
Figure 64: Old Engineering Building named Gates Hall. ......................................... 96
Figure 65: SOM Preliminary Drawing for New Engineering Building. ................... 97
Figure 66: Architect Aptullah Kuran. ....................................................................... 98
Figure 67: Robert College Science and Engineering Building, ................................ 99
Figure 68: Sketch by Aptullah Kuran for New Engineering Building. .................... 99
Figure 69: Ground Floor Plan for New Engineering Building,
…………...by Aptullah Kuran. ................................................................................ 100
Figure 70: Sections for New Engineering Building, drawn by Aptullah Kuran. .... 100
Figure 71: Ceremony of New Engineering Building. ............................................. 101
Figure 72-73-74: Photographs of the Construction of New Engineering Building 102
Figure 75: New Engineering Building, Perkins Hall. ............................................. 103
Figure 76: Aerial Photographs of the Robert College Campus .............................. 104
Figure 77: Publication of the law about the foundation of Boğaziçi University. ... 108
Figure 78: Robert College Bebek Campus and Rumeli Fortress. ........................... 110
Figure 79: Panoramic view of Old Darulfünun building and Hagia Sophia .......... 110
Figure 80: Hamlin Hall. .......................................................................................... 112
Figure 81: Old Darülfünun Building. ..................................................................... 112

xv
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Aim and Scope

This thesis investigates the American missionary school Robert College, and its
significant presence in İstanbul in not only educational but also architectural terms.
The focus is on the late Ottoman and Republican contexts, the period from 1863 to
1971 marked by the official opening of the college and its conversion into a public
institution named Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University. (Figure 1)

Figure 1: Robert College Campus from the Hill.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

1
Robert College was in a special condition among the American Schools within the
Ottoman Empire such as those in Beirut, Cairo, Jerusalem and many others, and could
be seen as the proof of the special interest of the United States of America (USA) in
the Middle East as founded in the capital city of the empire. The thesis focuses on
Robert College as a case study that could be used to better understand the role of the
United States in education, its architectural representation, and the college's position
upon the challenges of these contexts. Although American missionary activities have
been extensively studied, most of them do not take architectural evidence into focus.
Indeed, buildings could stand over centuries and play an important role in representing
ideas, know-how and practices of everyday life. Not only the buildings but also the
documents about the built environment, such as photographs and drawings, are also
telling about the production of architecture in a certain context. In this thesis, I locate
this architectural evidence at the center of the research.

Throughout the period that will be covered, Robert College began as a missionary
school founded by Cyrus Hamlin and funded by Christopher R. Robert, turned into a
private school with the newly founded Turkish Republic`s institutional reforms, and
eventually bifurcated as a university in the Bebek campus and a private high school in
the Arnavutköy campus. Thus, the main actors, Cyrus Hamlin and Christopher R.
Robert as the founders, and the last Turkish president and founding rector of Boğaziçi
University Aptullah Kuran, who also designed a new building to be constructed in the
campus, will be considered as the marking figures of this period’s beginning and end.

This study aims to understand Robert College in both educational and architectural
contexts of both the late Ottoman and Republican periods, whereby the politics of the
period also played a significant frame of analysis. Robert College was founded as the
first and still the oldest continually running American school outside of the USA, and
it is thus distinguished from other examples of its time. But differences are not limited
to these. Unlike other missionary schools, Robert College put science at the core of
education and made English the medium of instruction. In relation to these features of
the college, the educational context of its foundation and transformation from the late
Ottoman to the Republican period will be analyzed.

On the other hand, the focus of the analysis will be the architectural context of Robert
College. Beginning from the purchase of the land, with a spectacular location on top

2
of the hill in İstanbul where Rumeli Fortress is located, the aim is to examine in detail
the formation of its campus not upon a master plan, but with the construction of
buildings upon need. The visual harmony of the campus, on the other hand, depended
on the neo-renaissance style applied in its buildings, which would only change in the
mid-twentieth century with the new Engineering Building constructed as the last
building in the campus, designed by Aptullah Kuran in 1963 in the modern language
of the period. The formation of the campus with the construction of the neo-classical
buildings in the late Ottoman period and its transformation with the construction of a
modern building in the Republican period will be examined in order to understand the
spatial and architectural characteristics of the campus.

1.2. Literature Review

In this thesis, the architectural evidence is at the center of the research as the aim is to
write the architectural history of the Robert College campus. Developing a discussion
on the spatial history of the campus, initially requires the primary references of
architectural history that focus on the nineteenth and twentieth-century Ottoman and
Turkish contexts. The secondary sources on the Ottoman and Republican contexts,
will be used to better understand the architectural production at the time and in
İstanbul, especially around the campus area.

In this matter, Quataert explained the context of the Ottoman Empire as “the wars of
contraction and internal rebellions”; this explanation goes in line with the obstacles
that the Ottoman Empire was facing and the secondary sources will help better analyze
this period in relation to not only the contemporary military defeats but mainly the
relationship in a wider context with other foreign countries, especially the USA.1 The
effort to modernize the Ottoman Empire was an undeniable feature of the late period
of the Ottoman Empire, and this effort also affected the production of architecture.
Batur explained this period in a sense that goes beyond the classical understanding of
the term “westernization”. She covered a wide range of buildings from palaces, and

1
Quataert, D. (2002) “The Nineteenth Century”, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922, pp.54-74.
Cambridge University Press.

3
barracks to educational institutions. As well as the buildings, how architecture changed
and turned into a profession within the Ottoman Empire was also analyzed by her. This
has also helped in framing the process of the formation of Robert College, since the
process consists of different individuals and companies and professionals.2 Moreover,
İstanbul where Robert College was built, experienced a series of developments in that
period, and the urban fabric of the city needed to be regularized, as Zeynep Çelik
explained in her book on the nineteenth century of İstanbul. She analyzed many
aspects of contemporary transformation in the capital city including the effects of fires
on city planning, new modes of transportation and the rediscovery of the Bosphorus.
All these are important in the process of analyzing the city of İstanbul and situating
the Robert College campus in its urban and architectural context.3

On the other hand, the Republic of Türkiye founded in 1923, experienced political,
sociocultural, educational and architectural challenges in the first half of the twentieth
century, and secondary literature examines these series of events such as the works by
Bozdoğan that explain the effects of the early Republic and its process of nation
building, and the mid-twentieth century and its political shift on the production of
architecture.4

2
Batur, Afife. “Batılılaşma Döneminde Osmanlı Mimarlığı”, Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye
Ansiklopedisi, vol.4, 1985, p.1038-1067.

3
Çelik, Zeynep. “Regularization of the Urban Fabric,” “Transportation,” “The Grand Schemes,” The
Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century. Seattle and London:
University of Washington Press, 1986. p. 49-125.

For further reading about the late Ottoman period, see:

Yıldırım, Yavuz and Süha Özkan, “Final Years of the Ottoman Empire,” Renata Holod ve Ahmet Evin
(der.), Modern Turkish Architecture, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. İlhan
Tekeli,“Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Kentsel Dönüşümler”, Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye
Ansiklopedisi,1985, c. 4. Crinson, M. “The Spectacle of Alliance: British Architecture in İstanbul”,
Empire Building. Orientalism and Victorian Architecture. 1996. Shirine Hamadeh, “Ottoman
Expressions of Early Modernity and the ‘Inevitable’ Question of Westernization,” The Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians, 63/1. March 2004. Suraiya Faroqhi, Artisans of Empire: Crafts and
craftspeople under the Ottomans. London, I.B. Tauris, 2009. Girardelli, P. “Crossings and networks:
the itinerancy of architecture, planning, and landscape in a plural environment,” Proceedings of the
international conference Museums in Motion, University of Thessaly, Volos, July 3-4, 2015, edited by
S. Alifragis et a., 2015, p. 131-137. Ersoy, A. Mimarlık Tarihinde Şarkiyatçılığın Sonu. In B. Kaya,
Dolmabahçe Mekanın Hafızası (p. 405-414). İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları. 2016.
Ersoy, A. XIX. Yüzyılda Osmanlı Mimarlık Tarihi ve Kuramsal Söylemin İnşası. In Mimar Kemalettin
ve Çağı (p. 117-126). TMMOB Mimarlar Odası. 2019.

4
For further readings about the Republican period, see:

4
Sources on not only political, urban and architectural, but also educational
developments form the basis of this research. It is necessary to understand the process
of reshaping education from the late Ottoman to the Republican periods in order to
situate the foundation of the Robert College in these contexts. The late Ottoman period
and the transformation of education within the Ottoman Empire was analyzed by
Benjamin C. Fortna. In his studies, he examined the dilemmas that the Ottoman
Empire was in between, such as being secular, being modern and how Islam treats
them. He analyzed these dilemmas in many aspects such as the agency, buildings and
architecture and moral values that were challenged through time.5 Widmann’s study
analyses the educational reforms that were realized starting from the early republic,
helping frame the educational perspective of the country and locate Robert College
within this picture.6

Robert College is an American college that was founded in the Ottoman Empire; that
is why the sources about American missionary activities such as those by
Kocabaşoğlu7, American education policies such as Doğan’s book with its focus on
the USA and the Middle East relations, and different case studies that reflect the local

Enis Kortan, Türkiye’de Mimarlık Hareketleri ve Eleştirisi 1950-60, Ankara: ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi
Yayınları, 1971. Türkiye’de Mimarlık Hareketleri ve Eleştirisi 1960-70, Ankara: ODTÜ Mimarlık
Fakültesi Yayınları, 1974; 1950’ler Kuşağı Mimarlık Antolojisi, İstanbul: YEM Yayınları, 1997.
Osmay, S. “1923’ten Bugüne Kent Merkezlerinin Dönüşümü”, in Y. Sey (ed.) 75 Yılda Değişen Kent
ve Mimarlık. 1998. Bozdoğan, S. (2001). Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural
Culture in the Early Republic. University of Washington Press. Tanyeli, U. (2007) Mimarlığın
Aktörleri: Türkiye 1900-2000. Garanti Galeri, İstanbul. Bilge İmamoğlu and Elvan Altan Ergut,
“‘Mimarlık Tarihi Araştırma Stüdyosu’ Çalışmasının Düşündürdükleri: Ankara’da Mimarlık, 1950-
1980”, Mimarlık, 2007, c. 337, s. 56-59. Bozdoğan, S. (2008) “Art and Architecture in Modern Türkiye:
The Republican Period,” in R. Kasaba (ed.), Cambridge History of Türkiye, vol. 4: Türkiye in the
Modern World. Tekeli, I. (2009) “Cities in Modern Türkiye”, in R. Burdett and Wolfgang Novak (eds.)
İstanbul: City of Interventions. E. Altan Ergut, B. İmamoğlu, (ed.) Cumhuriyet'in
Mekanları/Zamanları/İnsanları, ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Yayını - Dipnot, 2010. S. Bozdoğan and E.
Akcan (2012) “Postmodern Landscapes in Post-Kemalist Turkey”, Turkey: Modern Architectures in
History, 203-234. Domesticating the avant-garde in the nationalist era: Aesthetic modernism in 1930s
Türkiye. New Perspectives on Türkiye, 29-53. Bozdoğan, S. (2016) “Turkey’s Post-War Modernism: A
Retrospective Overview of Architecture, Urbanism and Politics in the 1950s”, in M. Gürel (ed.) Mid-
Century Modernism in Turkey: Architecture across Culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Routledge, 9-26.
5
Fortna, Benjamin C., Imperial Classroom: Islam, Education and the State in the Late Ottoman Empire,
Oxford University Press, 2002.

6
Widmann, Horst. Atatürk Üniversite Reformu, İstanbul Matbaası. 1981.

7
Kocabaşoğlu, Uygur. (1985). Amerikan Okulları. In Tanzimat'tan Cumhuriyet'e Türkiye
Ansiklopedisi, Cilt 2, (p. 495). İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları. Vahapoğlu, H. (1992). The Minority and
Foreign Schools from Ottoman Times to the Present Day. İstanbul: Boğaziçi Publications.

5
nationalism within the Ottoman land,8 and the architecture of American colleges,9 will
also be important as the literature on the Ottoman and Republican contexts.

1.3. Archival Sources and Methodology

In addition to the secondary literature, the visual and written documents about the
college such as photographs and drawings of the buildings in the campus and official
records form the main sources in this study in order to evaluate how the campus was
built upon needs and how these needs were answered in architectural terms. In order
to do so, the Architectural Drawing Collection at Boğaziçi University Documentation
Center has been the most important archive for this thesis. The architectural drawing
collection in Boğaziçi University Documentation Center had a smaller portion of the
architectural drawings digitalized about the Robert College`s Bebek Campus and later
the South Campus of Boğaziçi University. The archive has roughly 400 drawings like
plans, sections, and elevations. Drawings came from America and were built with the
help of the local connection. In line with this fact, drawings have English, Ottoman
Turkish, and French notes. These notes, names and individuals that took part in these
drawings, were used to better frame the architectural formation of the Robert College
campus.

Land purchases and the construction of campus buildings took place in different years
from 1858 to 1963. In addition to the architectural drawing collection of Boğaziçi
University Documentation Center, in the Columbia University Libraries Rare Book
and Manuscript Library, Robert College records between 1858 and 2018 have also
been used to trace the academic activities in the college as well as records and reports
to trustees. The 208 boxes of archival records have rather recently been digitalized and

8
M. A. Doğan, American Missionaries, and the Middle East: Foundational Encounters (2011). Utah:
University of Utah Press.
9
For a detailed analysis of American campus design, see: Paul Venable Turner, Campus: An American
Planning Tradition (Architectural History Foundation Book), The MIT Press; Edition Unstated (1987).
For a recent reading about how an American-adopted university came to be built in Türkiye, please see,
Burak Erdim, Landed Internationals: Planning Cultures, the Academy, and the Making of the Modern
Middle East (Lateral Exchanges: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Practices),
University of Texas Press, 2020.

6
shared with Boğaziçi University and are available at Boğaziçi University Archive and
Documentation Center. The rest of the archives are in the archives of Bosporus
University, which, unfortunately, have not been digitalized; however, the photos of the
documents could be taken to be used in the study. In addition, the archives of Aptullah
Kuran are used to analyze the last period of Robert College at the Bebek Campus and
its transformation to Boğaziçi University. Moreover, different documents about the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) are available at
SALT Research and used in the process of research.

Another archival source is the SALT Research Archive where documents about the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM)10 are located and
will be used to understand the records of missionary schools other than Robert College.
This archive also has photos and several other types of visuals and written documents
such as financial records. Lastly, another source is the archive of Prof. Dr. Aptullah
Kuran, who is the main actor in the last phase of the school because of his role in the
design and administration and the transformation process of Robert College to
Boğaziçi University. Kuran archive, which is now in Boğaziçi University
Documentation Center, consists of Aptullah Kuran`s books, lecture notes, letters,
official documents, and personal documents. There are 4602 printed photographs,
4280 dia photographs, 357 sketches, 353 plans, sections, and elevations of
architectural projects in this collection.

Robert College has been studied in various aspects but there has been barely any
architectural reading of the college. In this sense, the project about the 150 th
anniversary of Boğaziçi University was a turning point; the architectural drawing
archives of the college was then shown and two articles about them have been
published by Paolo Girardelli11 and Ahmet Ersoy12. The college has been widely

10
This archive consists mainly of administrative records held by Amerikan Bord Heyeti (ABH), the
Turkish office of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), at its
headquarters in Istanbul.
11
Girardelli, Paolo. Mimari Çizimler Koleksiyonu. In C. Kırlı, Boğaziçi Arşivleri'ne Doğru:
Bavullardan Kataloglara (pp. 322-329). İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi, 2015.

12
Ersoy, A. Boğaziçi Üniversite'sinde Mimarinin Perde Arkası: Tarihi Proje Koleksiyonu. In C. Kırlı,
Boğaziçi Arşivleri'ne Doğru: Bavullardan Kataloglara (pp. 338-353). İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi
Yayınevi, 2015.

7
studied as an educational institution. The memoires of the college presidents are
especially important in understanding the process of studying at this college. The first
president Cyrus Hamlin (1863-1877)13, the second President George Washburn (1877-
1903)14, the third President Caleb Frank Gates (1903-1932)15 as well as a graduate and
the last Turkish Vice President Aptullah Kuran16, and Lynn Scipio,17 the founder of
the Engineering School in 1912 and served as professor in there till 1942, wrote
memoirs that form one of the most important primary sources when studying Robert
College. In addition, the memoir of Marry Mills Patrick18 (1890-1924), one of the most
important presidents of American College for Girls; as well as the official and non-
official correspondence of Robert College`s presidents and alumni open another way
of understanding the college from first-hand accounts. These correspondences were
extensively studied by Keith M. Greenwood who also published a book that mainly
studied the first two presidents Cyrus Hamlin and George Washburn.19 Another
important research was carried out by John Freely who published books about Robert
College, American College for Girls, and Bosporus (Boğaziçi) University. 20 Another
book was published by Orlin Sabev in 2014, which mainly focuses on the period
between 1863 to 1923, and provides photographic research of Bulgarian and Turkish

13
Hamlin, Cyrus. Among the Turks, (New York: Robert Carter and Brother, 1877). Hamlin, Cyrus. My
Life and Times, (Boston- Chicago: The Pilgrim Press, 1893)

14
Washburn, George. Fifty Years in Constantinople, and Recollections of Robert College, (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1909). This memoir later reprinted: George Washburn, Fifty Years in
Constantinople, and Recollections of Robert College, (İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2012)
15
Gates, Caleb Frank. Not To Me Only, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940.

16
Kuran, Aptullah. Bir Kurucu Rektörün Anıları: Robert Kolej Yüksek Okulu’ndan Boğaziçi
Üniversitesi’ne (İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi, 2002)

17
Scipio, Lynn. My Thirty Years in Türkiye, New Hampshire: Rindge, 1955.
18
Patrick, Marry Mills. Under Five Sultans (London: William and Norgate, 1930). Patrick, Marry Mills.
Bosphorus Adventure: Istanbul (Constantinople) Women`s College, (California: Stanford University
Press, 1934)

19
Greenwood, Keith M. Robert College: The American Founders (Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press,
2000).

20
Freely, John. A History of Robert College. Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2009.

8
students.21 Another very recent and comprehensive research was published by Önder
Kaya, which covers the history of the school from the Ottoman to the Republican
period.22

1.4. Structure

Following the introduction that states the aim, scope, literature review, archival
sources, methodology and structure of the study, the second chapter of the study will
analyze the foundation period of Robert College during the late Ottoman Empire. In
order to do so, this chapter will examine the American-Ottoman relations and focus on
the American “missionary” activities in the field of education after framing the
political context of the period. The founders Cyrus Hamlin and Christopher R. Robert
will be marked as two important figures; nonetheless, the chapter will further include
various individuals and institutions that played roles in the long process of the
foundation of the school. The focus of the chapter is on the formation of the Robert
College campus, starting from the choice of the site and continuing with the
construction of the blue-limestone neo-classical buildings on the campus. The physical
analysis of the campus in 1909 in the report by Alfred D. F. Hamlin and Caleb F. Gates
will also be studied in order to understand its condition during the late Ottoman
decades.

The third chapter will analyze the adaptation of Robert College in the Republican
period. It will begin with the examination of the educational policies in the early and
mid-twentieth century after the Republic was founded, and the response of Robert
College to them. The focus of this chapter is on the transformation of the campus,
starting from the early Republican construction of a new building and continuing with
the report prepared in 1955 by the architectural firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill
(SOM) about the campus. Referring to the role of SOM in contemporary architecture

21
Sabev, Orlin. Spiritus Roberti: Shaping New Minds and Robert College in Late Ottoman Society
(1863-1923), Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi, 2014).

22
Kaya, Önder. Dünyanın Tam Orta Yerinde, Robert Kolej, İmparatorluktan Cumhuriyete Bir Okulun
Tarihi, Kronik Kitap, 2022.

9
also in Türkiye, the modernist turn with the construction of the New Engineering
Building on the campus will be analyzed, also by studying its architect Aptullah Kuran
who would also be the last Turkish vice president of Robert College, as well as the
founding rector of the Turkish public university, i.e. Boğaziçi University, which
Robert College would turn into.

Lastly, the findings of the research about how an American missionary school came
to be built in the heartland of the Ottoman Empire and how it was transformed into an
American private school in the newly founded Turkish Republic in relation to its role
in contemporary politics, education and architecture, will be presented with a further
look as the conclusion of the thesis.

10
 CHAPTER 2

THE ROBERT COLLEGE IN THE OTTOMAN PERIOD

Robert College in İstanbul is a renowned educational institution that played a vital role
in the relationship between the United States of America (USA) and the Ottoman
Empire. It was established in 1863 during the late Ottoman period and survived
through the Republican period in the twentieth century. Nonetheless, there were
several difficulties in its construction, such as political and cultural considerations that
affected its establishment. The political relations between the USA and the Ottoman
Empire during the nineteenth century were complex and multifaceted. At the turn of
the twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire was struggling with political and economic
problems in order to maintain its sovereignty threatened by rising nationalist currents
and amidst the growing influence of foreign powers. The presence of the USA in the
Ottoman land showed itself both directly in the field of politics with its diplomats, and
indirectly in the field of education with its schools. These two fields occasionally
crossed one another, occasionally diverged, or appeared to diverge, but were indeed
always connected.

This chapter examines Robert College as an American school in İstanbul, the capital
of the Ottoman Empire. In order to understand the foundation process of the College,
the schools of the American missionaries in the Ottoman territory will initially be
studied, and the foundation of Robert College in this context will be examined,
especially by analyzing the roles of Cyrus Hamlin and Christopher R. Robert as the
founders. Then, the formation of the Robert College campus will be the focus of
analysis by examining the choice of the site as well as the establishment and growth
of the campus with the construction of various buildings. The chapter will conclude
with the analysis of a report about the campus by Alfred D. F. Hamlin and Caleb Gates

11
prepared in 1909 in order to evaluate the spatial formation of Robert College in the
political context of international relations in the Ottoman period.

2.1. The Foundation of the College in Late Ottoman Empire

This part of the chapter will examine the foundation of Robert College by introducing
the schools of the American missionaries in the Ottoman territory as the USA began
to act as the significant international actor in the empire. The role of Cyrus Hamlin
and Christopher R. Robert will be analyzed as the significant actors in this process.

2.1.1. Schools of the American Missionaries in the Ottoman Territory

The relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the USA may be traced back to the
end of the eighteenth century23, but the period when the USA became an actual actor
within the Ottoman Empire will be as late as 1831. In 1831, the USA sent David Porter
to the Ottoman Empire as “Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary".
Although, due to the Monroe Doctrine24, the USA preferred not to intervene in the
political activities that were taking place outside of the American continent, this
approach would not last long and the relationship between the two countries would
develop by the upgrade from legation to the American Embassy in 1906.25

On the other hand, the Ottoman Empire was diplomatically not as eager as the USA;
the Ottomans waited until 1867 to open an embassy in the USA. Apparently, “There

23
The first relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the USA was the deal between Joseph
Donaldson and Hassan Bashaw on September 5, 1795. The original deal was written in Turkish and
signed by the Ottoman autonomous vassals of North Africa, the Barbary States, and the United States
of America.

24
The Monroe Doctrine presented in 1823 by American President James Monroe defines the United
States’ foreign policy position as non-interventionist and neutral. This doctrine was essential to
American foreign policy in most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See: Mark T. Gilderhus,
"The Monroe Doctrine: meanings and implications." Presidential Studies Quarterly 36.1 (2006): p: 5–
16.

25
Kuneralp, Sinan. "Ottoman Diplomatic and Consular Personnel in the United States of America,
1867–1917." (2001) p. 100

12
was no real rush on the Ottoman side to send diplomatic envoys to Washington DC.”26
Before the decision of opening an embassy, Emin Bey had been sent to the USA to
visit shipyards in 1851, and was welcomed at the highest level by President Millard
Filmore. In 1857, the Ottoman Empire ordered a ship to the USA, and a year after that
Mehmet Emin Ali Pasha (later grand vizier)27 and Major Süleyman Efendi came to
visit the shipyard, which was also be a positive visit that would lead the Ottoman
Empire to open an embassy in the USA.

Edward Blacque was sent as the first official to represent the Ottoman Empire in
Washington DC. This was because his family had ties in America, and it was not easy
to find English-speaking diplomats in the Ottoman Empire at that time. In addition,
Washington DC did not seem as important in the beginning of relations as Paris or
London. The relationship between the USA and the Ottoman Empire was mainly
economic as both sides were thinking about taking advantage of the American
excellence in war industry.28 According to the records in 1869, guns and supplies were
79% of the trade of the USA to the Ottoman Empire, and this would increase to 97%
in 1877. 29 Until the beginning of the 1880s, the USA was one of the most important
supply centers, which later be replaced by Germany. On the other hand, the USA was
mainly buying opium from the Ottoman Empire. Just to draw a better picture, out of
6288 ships that passed through the Dardanelles Strait (Çanakkale Boğazı), only two of
them were American; however, after the Crimean War, İstanbul ports began to
welcome an American ship almost every week.30

Despite the Monroe Doctrine, there were some cases that the USA was involved in
some problems between the Ottoman Empire and ethno-religious groups such as the

26
Syed Tanvir Wasti (2012). "Ahmed Rüstem Bey and the End of an Era". Middle Eastern Studies. 48
(5): 781–796. 2012.
27
Mehmed Emin Ali Pasha served as grand vizier to Sultan Abdulaziz between 1867 to 1871. In his
early years as a statesman, he played a significant role in the process of the Ottoman Reform Edict of
1856 and the Treaty of Paris in 1856 that ended Crimean War.

28
Erhan, Çağrı. Türk Amerikan İlişkilerinin Tarihsel Kökleri, 2015. p.178

29
ABCFM records, Series ABC 16:5, c: 4, No: 18-22

30
Tibawi, American Interests …, p. 33 and 35.

13
Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians.31 The relationship between the two countries
passed through some challenges constantly but none of them resulted in their complete
separation. The reasons for the USA are mainly economic as the size of the Ottoman
market could not be underestimated. On the other hand, the Ottoman Empire was
hoping to have the strategic support of the American army when needed. The interest
of the USA towards the old world, the Middle East, and the Ottoman Empire would
extend via several ways like economic, socio-cultural, and political presence in the
region.32

The nineteenth century was the period when the Ottoman Empire was attempting to
modernize the empire while trying to hold its territory intact through various wars and
economic crises. The effort to modernize the empire was constantly challenged by
both economic and political defeats. The Treaty of Balta Limanı 33 or the Anglo-
Ottoman Treaty was signed in 1838 between Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire.
This agreement turned the Ottoman Empire into an open market and gave significant
privileges to Great Britain including the opening of the Ottoman market to British
merchants and also taxing them equally as the Ottoman merchants.34 This agreement
was the time when the Ottoman authority on its economic bazar or known as “yedd-i
vahid”, on its market came to an end.35 After the agreement was signed, the Ottoman
market was heavily opened to European merchants. This situation helped the
emergence of a new class of merchants that connected the locals to the Europeans.
Also, each year more foreigners began to come to the Ottoman Empire and many of

31
In 1825, during the Greek rebellion or the Greek War of Independence, the US Navy conducted anti-
piracy operations in the Aegean Sea which was controlled by the Ottoman Empire until Greece gained
independence in 1829.

32
Erhan, 2015, pp.142-145.
33
The Treaty of Balta Limanı was signed by Sultan Mahmud II, in response to the help of the British
to the Ottoman Empire about stopping Kavalali Mehmed Ali Pasha, the governor of Egypt, from
marching over the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

34
Geyikdağı, V. Necla (2011). Foreign Investment in the Ottoman Empire: International Trade and
Relations 1854-1914. Tauris Academic Studies. p. 23.

35
Findley, Modern Türkiye Tarihi, p 43.

14
them settled in İstanbul, and places like Pera and Bomonti in the newly developing
parts of the city began to show the effects of European style living.36

This series of events shows that the nineteenth century was a period of rapid change
and transformation for the Ottoman Empire as for Europe. Industrializing western
European countries had already been exploring new territories to colonize in Africa,
and America. The Ottoman Empire was doing its best to catch the spirit of the age but
its political and economic problems were obstacles in its way.

In the face of these challenges, the Ottoman Empire embarked on a series of reforms
and modernization efforts that aimed at improving its economic, military, and political
systems. However, these modernization efforts also opened the door for foreign
powers to exert their influence on the Ottoman Empire. In this context, missionaries
from various countries came to the Ottoman Empire to spread their religious and
cultural beliefs, as well as to engage in various forms of social and educational work.

Overall, the nineteenth century was a dynamic and also transformative period in world
history as well as the Ottoman Empire, characterized by complex interactions and
power dynamics between different regions and cultures. The role of missionaries in
the Ottoman Empire is definitely significant and could easily be seen in different levels
of political and cultural life.

Missionary as a term means “a person who is sent to a foreign country to teach people
about religion, especially Christianity”.37 Missionary groups focused on three main
areas to spread around the world: religion, culture, and language. As a result, most of
the foreign schools were founded by missionaries. Countries like France, England, the
USA, Austria, Germany, Italy, and Russia supported Catholic, Protestant, and
Orthodox missionaries in the Ottoman Empire. In the act of missionary schools, the
role of the USA is noticeably important.38 These schools mushroomed within the
Ottoman territory and worked hard to spread their language and culture. In the process
of their foundation, they had little if no difficulties; until the General Educational

36
Ortaylı, İlber. İmparatorluğun En Uzun Yüzyılı, 2019. p. 108-109.

37
See: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/missionary?q=missionary

38
Kocabaşoğlu, Uygur. Anadoludaki Amerika: Kendi Belgeleriyle 19. Yüzyılda Osmanlı
İmparatorluğu’ndaki Amerikan Misyoner Okulları, 1985, p:27.

15
Charter in 1869, the Ottoman Empire did not even have any regulation or law to control
these institutions.39 One of the reasons why the American missionary presence is
noticeable is because they had the greatest number of schools, unlike the assumption
that the French had more schools in the Ottoman Empire. While the Americans had
nearly 400 schools in 1886, the French had only 100 schools as indicated in the Turco-
French Treaty in 1912-1913. Foreign schools were not fully in control of law until the
capitulations were temporarily abolished in 1914 with the beginning of the First World
War.

The role of American missionary presence in the Ottoman Empire is to be understood

in order to evaluate their schools.40 The USA was late but quick in the race of
expansionism. The Ottoman Empire was the place where they could act quickly and
secure this atmosphere that allowed American missionary schools to spread around the
empire.41 In the USA, nine out of ten of the administrators of faculties and colleges,
and most of the teachers were religion-rooted. Moreover, until 1834, everyone in the
USA was obliged to donate to the church, and according to law, the church had the
privilege of inspecting the schools.42

The American missionary movement began at the beginning of the nineteenth century;
and its official beginning was in 1812 with the incorporation of the Boston-based
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (American Board). The
American Board soon opened its offices in Mumbai (Bombay), Sri Lanka (Ceylon),
and Hawaii, and these offices convinced the American Board to spread itself
throughout the world. By 1820, American Board missionaries opened their schools in
India, Connecticut, and Cornwall, and the last two schools were for native

39
Akyüz, “Abdülhamid Devrinde Protestan Okulları ile İlgili Orijinal İki Belge.” Eğitim Fakültesi
Dergisi 14, no.3 (1981): 87-96.

40
For further reading see: Kocabaşoğlu, Uygur. (1989). Kendi Belgeleriyle Anadolu’daki Amerika: 19.
Yüzyıldaki Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’ndaki Amerikan Misyoner Okulları. Arba Yayınları.

41
Kocabaşoğlu, 1985, p: 488

42
Danacıoğlu, Esra, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Amerikan Board Okulları ve Ermeniler” p: 132.

16
Americans.43 In one of the Board`s early reports, these schools` functions were
explained as follows:

These schools would train youthful converts to become `missionaries,

physicians, surgeons, schoolmasters or interpreters, and to communicate to
the heathen nations such knowledge in agriculture and the arts as may prove
the means of promoting Christianity and civilization.44

The Ottoman Empire and the USA may not have a long history of relations; however,
during the nineteenth century, their trade relations increased, establishing an
atmosphere ideal for missionary activities. Most of these missionaries were chaplains
45
supported by the American Board. The first two missionaries, Levi Parsons and
Pliny Fisk, arrived at Smyrna/İzmir in mid-January, 1820. Then others arrived and
traveled throughout the Ottoman territory. The results reported to the American Board
created a depressing picture of the Native Christian Churches in the Middle East.46 The
report analyzed the situation as follows:

Idolatrous rites and worship in an unknown tongue, manipulated by an

ignorant, degraded selfies priesthood, the general population in a state of
deplorable ignorance and degradation, destitute of the means of divine
knowledge bewildered with vain imaginations and strong delusions.47

These reports made the American Board realize that a forceful effort to convert
Muslims would not make sense anyhow because of the desperate situation that the
Eastern churches were in. Hence, they decided to work with the local Christians to
make them reform their churches, so these churches would be an example of

43
Freely, John, A Bridge of Culture, İstanbul: Boğaziçi University Press, 2009, p: 6.

44
Freely, 2009, p: 5.
45
Somel, Selçuk Akşin, “Kırım Savaşı, Islahat Fermanı ve Osmanlı Eğitim Düzeninde Dönüşümler,”
150. Yıldönümünde Kırım Savaşı ve Paris Antlaşması (1853-1856), İstanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi
Edebiyat Fakültesi, 2007.

46
Freely, 2009, p: 18.

47
Freely, 2009, p: 18.

17
Christianity for converting Muslims, Jews48, and pagans. Following the first
missionaries who arrived in 1820, in June 1831, the American Board officially opened
its Centre in İstanbul. The main team worked in the process of establishing such a
center included William Goodell, Harrison Gray Otis Wright, and William Gottlieb
Schauffler.49

The American Board mainly focused on education, health, and publishing activities.
Education was the most effective of these focuses. The first American school was
opened in Beirut in 1824. This was followed by İstanbul, Adapazarı, Bursa, İzmir,
Kayseri, Sivas, Merzifon, Harput, Diyarbakır, Mardin, Bitlis, Van, Erzurum, Trabzon,
Antep, Maraş, Adana, Haçin, Tarsus and Urfa under the name of Western Anatolia,
Eastern Anatolia, and Central Anatolian Missionary groups. There were 425 American
schools with 23.040 students in the Ottoman Empire at the end of the nineteenth
century.50

In the early nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was struggling to modernize in
the face of a changing world. Education was one area in which the Ottomans faced
particular challenges, as the traditional Islamic educational system was ill-suited to
preparing students for the demands of a modernizing society. Moreover, the Ottomans
had suffered a series of military and political defeats that highlighted the need for new
approaches to governance and education. To address these challenges, the Ottomans
embarked on a series of educational reforms known as the Tanzimat Era. Under the
regime of Sultan Selim III and Sultan Mahmud II, initial attempts at reform were made,
but it was not until the reign of Sultan Abdülmecid that the reforms were fully realized
with the issuance of the Tanzimat Edict (Ferman)" in 1839. This edict, also known as
the Gülhane Hatt-ı Şerif, signaled the beginning of a new era in Ottoman education.

The word “Tanzimat” means “regulations.” This word was the key to the following
period. The Tanzimat Era was a period of secularization in the empire. Due to the new
rules, many systems in the empire were redefined. European-style political and social

See: Şişman, Cengiz, The Burden of Silence: Sabbatai Sevi and the Evolution of the Ottoman-Turkish
48

Donmes, 2015. Oxford University Press.

49
Freely, 2009, p: 30.

50
Kocabaşoğlu, 1985, p: 495.

18
institutions began to be founded. The contribution of well-educated military personnel,
together with bureaucrats, resulted in the foundation of modern schools for higher
education in engineering, medicine, military, arts and political administration
(Mühendishane-i Berrî-i Hümâyûn, Mekteb-i Tıbbiye-i Şahane, Mekteb-i Harbiye,
Darü’l-Muallimin, Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi and Mekteb-i Mülkiye). These schools
were the very first schools within the empire that could be defined as secular. Soon
after, these schools were to spread the Tanzimat spirit throughout the whole empire,
including elementary levels of education, and were instrumental in redefining the
system.51 Primary education was made mandatory until the age of twelve. As a result
of these new regulations, new elementary, secondary and high (rüştiye, idadi, and
sultani) schools were opened. In 1868, Mekteb-i Sultani (Galatasaray High School)
was opened in order to fulfil the lack of a high-quality educational institution.

However, the impact of these new schools was somewhat limited. Economic
constraints, lack of teachers, and opposition from traditionalists in society prevented
them from reaching their full potential. Nonetheless, the effort to remake the
educational system was commendable, as the Ottomans recognized the importance of
education in modernization. European influence played a significant role in inspiring
the Tanzimat-era reforms. Ottoman officials and intellectuals were influenced by
European ideas about education and adapted them to fit the specific needs and
traditions of the empire. The reforms paved the way for later developments in
education in the region and reflected broader global trends toward secularization and
modernization. The Tanzimat-era educational reforms were a crucial aspect of
Ottoman modernization in the nineteenth century. Despite their limitations, the
reforms helped establish a foundation for secular education in the empire and paved
the way for later developments. By recognizing the importance of education in
modernizing the society, the Ottomans demonstrated a commitment to progress and
adaptation in the face of changing times.52

51
Ortaylı, 2019, p: 134-135.
52
Shaw-Shaw. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ve Modern Türkiye. İstanbul: E Yayınları. 1994. p:147. Finkel,
Caroline. Rüyadan İmparatorluğa Osmanlı. İstanbul: Timaş Yayınları. 2014. p:422. Ortaylı, 2019.
p:193-194.

See for further reading: Ergin, Osman Nuri, Türk Maarif Tarihi, İstanbul: Eser Neşriyat, 1997. Fortna,
Benjamin, Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic, London:
19
Foreign schools were the first “modern” schools in different provinces of the Ottoman
Empire, and thanks to being the first, they had the chance to set the standards for all
upcoming institutions.53 It is possible to see the effects of these schools primarily on
the local ethno-religious communities and later gradually by the Muslim societies.54
“The Ottoman ethno-religious communities are mostly viewed as political clients of
the foreign powers, if not their outright agents,” as Fortna suggested. These
communities took the attention of the Western missionaries. Their financial power and
cultural influence played a significant role in order to affect those ethno-religious
communities accompanied by their political abilities and presence in the Ottoman
land.55 Therefore, the challenge put forward by the Western missionaries and their
presence within the Ottoman Empire was accepted as the most alarming one.
Especially, during the times of Sultan Abdülhamid II, the Muslim Ottoman elite was
strictly pressured about sending their children to either Robert College or American
College for Girls.56

Increasing trade and thus stronger ties with Europe and the resultant nationalist
movements caused these schools to spread throughout the Ottoman Empire. As well
as the capital city, İstanbul, almost every city and town with a non-Muslim population
had its own schools for different ethnic and religious groups of the Ottoman
population.

For example, at the beginning of the twentieth century, 500.000 students were
attending 10.000 schools that were founded by the Christian groups in the Ottoman

Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Somel, Selçuk Akşin, "Gayrımüslim okulları nasıl azınlık okullarına
dönüştü”, İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı, May 2013. Somel, Selçuk Akşin, Osmanlı'da eğitimin modernleşmesi,
1839-1908: İslamlaşma, otokrasi ve disiplin, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, April 2015.
53
Fortna, Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire, 2002 p:
50.

54
Donald J. Cioeta, “Islamic Benevolent Societies and Public Education in Ottoman Syria, 1875-1882”
The Islamic Quarterly, 26/1 (1982), 41.

Fortna sees Cioeta as who discusses the case in Syria, but his analysis can be extended to the areas
having a high percentage of Armenian inhabitants which also became the focus of intensive foreign
missionary activity. For missionary activities within the Armenian population, see Jeremy Salt,
Imperialism, Evangelism and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878-1896. London: Frank Cass, 1993.

55
Fortna, 2002, p: 49.

56
Gates, Not To Me Only, 1940, p:182.

20
Empire. The rapid expansion of these schools was a testament to their perceived need
and importance. Within the Ottoman territory, Armenians mostly located their schools
in the eastern part of Anatolia; Greeks were active in İstanbul and the Black Sea region;
and Jews were mainly in İstanbul, Jerusalem, and Beirut.57

These non-Muslim schools were run by the groups that founded them. Basically, no
rules regulated their way of administration or education at the time when they were
founded. The Ottoman administration did not know the number of students, teachers,
or any other expenses well enough. Finally, the empire tried to gather informational
reports from the non-Muslim schools starting in 1838 but never succeeded this, and
could not achieve the control that it wanted. The schools were totally independent to
govern themselves. Teachers were mostly chosen from within the priesthood and even
some missionaries also worked as teachers. This situation was changed by the Reform
Edict (Islahat Fermanı) in 1856. Then, the selection process of teachers for non-
Muslim schools began to be run by a commission supervised by the state. However,
the result was not as successful as it had been planned.

Overall, the rise of educational institutions by ethno-religious communities and

foreign schools throughout the Ottoman Empire's nineteenth century was a significant
development that posed a threat to the established hierarchies, and aided in the
establishment of a new class of professionals and businessmen. The independence of
these schools was a notable divergence from the conventions and demonstrated the
expanding influence of European institutions and values in the empire.

The ability to influence different ethno-religious communities within the Ottoman

Empire hit its most with these schools and concerns regarding those schools from the
Ottoman authorities thus rose. The chance of affecting Muslim/Turkish students in
Christian schools, and their possible conversion was one of the negative scenarios
developed about these schools. Although American missionaries never accepted that
kind of an aim to convert Muslims to Christianity, the fear prevailed especially with
the British invasion and later occupation of Egypt in 1882.58 The attempts to control

57
Koçak, “Tanzimat’tan Sonra Türkiye’de Özel ve Yabancı Okullar,” Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e
Türkiye Ansiklopedisi, Cilt 2, 1985, p:495.

58
Deringil, Selim. The Well-Protected Domains, Ideology, and the Legitimization of Power in the
Ottoman Empire 1876-1909 (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011), p: 113, 132.

21
non-Muslim and foreign schools began with a memorandum issued in March 1886,
and the Minister of Public Education Münif Pasha59, endorsed that non-Muslim
schools in İstanbul must be investigated.60 In the same year, on May 6, the Inspectorate
of Foreign and Non-Muslim Schools (Mekatib-i Ecnebiyye ve Gayr-i Müslime
Müfettişliği) was established to prevent teaching inconsistencies in comparison to
Ottoman policies.61 In his memoirs, Sultan Abdülhamid II states that “the private
schools constitute the biggest danger” for the Ottoman Empire and they constantly
wanted to take those schools under control and heavily limit their activities, although
this was not always possible since those schools were mostly backed and protected by
their ambassadors and diplomats.62

On the other hand, the Ottoman Empire aimed to prevent Muslim children to attend
those schools, and the reports written in 1893-1894 show that, on the order of Sultan
Abdülhamid II, Minister of Public Instruction Ahmed Zühdü Pasha63 (1891-1902),
forced that Muslim children should not go to foreign schools since those schools would
have a negative impact on them.64 On the contrary, Zühdü Pasha also complained
about the lack of financial support to Ottoman public education to attract Muslims,
and also criticized Ottoman schools for not giving the opportunity to different ethno-

59
Mehmed Tahir Münif Pasha was three times Minister of Public Education (Maarif Nazırı): in 1877,
between 1878-1880, and between 1884 and 1891.

For further reading, see Sinan Kuneralp, Son Dönem Osmanlı Erkan ve Ricali (1839-1922).
Prosopografik Rehber (İstanbul: The Isis Press, 1999), p: 105.

60
Fortna, 2002, p: 96.
61
Hasan Ali Koçer, Türkiye’de Modern Eğitimin Doğuşu ve Gelişimi (İstanbul: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı,
1991), p: 158. Betül Başaran, “Reinterpreting American Missionary Presence in the Ottoman Empire:
American Schools and the Evolution of Ottoman “Reinterpreting (1820-1908)” (Ankara: Bilkent
University Institute of Economics and Social Sciences, 1997), p: 74.

62
Sultan Abdülhamit, Siyasi Hatıratım (İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 1987), p: 189.
63
Kuneralp, 1999, p: 61.

Atilla Çetin, “Maarif Nazırı Ahmed Zühdü Paşa’nın Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’ndaki Yabancı Okullar
64

Hakkında Raporu”, Güney-Doğu Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi 10-11 (1981-1982): 192, 202-203.
Adnan Şişman, XX. Yüzyıl Başlarında Osmanlı Devleti’nde Yabancı Devletlerin Kültürel ve Sosyal
Müesseseleri (Ankara: Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi, 2006), 1.

22
religious communities to learn their own language besides Turkish, their own religion,
and to achieve basic knowledge in sciences.65

In another report written in 1893 by Ottoman Minister of Public Education Ahmed

Cevdet Pasha (who served in this position three times between 1873-1874, in 1875
and 1876), mentioned that some well-known non-Muslim merchants had no other
choice but to send their children to foreign schools. He believed that they would send
their children to Muslim (Ottoman public) schools if these schools would be able to
teach them the necessary sciences (fünun-ı lazime). In that case, they would not only
learn sciences but also Turkish and apply for a job easily as well as not become
Europeanized and troublesome.66 Cevdet Pasha also stated that “some non-Muslims
prefer to go to foreign schools in order to adopt fully European manners (alafranga).
Regretfully, there are some Muslims who also follow this wrong path.”67 These reports
made Ottoman Empire take some serious actions towards the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Some of its members were arrested on October
25, 1892.68 Following this, on February 11, 1893 and later again in 1898, the sultan
ordered that American missionaries should cease their activities on the Ottoman land.69

As Deringil explains,

The missionaries, through their schools, constituted a danger for the future. …
Indeed, by the 1890s, the missionaries had come to be regarded by the sultan
as “the most dangerous enemies to social order” We are, therefore, when we
speak of the struggle between missionaries and the Ottoman government,
dealing with nothing less than ideological war.70

65
Çetin, 1981-1982: 203-205.

66
Kuneralp, 1999, p: 56.
67
Akyüz, Yahya. “Cevdet Paşa’nın Özel Eğitim ve Tanzimat Eğitimine İlişkin Bir Layihası”, OTAM
Ankara Üniversitesi Osmanlı Tarihi ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi 3 (1992), p: 96-97.

68
Yıldız, Özgür, Misyonerlik ve Amerikan Board Teşkilatı (Türkiye’de Siyasi ve Sosyal Hayata Etkileri)
(İstanbul: IQ Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık, 2009) p: 42.

69
Yıldız, 2009, p: 45.

70
Deringil, 2011, p:114-115.

23
American missionaries, in particular, were perhaps the “biggest headache.” The
problem was that the two sides were talking at cross purposes: the missionaries argued
that their efforts to educate the Armenian or Bulgarian Ottomans would be good for
the Muslim majority too, while the Ottoman government suspected that they were
establishing nests of sedition. Indeed, through their schools, the missionaries seem to
have undermined Ottoman legitimacy in their own country, such as in what was to
become the Bulgarian nation state.71

2.1.2. Cyrus Hamlin and Christopher R. Robert as the Founders

Figure 2: Founders of Robert College Cyrus Hamlin (left) and Christopher R. Robert (right).
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Robert College is the oldest continually running school outside of the USA.72 The
school was officially founded by Cyrus Hamlin73 in 1863; however, the story had

71
Deringil, 2011, p:125,130.

72
https://website.robcol.k12.tr/en/about-rc/history
73
Cyrus Hamlin was born on January 11, 1811 in Waterford, Maine. He grew up on his family’s farm
and when he was sixteen, he moved to Portlandto master the silversmith’s trade. He went to the Portland
Congregational Church where he and his friends attended Bible classes. On May 6, 1828, he took vows
of membership and joined the church, or in his own words, “a society of young men for religious
improvement”. Although he had joined the church, he was not an ordinary Christian and he later
attended Bridgton Academy for his preparatory studies for college and within his two years there, he
studied Greek and Latin.

He had a deep interest in science and engineering. He was particularly interested in steam engines, and
after some preliminary research, he also built a steam engine as well. His urge to learn and curiosity led
him to be elected as the president of the Peucinian Society, the Praying Circle, and the Theology Society.
24
started as early as 1839 when Hamlin was sent to İstanbul, 74 or when he met
Christopher R. Robert in 1856. (Figure 2) Hamlin was a member of the American
Board and was sent to İstanbul to work with the İstanbul mission in the city. Once he
arrived İstanbul there in January 1839, he wanted to give an order to a missionary
school in Pera that was opened by Protestant missionaries in 1834.75 He would not be
successful in Pera because of both Armenian and Greek patriarchates since most of the
students were of these ethnicities.76 This period was when the nationalist movements
were rising and the Armenian community was experiencing conflict in different layers
of their community.77 In this atmosphere, the education offered by the American
missionary schools would take the attention of the craftsman and tradesman groups.
The understanding of putting science forward, teaching foreign languages, and the
importance of asking questions were the key points of the American missionary
education system and the school that would be opened by Hamlin would surely fulfil
these requirements and even go further. These different ethno-religious communities
were also calling the attention of different foreign countries. France was one of those

He was also a member of the Temperance Society and actively formed a new Natural History Society
in his senior year in college. Particularly, this interest will show itself both in Robert College’s
curriculum and space design as having places for ateliers, laboratories, and a natural history museum.

For a detailed biography of Cyrus Hamlin, see Malcolm Stevens and Marcia Stevens, Against the
Devil`s Current: The Life and Times of Cyrus Hamlin (İstanbul: Boğaziçi University Press, 2012).

74
Cyrus Hamlin expressed his interest in Africa as a place where he wanted to continue his missionary
work, but the American Board had informed him that this was out of the question, so he chose China
instead. However, on February 4, 1837, he received a letter from Rev. William Armstrong of the
American Board about his assignment to Constantinople to work in the mission schools in Turkey. On
December 2, 1838, they embarked on their journey, from Boston to Smyrna (İzmir), arrived in Smyrna
on January 17, 1839, and within the following ten days they embarked to Constantinople (İstanbul).
The steamer`s name was Stamboul, which is the first regularly scheduled steamer to operate between
İstanbul and Izmir. The voyage took six days and they finally arrived in Golden Horn on February 2,
1839.
75
Danacıoğlu, Esra. Osmanlı Anadolusunda Anglo-Sakson Misyoner Faaliyetleri (1816-1856), 1993,
p: 101. Danacıoğlu,, Esra. “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’ndaki Amerikan Board Okulları ve Ermeniler”,
1999-2000,p: 136.

76
Kocabaşoğlu: Kendi Belgeleriyle Anadolu’daki Amerika, p:82.

77
Danacıoğlu, 1993, p: 135.

25
countries as it opened a school in Bebek under the management of Jesuits with French
as the official language of education.78

Hamlin also opened his school in the village of Bebek in 1840, and the school became
known as the Bebek Seminary.79 Indeed, he had opened his school firstly in Madriarki
Palace80 in Arnavutköy, and after a couple of months Demirgi Bashi`s (Demirci Başı)
house in Bebek was rented since the İstanbul station of the American Board voted for
the enlargement of the school in 1841.81 In November 1843, the school moved to the
konak of Chelebi Yorgaki as its final place where it would function until it would be
closed and moved to Merzifon in 1857.82

Unlike classical missionaries, the Bebek Seminary was not dependent on donations as
the students were also working in the ateliers of the school to pay for their education
on their own. The American Board was not happy with this situation and even
requested the shutdown of the atelier, but Hamlin said that, in that case, the American
Board had to pay from its sources, and thus the Board allowed him to keep the atelier
open.83 This example is enough to say that Hamlin was not an ordinary missionary,
and he would prove that many more times in the following years. The importance that
he gave to science and the education program that he followed prepared the foundation
of Robert College.

In the first days at Bebek, the locals did not like Hamlin at all, and even threw stones
at his house; nonetheless, these did not stop him. He changed his physical appearance
by wearing a fez and growing a mustache just to appear more Turkish and carried on.84
It is important to mention Hamlin`s understanding of education: in the Bebek

78
Kaçmaz: “Missionary Activities in The Lands of Ottoman Turkey: The Emergence of Robert College
and The American College for Girls”, p:386.

79
Yetkiner, Cemal. “At the Center of the Debate,” p: 73-74.
80
The building was divided into three dwellings and a part was taken down. Cyrus Hamlin hired five
giant rooms for three months. He explains the rooms as large in size and height.

81
Freely, 2009, p: 23.

82
Freely, 2009, p: 27.

83
Freely, 2009, p: 30.

84
Freely, 2009, p: 24.

26
Seminary building there were two ateliers where students were working as well as a
woodshop and a laboratory.85 On the other hand, the lack of course books was
immediately noticed by Hamlin and he prepared an arithmetic book in Turkish with
Armenian letters.86 In the school, not only the theological courses were given but
natural and social sciences were playing important roles as well as English and some
atelier lectures such as needlework, bookbinding, and ironworking.87 This was also in
line with the Protestant understanding of Christianity that consists of working both for
this world and the afterlife.88 All of these were fueling the interest in the Bebek
Seminary.89 On the other hand, the American Board was expecting Hamlin to raise
Armenian Protestant Priests who could work in Anatolia as soon as possible.
Therefore, his efforts to educate his students in as many ways as possible were not
welcome, only to be rewarded later by Robert.

Hamlin and Robert90 met in 1856. This coincidence was explained by Hamlin in his
memoir as follows:

Christopher R. Robert, Esq., of New York, had visited Constantinople, in 1856,

just at the close of the Crimean War. Seeing, along the shores of the Bosphorus,
a boat laden with bread, the appearance and aroma of which drew his
attention, he inquired where it was made, and this led to our acquaintance, out
of which has grown Robert College. But for that incident, secluded as I was in
the village of Bebek, five miles from the city, we should never have met.91

85
Hamlin, Robert Kolej Uğrunda Bir Ömür, 2012, p: 246; Gates, Not To Me Only,1940, p:160.

86
Hamlin, 2012, p:238. Kocabaşoğlu, “Cyrus Hamlin: Misyoner, Eğitimci, Müteşebbis”, 2013, p:89.
87
Kocabaşoğlu, 2013, p:93; Kiskira, “19. Yüzyılın Çokuluslu İstanbulu’nda Amerikan Misyonerleri”,
p:74-75.

88
Danacıoğlu, 1993, p: 104.

89
Danacıoğlu, 1993, p: 96.
90
Christopher Rheinlander Robert was born in New York on March 23, 1802. He was originally a
French Protestant whose ancestors moved to the USA long ago. Robert started his own work and
engaged in different subjects such as railway building and tea, sugar, and cotton trading and importing.
Thanks to his efforts he became rich and involved in different donations to the American higher
education institutions earlier than Robert College. See: Aksu, Robert Kolej’in İzinde, 2017. p: 283.

91
Freely, 2009, p: 42.

27
In 1857, the Bebek Seminary was closed, and the Mission asked Hamlin to move to
Anatolia, but he rejected this and resigned from the American Board in 1859 but stayed
in İstanbul instead of leaving. At this very point, Robert asked him to take control of
the college project that the Dwight Brothers92 had given up, and Hamlin accepted this
offer in 1859. Thereby, Hamlin`s prediction about the Bebek Seminary that it “may
one day grow into college” was about to come true.93 The American Board`s seminary
was moved to Merzifon and became a totally theological seminary.94 At this point, the
journey of the Robert College officially started. Having resigned from the American
Board and starting to work with the wealthy American Robert,95 Hamlin no longer had
connections with the American Board nor the missionaries; still, he defined himself
and the school he founded as follows in his book called My Life and Times:

… It would be a Christian college, preparing young men to enter upon

professional study, or into any of the active pursuits of life. In full harmony
with this plan, the connection of twenty-two years with the American Board
came to an end, but the work in which I had been engaged only assumed
another form; and on entering upon it I consider myself more a missionary to
Turkey than before. I was to labor, as far as possible, for all its peoples, without
distinction of race, language, color, or faith.96

Hamlin was well aware that the new generations in the Ottoman Empire were much
more into foreign languages and literature other than formally pursuing ways of
benefiting from the possibilities. He was so confident that, if there was an option given
to Turks and local Christians rather than religious education, society would welcome

92
The idea of founding a rather secular American school in İstanbul was thought of before Cyrus
Hamlin. James and William Dwight brothers were thinking that different ethno-religious communities
in the Ottoman Empire would be driven to this American school. In 1857, they shared this opinion with
Christopher R. Robert, but he was neither into supporting such secular schools that did not put
Christianity into the core of itself, nor he was believing such schools would be supported by the
American community.
93
Washburn, Fifty Years in Constantinople and Recollections of Robert College, 2013, p:5. Freely,
John, A Bridge of Culture, İstanbul: Boğaziçi University Press, 2009, p: 51.

94
Cemal Yetkiner, “At the Center of the Debate,” p:79.

95
Hamlin, 2013, p: 367.

96
Freely, 2009, p: 49.

28
and accept it. Eventually, he noticed that “Christianization” would not work in the
Ottoman society, but “Westernization” would work.97 (Figure 3)

Although its story clarifies how it was a different case for a missionary school, Robert
College was founded upon three main features: Firstly, the education was English-
based rather than local languages; secondly, secular education was accepted rather
than religious education; and lastly, missionary style education was accepted rather
than specifically protestant or catholic religious education system.98

Figure 3: The legal document about the land at Rumeli Fortress sold to
American Mr Hamlin by Ahmed Vefik Efendi.
Source: Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi, İstanbul, İ. MMS., 36, 1488

Robert College was founded as a secular college that prioritized Christian moral values
but not as a college that urged students to convert to Protestantism. In line with this,
Christian students were required to attend morning and evening sermons, and Muslim

97
Greenwood, Keith M., Robert College: The American Founders, İstanbul: Boğaziçi University Press,
2003, p:70

98
Greenwood, 2003, p:83.

29
students were required to attend at least the Sunday sermons during the early period of
the college. During the Sunday sermons, religion-centered history and geography were
taught rather than pure religion. During these sermons, special attention was paid to
not talking about the disagreements and dissimilarities of different sects. 99 Although
religion was not totally separated from education, it would not be fair to say that total
separation was what Hamlin was looking for. On the other hand, Hamlin aimed at first
that this school should be to some extent a law school and thus the college hired a
Professor of Law to give regular lectures and to guide students who wished to pursue
a career in that subject. Secondly, this school should put forward natural sciences in
particular that apply to daily life. Thirdly, this school should show excellence in
mathematics, mental and moral philosophy, logic, history, etc. Lastly, to make all three
components be possible, everyone in the college should be able to understand each
other, and therefore, a common language was necessary, and in this case, this language
would be English.100

In 1873, the Robert College had three main departments, which were Preparatory,
Intermediate, and Collegiate. In order to pass to the Collegiate, a certain level of
English was required. Collegiate also had five sections as sub-freshmen, freshmen,
sophomores, juniors, and seniors.101

The Robert College and where it was located within the framework of the Ottoman
education system was decided with the 1869 Regulation of Public Education ( Maarif-
i Umumiyye Nizamnamesi). This regulation divided the Ottoman education system into
five levels as ibtiadi or sıbyan (primary), rüşdi (junior secondary), idadi (preparatory
or secondary), sultani (imperial or senior secondary) and ali (higher).102 The imperial
Galatasaray High School had the sultani status, and the ali degree was granted for the
Ottoman university opened in the same year of 1869. In this system, the Robert

99
Kocabaşoğlu, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda XIX. Yüzyılda Amerikan Yüksek Okulları” p:306-307.
Sabev, “Robert Koleji: Eşsiz Bir Eğitim Projesini Hayata Geçirme Hikayesi”, p:606. Keskiner,
“Osmanlı Döneminde Robert Kolej ve Mekteb-i Sultani’deki Din Eğitimine Karşılaştırmalı Bir Bakış”,
p:61. Potukoğlu- Büyüktolu, “Osmanlı’da Yabancı Dil Öğretimi ve Robert Kolej Örneği”, p:212.

100
Sabev, Spiritus Roberti: Shaping New Minds and Robert College in Late Ottoman Society, p: 136.

101
Toprak, “Robert Kolej’den Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’ne,” p: 42.

102
Somel, “The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839-1908: Islamization,
Autocracy, and Discipline, p: 86-87, 108-122.

30
College was granted with the idadi degree together with other American schools such
as the American College for Girls103 and the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. The
official idadi status of these American schools stayed unchanged on reports that were
prepared by the American embassy and submitted to the Ottoman Ministry of Foreign
Affairs on February 25, 1903.104

When Caleb Gates became the third president of the Robert College in 1903, he came
up with the idea of doing some revisions in the curriculum. He set up a committee that
was responsible for looking into this and coming up with suggestions. As the
committee suggested, the course of study was divided into two, one with an Arts
course leading toward the Baccalaureate of Arts degree, and the other with a Science
course leading toward the Baccalaureate of Science degree. In addition to those
degrees, a course in commercial science with a diploma was also introduced to meet
the student needs in their search in a business career. Moreover, a course in premedical
biology was also set for the ones who wanted to enter the medical profession.105

The Robert College constantly modernized its education program through the late
Ottoman period. As the school had been founded as a College of Arts and Sciences,
this modernist spirit finally also led to the foundation of an engineering school in 1912
as one of the last but maybe one of the most important events for the college before

103
American College for Girls was founded in October 1871 at Gedikpaşa and began education as a
homeschool by Julie A. Rapple. The school later moved to Üsküdar in 1876. The school began teaching
in Armenian and Greek courses was also involved but later in the same year that the school moved, the
official language of the college turned into English. The school was opened in an Armenian
neighborhood called Selamsız and this explains the reason why the first President of the college, Clara
Catherine Pond Williams, decided the language of the college turned into English. On December 5,
1905, a fire started in Barton Hall, one of the two main buildings of the college, and the building
completely burnt down. After this terrific accident, the college searched for a new place, and finally on
March 3, 1914, the school officially moved to Arnavutköy.

For Further reading about American College for Girls, see: Fincancı, The Story of Robert College Old
and New (1863-1982), p: 39. Burry, My Turkish Adventure, p: 42. Ramsay, İsyan Günlerinde İstanbul,
p: 167. Keskinkılıç, “Üsküdar Amerikan Kız Kolejinde Türk Öğrenciler”, Toprak, “Arnavutköy
Amerikan Kız Koleji”, Goffman, “Amerikan Kız Koleji”, Çetin, “İstanbul Amerikan Kız Koleji ve
Kolej’in Müslüman Kadın Algısı (1908-1918). Jenkins, Robert Kolej’in Kızları, Alan, “Osmanlı
Ülkesinde Amerikan Board Kadınları”, Scott, “The Barton Hall Fire”.

For reading about the girls’ education in the Ottoman Empire, see: Kurnaz, Cumhuriyet Öncesinde Türk
Kadını (1839-1923).

104
Mutlu, Şamil. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Yabancı Okullar (İstanbul: İstannbul Üniversitesi Sosyal
Bilimler Enstitüsü,1999), p: 277-278.

105
Gates, 1940, p:176-177.

31
the First World War and the foundation of the Turkish Republic.106 The school thus
successfully survived as a significant educational institution into the Republican
context, to be examined in the next chapter of the study.

2.2. The Formation of the College Campus

“Academic Village” was used by Thomas Jefferson to explain his thoughts on

education and planning while he was designing the University of Virginia. Although
this was stated in the process of designing a particular university, it surely reflects the
American perception of higher education from the colonial period to the twentieth
century. This approach required architects and all related fields to see campuses as not
only buildings but a microcosm that consists of classes, labs, dorms, and social halls,
in other words, a living environment. Therefore, the design of American campuses was
very much different than the ones in Europe at the time.107

This part of the chapter will analyze how the American campus approach showed itself
overseas in İstanbul at the formation of the Robert College campus. The Robert
College was located in the Ottoman Empire's heartland and survived and continuously
grew through wars and political crises. The location of the campus is definitely a
privilege; thus, the choice of the site and its characteristics will be initially examined.
Then, the architectural approach in the construction of the buildings in the campus will
be examined as compared to the architectural context of their production.

The maintenance of the campus will also be of concern in this part, and the report
about the campus prepared by Alfred D. Hamlin and Caleb Gates in 1909 will be
studied to discuss the efforts to this end.

106
For further reading of the Engineering School, see: Mahmut Önder Hortaçsu, “Robert Kolej
Mühendis Mektebinin Tarihi/ History of Robert College School of Engineering,” in Bir Geleneğin
Anatomisi: Robert Kolej’in 150 Yılı/ The Anatomy of a Tradition: 150 Years of Robert College 1863-
2013, ed Cem Akaş (İstanbul: Suna ve İnan Kıraç Vakfı İstanbul Araştırmaları Enstitüsü, 2013), p: 173-
208.

107
Venable Turner, Paul, Campus An American Planning Tradition, p: 3.-4.

32
2.2.1. The Choice of the Site

In search of a place for a school that would educate the young masses according to the
so-called “Western” or rather “European” style, Hamlin searched through the whole
year in 1859. In his memoires, he mentioned that he had visited 24 sites and the first
place he wanted was impossible to purchase. Moreover, through his travels in İstanbul,
he looked at places in Pera, Galata, Feriköy, Üsküdar, Kadıköy, and along the
Bosporus.108 Since the school would represent American excellence in the Ottoman
Empire, the place had to be significant, therefore, even the Palace of the
Porphyrogenitus109 (Tekfur Sarayı) was considered a possible place.110 (Figure 4) This
Byzantine imperial palace was right at the borders of the historical peninsula and it
was near the neighborhoods like Fener, Balat, and Ayvansaray where the Jewish,
Armenian, and Greek people mostly lived.

This palace was also near the neighborhoods like Fatih and Eyüp where Muslims
mostly lived. Therefore, it was not easy for an American Christian to have a place like
this in the middle of several mosques. Another possible location was in Pera and the
rents there were relatively high. This situation might have forced Hamlin to look at
further distances.

Figure 4: Byzantine Imperial Palace, Tekfur Sarayı, İstanbul.

Source: SALT Research, Ali Saim Ülgen Collection

108
Hamlin, 2013, p: 194.
109
Palace of the Porphyrogenitus (Tekfur Sarayı) was built during the late thirteenth or early fourteenth
centuries as part of the Blachernae palace complex, where Theodosian Walls join with the walls built
later in the suburbs of Blachernae. For further reading upon Byzantine Constantinople, see: Byzantine
Constantinople: The Walls of the City and Adjoining Historical Sites by Alexander Van Millengen in
1899.

110
Washburn, 2012, p: 33-39.

33
To go further distance, it is worth mentioning that İstanbul had already grown out of
the historical peninsula. In fact, lands outside of the historical peninsula were already
populated village by village by mostly non-Muslims; but once the Ottoman Sultans
decided to move to the Bosphorus rather than living in the Topkapı Palace located in
the historical peninsula, the shift became more visible. The second half of the
eighteenth century was when the Bosphorus began to integrate into the city. Especially
the European side of the Bosphorus became a place where İstanbul`s elite began to
live and a place where foreign consulates were located.111 (Figure 5)

Figure 5: Map of the Bosphorus (College sites highlighted by the author).

Source: İstanbul Urban Database

Batur, Afife, “Batılılaşma Döneminde Osmanlı Mimarlığı”, Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye

111

Ansiklopedisi, vol.4, 1985, p.1046.

34
The Bosphorus could be one of the most valuable places on the Ottoman Empire if not
the whole world. By the mostly untouched nature and fortresses and their relations
with the sea, along with the special way that it was populated village by village on the
turning points of the Bosphorus became a spectacular meeting point of East and West
with the touch of architecture.112 Yıldız Palace was the first vast complex of imperial
Ottoman mansions, kiosks and gardens. (Figure 6) The first building was built at the
time of Sultan Selim III for his mother Mihrişah Sultan from 1798 to 1808. Later, the
complex expanded one by one on the hills and valleys of the Beşiktaş neighborhood.113

Figure 6: Yıldız Palace.

Source: SALT Research, Ali Saim Ülgen Archives

Following Yıldız Palace, the interest of Sultans upon the Bosphorus was risen and
followed by Dolmabahçe Palace ordered by Sultan Albülmecid I, and it was built in
between 1843 to 1856. (Figure 7) After the completion of Dolmabahçe Palace, the
Sultan decided to leave Topkapı Palace and began to live in the new palace and the
political and socio-cultural center of the city was officially shifted from the old
historical peninsula to the Bosphorus and the area around it.114

112
Batur, 1985, p.1046.

113
Freely, John. Istanbul: the imperial city. Internet Archive. London; New York: Penguin Books. p.
281.

114
Batur, 1985, p.1063.

35
 Figure 7: Dolmabahçe Palace.
Source: SALT Research

Over the following days, the search for a site continued and ended with a location close
to where the old Bebek Seminary was located. The site was on top of the fortress
(Rumeli Hisarı), with a great view of the Bosphorus. Hamlin wrote to Robert about
why he thought this site was ideal for the college: “A college with a commanding
position on the Bosphorus would soon be acknowledged and remain known, all-over
Constantinople.”115 (Figure 8)

Figure 8: The Bosporus view from the Robert College Campus.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

115
Freely, 2009, p: 49.

36
There were many difficulties with this land and Hamlin really needed to fight for this
property. First of all, the land was owned by Ahmet Vefik Pasha116, the Ottoman
Minister to Paris, and when he was asked to sell the land, at first instant he was positive
but soon after he learned what the purpose of the site was going to be, he rejected the
offer and said he would never sell it to “Frank Protestants.” In addition, in the vicinity,
there was an old Muslim cemetery and a tekke belonging to Bektaşi dervishes, who
would not be happy to have a Christian school as a neighbor. Last but not the least, the
site was overlooking the historical fortress (Rumeli Hisarı) built by Sultan Mehmed II
for the planned Ottoman siege in 1453 of the then Byzantine city of Constantinople,
so this location was also morally important for the Ottoman Empire as well.117 In time,
Ahmed Vefik Pasha agreed to sell the land to Hamlin on December 2, 1861. The
agreement included that no payment would be made to Ahmed Vefik Pasha until the
day that all the permissions would be given regarding building on the land.118 That
permission was given in March 1862 and all foreign and local individuals were
shocked that such an important land was given to be used by an American school.

Especially the Jesuit mission was truly angry about this news since the Ottomans did
not allow any of the Christian buildings along the Bosporus. The other Catholic groups
and the Russians were also strongly against it.119 On the other hand, at the time of the
opening of Robert College, Hon. E. Joy Morris was representing the USA. According

116
Ahmed Vefik Pasha was one of the former Grand Viziers of the Ottoman Empire.
117
Freely, 2009, p: 50.

118
The price was 16000 sterling for the first half of the land and 18000 sterling for the other half of the
land.

119
In 1837, Bebek College was established under the French lycée Saint Benoit. This school was located
remarkably close to the Bebek Seminary and the first place of Robert College. In the process of founding
Robert College, Cyrus Hamlin mentioned the director of Bebek College and also a good catholic,
Eugene Bore, who worked hard to prevent this school to be opened. This might be because this school
would also target the Greek, Bulgarian, and Armenian students as Bebek College. This college was
closed after the opening of Mekteb-i Sultani on November 1, 1867. Although Robert College and
Mekteb-i Sultani were competing with each other, the third President Caleb Gate, and the director of
the engineering school Lynn Scipio visited Mekteb-i Sultani from time to time to do some observations.
For further reading, see: Scipio, My Thirty Years in Turkey, p: 92.

For further reading about Bebek College, see: Poole: “Eugene Bore ve Katolik Vincentian Cemaatinin
Yakındoğu’da Kurduğu Misyoner Merkezleri.” Also, for further reading about Saint Benoit lycée, see:
Dilan: “Türk-Fransız İlişkilerinde Saint-Benoit Lisesi’nin Misyonu.” Edirne: Trakya Üniversitesi
Rektörlük Yayını, No Date.

37
to Cyrus Hamlin the American ambassador was not working for getting the permission
to build the college although the right of opening the college had already been taken.
Cyrus Hamlin thought, his attitude was because the agreement between the USA and
the Ottoman Empire was a trade agreement therefore in this case he did not have to
involve and take any action. Cyrus Hamlin asked what he would do if this was about
a trade ship full of rum, and his response was saying that he would take immediate
action. This unwilling attitude towards the very first American school that would be
opened outside of the USA should be worth mentioning.120

Within this negative atmosphere, Hamlin had the idea of opening the college first at
the building where the Bebek Seminary had been located. That building had first been
rented and was later bought by the American Board. Hamlin asked Robert about
managing the status of the building with the American Board. After some renovations
on the wooden pediments on the front façade, the building was painted into a new
color. The ateliers of the seminary turned into laboratories and the school was initially
opened in the old building of the Bebek Seminary121 and was named “Robert College.”
(Figure 9)122

While education was continuing at the Bebek Seminary building, the help came from
overseas: Admiral David Farragut steamed into İstanbul with a smaller ship that was
then joined by the war between the Greeks together within this atmosphere, Hamlin
finally received the irade (will) by the sultan in November 1868, giving the permission
to build a college, and the right to raise an American Flag there.123

120
Hamlin, 2013, p: 380.
121
The Bebek Seminary building was a wooden house built in 1798. It was located on the side steep
hill in the midst of the village of Bebek. The building was entered via a court and there were three levels
above and three levels below.

122
Photo: A. W. Sellar. CU-RBML, RC Documents

123
Greenwood, 2003, p:83.

38
 Figure 9: The original house of Robert College, built in 1798, Bebek (no longer exists).
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

“The College on the Hill”, “the school at the center of the world”, or “the school on
the commanding position at the Bosporus”, and many more expressions were used to
define the Robert College and its magnificent location on top of the Rumeli Fortress.
The mansions of foreign ambassadors, Armenian and Greek villages, and mostly other
non-Muslim Ottoman population were located along the Bosporus. On the other hand,
Robert College was located on top of the fortress that is both religiously and politically
important for Muslims as built by Sultan Mehmed when he conquered Byzantine
Constantinople. (Figure 10)

This rather “sacred” site of the Robert College had Muslim neighbors: As shown by
the investigation undertaken in 1862 by Rıza Efendi, an officer of the Council of Public
Buildings, the campus was bordered by the land owned by the Bektashi convent of late
Mahmud Baba (Merhum Mahmud Baba Dergahı).124 After Mahmud Baba had passed
away in 1860, his son Nafı Baba became the head (şeyh) of the lodge. This lodge is
also known as Şehitlik Dergahı125 as the resting place of the martyrs who had died

124
İbrahim Ethem Gören, “Boğaziçi Üniversitesi'ndeki gizli hazine: Nafi Baba Tekkesi”, available on
https://www.dunyabulteni.net/kultur-sanat/bogazici-universitesindeki-gizli-hazine-nafi-baba-tekkesi-
h222089.html (accessed May 22, 2023).

125
Baykan-Çıracıoğlu, Bilim Yolunda 100 Yıl Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi, 2013, p:15.

39
during the Ottoman conquest of the vicinities of Constantinople in 1452. (Figure 11)126
Hamlin as the president and the Robert College administration in general mostly had
good relationships with the Bektashi convent and with Nafi Baba in person. Indeed,
the first Turkish graduate of the college, Hüseyin Pektaş, was the grandson of Nafi
Baba.127 In line with the good relations with the convent, Nafi Baba left a portion of
the convent`s land to the usage of the Robert College.128 (Figure 12)

Figure 10 Aerial Photograph of the Robert College Campus and Rumeli Fortress.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Figure 11: Robert College Campus, Rumeli Fortress, and Bektashi convent
(the area on top of the hill with trees).
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

126
Sabev, Spiritus Roberti: Shaping New Minds and Robert College in Late Ottoman Society, p: 82.
Koman, “Rumeli Hisarı Şehitliği ve Fetih Şehidleri,” p:8. Today this land stays inside of the South
Campus of the Bosporus University.

127
The first Turkish student that attended the college was Kamil Efendi who was registered in May
1867 but he left the school after only one year of education. Freely, John, A History of Robert College,
I, p: 158-159.

128
Kut-Eldem, Rumelihisarı Şehitlik Dergâhı Mezar Taşları, 2010, p:57.

40
 Figure 12: Overlooking the Bosporus and the towers of Rumeli Fortress,
where Nafi Baba`s Tomb is located.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

2.2.2. The Buildings in the Campus

The nineteenth century was the period when Robert College was founded and its
campus developed over the hills of Rumeli Fortress through the early decades of the
twentieth century. This part of the chapter will present the architectural understanding
of the late Ottoman period, especially exemplifying the buildings of educational
institutions. Then it will analyze the buildings of Robert College by using the
documents from the architectural drawing collection of Boğaziçi University in
comparison to their context of production in the empire. Robert College was also the
product of the American know-how in both architecture and education; therefore, it is
also the product of the architectural understanding in the USA at the time.

The American missionary in İstanbul was not wealthy; and even worse, Hamlin was
no longer a member of the American Board. His only supporter was Robert, and
although Robert gave him sufficient money to start the building, he constantly needed
to go back and forth to the USA to raise more funds.129 As a result of this, the Robert
College campus could not commence as Hamlin would have liked, and did not begin
by building upon the original master plan (except for the central garden “quadrangle”
idea which can be seen in European and American examples) but grew organically
according to the need of the day, one building after another, which would then be

129
Greenwood, 2003, p:25.

41
related to each other.130 As a result, the whole campus was created at different times
without a master plan, although all the buildings have a similar architectural language
as products of the same context. (Figure 13)

The late nineteenth century, when the campus was built, was defined by most
historians as the time of eclectic design. At that time in İstanbul there were only a few
eclectic buildings and the buildings in the Robert College campus were such examples
of neo-Renaissance style. Each building in the campus had indeed its own specialty.
The usage of Ottoman Turkish, English, and French in the documents proves that there
were discussions between local architects and governors about the buildings.131

Figure 13: Robert College Master Plan, before 1955.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

The son of Cyrus Hamlin, Alfred Dwight Foster Hamlin, a professor of architecture at
Columbia University, was in charge of the design of many of the buildings in the
campus at the time of campus construction, while other architects also worked in

Ersoy, Ahmet, Bavullardan Kataloglara: Boğaziçi Arşivlerine Doğru, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’nde

130

Mimarinin Sahne Arkası: Tarihi Proje Koleksiyonu, İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, 2015 p: 338.

131
Ersoy, 2015 p: 345.

42
collaboration with him. Their designs were in line with the contemporary architectural
understanding, and their effort in using iron in the construction of the buildings is
especially worth mentioning because, as application of new technology, it was quite
rare at that time in the Ottoman Empire.132 In the middle of the eighteenth century,
Ottoman sultans began to hire non-Muslim architects who had spent time in Europe
and these architects brought European building know-how to the Ottoman land. The
usage of iron columns and steel skeletons in buildings became widespread towards the
second half of the nineteenth century. Robert College played a leading role as
representing the technique and materiality of the time.133

Hamlin Hall: The Oldest Building in the Campus

Cyrus Hamlin laid the cornerstone of the initial building in the campus, Hamlin Hall
(Figure 14),134 on July 5, 1868. Local limestone was used as the main material in the
construction and cut from the same quarry as seen in the Rumeli Fortress used together
with the mortar. The building was designed to be fireproof; iron beams came from
Glasgow in Scotland and iron sticks from Antwerp in Belgium, and many other
construction materials were brought from Europe without paying customs duty.
Nearly 200 workmen were involved in constructing the building, and everything was
supervised by Cyrus Hamlin himself. The south part of the building was constructed
by Armenian craftsmen from Van, and the north part of the building by Greek
craftsmen from Midilli. Cyrus Hamlin mentioned in his memoirs about three Kurdish
workers as well, and stated that he was very happy with their strength and being able

132
Girardelli, Paolo, Bavullardan Kataloglara: Boğaziçi Arşivlerine Doğru, Mimari Çizimler
Koleksiyonu, İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, 2015 p: 327.

133
Danışman, H. H. G. (2009) “Ertuğrul Gazi Mescidi’nden Laleli Apartmanları’na, Yığma
Duvarlardan Betornarmeye: Osmanlı Yapı Teknolojisinin Evrimi”, in A.Cengizkan (ed.) Mimar
Kemalettin ve Çağı, p: 43-46. TMMOB Mimarlar Odası.

For further reading about the technology in the nineteenth century in Europe and in the Ottoman Empire
see:

Enginsoy, S. (1990) Use of Iron as a New Building Material in 19th Century Western and Ottoman
Architecture, Unpublished MA Thesis, Ankara: METU. Bergdol, B, (2000) “New Technology and
Architectural Form, 1851-90”, European Architecture 1750-1890, p: 207-240. Oxford University Press.
Kula Say, S. (2016) “Belgeler Işığında 19. Yüzyıl Sonu-20. Yüzyıl Başı Türk Mimarlığında Teknik
İçerikli Tartışmalar”, in G.Çelik (ed.) Geç Osmanlı Döneminde Sanat, Mimarlık ve Kültür
Karşılaşmaları, p: 161-191. T.İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları.

134
Figure 4: CU-RBML, RC Documents

43
to work long hours in the hard work. Unlike Greek and Armenian craftsmen, they were
doing work that did not require a profession. On the other hand, he mentioned that one
of them was also paying attention to his bible lessons and Cyrus Hamlin was hoping
that he would become Christian.

Figure 14: Hamlin Hall.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Hamlin Hall was designed with a central courtyard surrounded by four wings,
resembling a traditional Turkish han.135 The plan of the building was almost a square,
i.e. a rectangle of 34.44 by 31.38 meters, with the central courtyard surrounded on each
level with galleries supported by iron columns.136 (Figure 15-16)

Figure 15: Hamlin Hall Interior.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

135
Hamlin, 2013, p:401-403.

136
Freely, 2009, p:81.

44
 Figure 16: Basement Plan of the Hamlin Hall.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

Unlike other buildings, Cyrus Hamlin was involved in every part of designing and
building the Hamlin Hall, and prepared the plans although he said that the plans were
initially studied by four different architects and one of those was Stampa who designed
Kamondo Han in Galata and Saint Pacifico Latin Catholic Church in Büyükada.
Although Robert suggested to him to design a wooden structure, Hamlin insisted on
building a stone-iron structure. Cyrus Hamlin mentioned that wood prices doubled,
due to the construction of the Suez Channel in Egypt. On the contrary, the iron prices
were much lower than wood. 137 Cyrus Hamlin was involved often in the process of
design but his son A. D. F. Hamlin took part as an architect in Hamlin Hall too.
Another significant feature of the building is the use of iron. The mansard roof of the
Hamlin Hall was carried upon the iron trusses which was not common at that time in
the Ottoman Empire. (Figure 17) In the following drawings of A. D. F. Hamlin, the
connection in between the roof and truss system was designed as well. The truss

137
Hamlin, 2013, p:396.

45
system that was used in the uppermost floor of the Hamlin Hall, allowed the floor to
have full height rather than being cut by the roof at some point. (Figure 18)

Figure 17: Truss Details, Hamlin Hall.

Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

Figure 18: Roof Plan, Hamlin Hall.

Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

The building has four stories above the basement, and the uppermost level has a
mansard roof, a reminder of the French Renaissance period, and towers at four corners.
The central courtyard was originally left open, but in the second half of the twentieth

46
century it would be covered with a roof. Hamlin Hall is the only building with a central
courtyard in the campus. Lastly, there emerged financial problems again during its
construction and the extensive project of its roof designed by A. D. F. Hamlin, could
not be built as it was designed. (Figure 19)138

Figure 19: Alteration project for the roof of the Hamlin Hall by A. D. F. Hamlin.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

Old Study Hall

After the opening of the Hamlin Hall, Robert College started the journey of becoming
a campus. In 1871, Cyrus Hamlin wanted to extend the campus and he built the Study
Hall as the second building of the campus. (Figure 20) The Study Hall was a large one-
story building right behind the Hamlin Hall.139 It was made with dry stone plastered
walls; and inside there were two study rooms and recitation rooms at the roof level.140
(Figure 21-22)

Hamlin defined this building as adding magnificence to the College, although George
Washburn mentioned this definition as a joke and defined the building as an ugly

138
Ersoy, 2015 p: 338., Girardelli, 2015 p: 327.

139
Hamlin, 2013, p:417.

140
Washburn, 2012, p:68.

47
structure from the outside.141 The building served its function for almost thirty years
and it was demolished at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Figure 20: Study Hall.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Figure 21: Study Hall on the right of the Hamlin Hall.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

141
Washburn, 2012, p:69.

48
 Figure 22: Late 1880s, View of the Campus.
Hamlin Hall and the Study Hall are in the center.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Albert Long Hall: “The Clock Building”

This building was designed by architects A. D. F Hamlin and C.P. Warren. Albert
Long Hall is the third oldest building on the campus and is also known as “The Clock
Building” with the clock on its entrance façade. The construction began in 1890 and
finished in 1892, almost 20 years after the first building the Hamlin Hall. (Figure 23-
24)142 This supports the idea that new buildings were constructed as needed and could
also be related to the financial difficulties of Robert College that had to wait long for
new constructions.

Figure 23: Albert Long Hall, 1909.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

142
Figure 14: CU-RBML, RC Documents

49
Albert Long Hall was also made of blue limestone, the same material used in the
Rumeli Fortress. As seen in its roof drawing, steel was also used in this building. The
use of steel frames could be stated as one of the significant features of the “modernity”
of the Robert College campus. The details of the roof of the Albert Long Hall were
drawn by the American Bridge Company.143 (Figure 25) On the other hand, these
modern elements balanced well with the more classical character of the facades with
narrow windows and ordered Romanesque and Byzantine arches.144 Again in the USA,
Romanesque revival or neo-Romanesque style was very common after the middle of
the nineteenth century. There were examples applied on campus buildings and
churches. The Romanesque style was considered as “ideal for a more flexible and
economic American architecture” by social reformer Robert Dale Owen.145 On the
other hand, the best examples of neo-Romanesque in the USA could be Sever Hall and
Austin Hall at Harvard University, which was designed by H. H. Richardson.

Figure 24: Albert Long Hall and Hamlin Hall.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

143
The company was founded in the 1900s and still operates today. See: Girardelli, Paolo, Bavullardan
Kataloglara: Boğaziçi Arşivlerine Doğru, Mimari Çizimler Koleksiyonu, İstanbul: Boğaziçi
Üniversitesi, 2015 p: 328.

144
Ersoy, 2015 p: 344.

145
Meeks, Carroll L.V. "Romanesque Before Richardson in the United States." The Art Bulletin 23, no.
1 (1953): 17–33.
50
 Figure 25: The Roof Detail of Albert Long Hall.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

Theodorus Hall

Theodorus Hall was built as a dormitory and a classroom for Robert College
Preparatory Language Department - later Robert Academy. The construction began in
the fall of 1900 and cost 49.000$ at the time, which was donated by Miss Olivia Phelps
Stokes of New York City.146 The building was pedagogically needed and finished in
September 1902. (Figure 26)147 It was constructed with five storeys, including the
basement, and the mansard roof; and the same material as in previous buildings, blue
limestone, was used in the building. Since this was a dormitory building, it was
specifically mentioned that the building was fireproof as the previous buildings. The
building was constructed on a hillside right next to the main college grounds where
the earlier buildings had been located, and designed with a playground on its north
supported by heavy retaining walls. (Figure 27)

146
Freely, 2009, p: 413.

147
Gates, 1940, p: 169.

51
 Figure 26: Theodorus Hall.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Figure 27: Theodorus Hall, Structural Plan.

Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

52
Washburn Hall: Earlier Recitation Hall

The Washburn Hall, or at that time Recitation Hall, was designed by A. D. F Hamlin
and C. P. Warren. (Figure 28) They used blue milestone as the main material as in
other buildings of the campus. The construction began in July 1904 and was completed
on April 10, 1906.

The façade details and historical references are seen in the drawings of Washburn Hall,
and when the two drawings of the same façade are compared, a change is realized in
the neo-Renaissance design as “archaic double arched windows” turned into
“Palladian windows.”148 (Figures 29-30) Lastly, Washburn Hall is also known for its
spectacular divided stairway facing north.149

Figure 28: Washburn Hall

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

148
Ersoy, 2015 p: 344., Girardelli, 2015 p: 328.

149
Freely, 2009, p:415.

53
 Figure 29-30: Washburn Hall, Façade and Revised Facade.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

54
 Figure 31: Second Floor Plan of Washburn Hall.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

The Washburn Hall housed a study hall for 196 students located in the first floor,
classrooms, offices, a biology laboratory, and a Natural History Museum located in
the fourth floor, which is visible on the plans, as well as a skylight opening on top of
the museum.150 (Figure 31-32) The museum was one of its kind in Turkey, and even
defined as the best natural history museum of the Middle East by the British Natural
History Museum.151 This museum would move into different buildings within the
campus throughout the years but the Washburn Hall was the place where it stayed the
longest.152 (Figure 33)

150
Freely, 2009, p:415.

Akyıldırım; İstanbul’daki Orta Dereceli Öğretim Kurumlarında Bulunan Bitki ve Hayvan

151

Koleksiyonlarının Envanteri, p:32. İleri; “Kayıp Bir Müüzenin İzinde: Robert Kolej’in Bilimsel
Koleksiyonları”, p:61.

152
The second President George Washburn reported that the museum was opened in the sixth year of
the college, which means in 1869. At that time Hamlin Hall had not yet been built so the college was at
the Bebek Seminary. In 1871, Hamlin Hall was built, and the museum moved to this building. In 1893,
the museum had over 800 bird types carefully chosen from Anatolia and over 100 fish types from
Bosporus as well as fossils, and stones. The collection grew mostly with the help of professors of the
college but Dr. Bertram Van Dyke Post also played an important role to take care of the museum
professionally. Dr. Post would be the one who turned the whole collection and display practice into a
museum. At the beginning of the 1900s, the museum moved to the 4th floor of Washburn Hall where it
would stay for most of its time in Robert College.

55
 Figure 32: The Fourth Floor Radiator Installation Plan of Washburn Hall.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

Figure 33: Dr. Bertram Van Dyke Post at Natural History Museum, Washburn Hall.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Gates Hall: Old Engineering Building

The Gates Hall was originally built to house the Engineering School that was founded
in 1912. (Figure 34-35) The building was designed by Prof. John R. Allen from the
University of Michigan. It was originally designed in a U-shape but, due to the Balkan

56
War, only one wing of the design could be built.153 The building partially opened in
1913 and the engineering school started in there; in 1955, the architectural firm of
Skidmore, Owings and Merill, suggested building a new engineering building and
moving there rather than completing the missing part of the Gates Hall. The building
was named after President Caleb Gates whose aim was to have an engineering school.

Figure 34: Gates Hall, originally built as the Robert College Engineering Building.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Figure 35: West Façade of Gates Hall (partially built).

Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

153
Freely, 2009, p: 415.

57
2.2.3. The Analysis of the Campus in Early Twentieth Century: Alfred D. F.
Hamlin and Caleb Gates Report (1909)

Not only building the campus, but also maintaining it was important. In the history of
Robert College, several reports were prepared and some of them were crucial for the
purposes of this study. One of these is the report by Alfred D. Hamlin and Caleb F.
Gates prepared in 1909 that played a key role in explaining the current conditions of
the campus and also projecting its future both architecturally and institutionally.

Robert College was officially founded in 1863 as one of the first American institutions
both in the East and in the Ottoman Empire. In college yearbooks and brochures and
many other documents, it is mentioned that the college plays an undeniable role as a
representative of the American influence in the heartland of the empire. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, foreign influence increased as well as the
nationalist movements. Therefore, the leading role of the college was constantly
challenged in this context and required the college to be at its best in every condition.

In 1909, a report prepared by President Caleb F. Gates and the son of Cyrus Hamlin
and Professor from Columbia University, Alfred D. F. Hamlin, was submitted to the
trustees in their annual meeting. In that report, the current conditions of the college, as
well as the immediate needs of the campus, were carefully explained. In order to
prepare this report Alfred D. F. Hamlin spent three months in the Robert College
campus from July 12 to October 12, 1909. His report mentioned that he aimed to
examine all the campus and an English consulting engineer Jos. R. Weston who joined
him upon the recommendation of President Gates, helped him to survey the campus,
and Mr. Weston continued his work on the campus after Alfred D. F. Hamlin turned
back to the USA. The report aimed to reflect the current condition of the campus by
examining all the buildings, the drawings, and plans of principal buildings, and turning
them into a uniform scale. In addition, Hamlin prepared a topographical map of the
entire property in order to analyze possible purchases to enlarge the campus and places
where new buildings might be built. On the other hand, the electric lighting, heating,
power-plant, water-supply, and fire-protection systems were also examined in this
report. The preparation of this report was very much welcome by the professors at

58
Robert College. Hamlin specifically mentioned the sympathy that he received from
President Gates, Dean Anderson, and the professors Mr. Orniston, Mr. Huntington,
Mr. Dwyer, Mr. Manning, and Mr. Van Millengen. The report consists of an analysis
of the grounds, the access, the entrance, and the existing buildings, and further analysis
of the conditions and character of the campus.

Moreover, Alfred D. F. Hamlin suggested Levantine architect Giuglio Mongeri as his

representative. According to Le Beton Arme journal (November 1911, vol. 162), a
design of Alfred D. F. Hamlin and C. P. Warren would be applied by Giuglio Mongeri,
Eduardo De Nari, and M. M. Georgini. (Figure 36)

Figure 36: A Photo of New Construction in Robert College and at the Back of the
Photograph, architect Giuglio Mongeri is seen.
Source: (CNAM/SIAF/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, 1911-1912 b).

The properties of the College covered an area as large as 100,000 square meters. The
irregularity of the area and the slope is especially mentioned in the report. The location
over the Bosporus was stated as privileged yet requiring “a certain amount of
expertise” as well as “a decent amount of patience” to develop the campus there. This
steep landscape made it possible to locate almost every building with a great Bosporus
view. In the report, it was mentioned that the lowest point of the ground was still 30.74
meters above the Bosporus and the highest point 113.25 meters above it. (Figure 37)

59
 Figure 37: Topographic Plan, 1909.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

The report stated that the landscape needed extreme terracing in order to construct
buildings above, but this also brought the advantage of having one of the most durable
grounds. As well as terracing, this also required the site to be excavated, filled, and
embanked with masonry. In the report, this urge was mentioned as a costly way of
building that also brought the possibility to enter the campus from two different levels.
Most of the campus buildings also had this feature. On the other hand, the campus is
located on the same hillside as the historical Rumeli Fortress and limestone as the
common material available on the site is used both on the walls of the fortress and the
campus buildings. This made the buildings cost reasonably less expensive compared
to their sizes and quality of construction.

The steepness of the campus is also mentioned as making it hard to be reached, causing
transportation expensive. The road constructed by Cyrus Hamlin as early as 1869-1870
was the best option at the time as being less steep. (Figure 38) The report pointed out
the issue of reaching the campus via the roads that were not under the college’s
authority as a problem as those roads were not in a usable condition. Moreover, the
report proposed a better way with a fine slope, but this would not be fully possible to
be built in the future and would guide the college trustees about future purchases.

60
 Figure 38: Site Plan, 1909.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

As well as the buildings, the crowdedness of the college was also mentioned in the
report. It was stated that the college was serving around 600 students and 50 professors
at the time, and it was already too much for the campus. It was mentioned that the
college gets bigger than the campus. On the other hand, the report mentioned that the
school is not an ordinary school but the representation of American standards in the
Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, therefore it should offer the latest examples of
American advancement by all means. Lastly, the report was mentioned that
architecturally whole campus is visible from miles away on top of Bosphorus.
Therefore, all design decision must be taken in line with this fact. The report explained
the campus as “a city set upon the hill and cannot be hid.”

2.2.4. Concluding Remarks on the Formation of the Campus

This chapter aimed at understanding the formation of Robert College campus in

İstanbul in the late Ottoman period. The campus plays an important role as an example
of nineteenth-century American architecture in the Ottoman context, especially for the
case of educational and institutional buildings. In this story, Cyrus Hamlin mostly
seems as the main actor who was responsible of every detail of the College and its
campus; however, further evidences have also shown the role of other actors. First,
61
there were political actors as the Ottoman Empire and the USA. Several individuals as
well as the American Board and the USA Consulate and the army took different roles
in the history of Robert College. However, the campus was built according to the needs
of the school and it took almost forty years to the college to have the first building, the
Hamlin Hall but a rather fast completion of other buildings followed at the beginning
of the 1900s. This may also be in line with the rising importance of Robert College as
an institution that had an impact on further distances than İstanbul. The campus-style
was in line with the contemporary campus design in the USA in the nineteenth century,
and since drawings have shown, the buildings were designed by different architects
and constructed by various companies from overseas, it is possible to understand how
Robert College aimed to be American institution with not only its institutional but also
architectural characteristics. (Figure 39)

Figure 39: Local and Foreign Individuals and Firms noted on the documents.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

The idea of having a quadrangle in the center of a campus was a rather common both
in English colleges and later in American colleges.154In Robert College, the open

154
Unlike English colleges, the quadrangle was not playing an important role in the design of American
colleges until its revival notably in the Princeton University campus. Until that time, Ralph Adams
Cram sees the American colleges as the remainder of a chaos of architectural anarchy. Venable Turner,
Paul, Campus An American Planning Tradition, p: 217.

62
quadrangle in the center of the campus continued this spatial tradition. Building on a
hill, on the other hand, required the architects to carefully design each building that
must have multiple entrances from different levels. (Figure 40)

Figure 40: A note that shows the place of extreme filling,

required because of the slope in the site.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

As well as the level differences, another important design element was the spectacular
view of the Bosporus. Almost all the buildings on the campus have access to a great
view of the Bosporus. This required a well-studied campus design and collaboration
among many local and American actors such as university administrators and
architects who took part in the process of building the campus. Overall, the formation
of the campus was a production of collaboration among the various actors, and their
success in coordinating the process made the Robert College a successful example of
the late Ottoman period to survive into the twentieth century. (Figures 41-42)

63
 Figure 41-42: Robert College Campus.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

64
 CHAPTER 3

THE ROBERT COLLEGE IN THE REPUBLICAN PERIOD

For Robert College, the nineteenth century was the period of formation, and the
twentieth century was the period of maintenance and transformation. The efforts to
sustain the campus and possible solutions to the ongoing problems played an important
role in the transformation of the campus in the twentieth century.

The same design approach by the same architects was effective from the late
nineteenth to the early twentieth century in the buildings of the campus that was
formed around a quadrangle. (Figure 43)

Figure 43: The Layout of the Proposed Athletic Field for Robert College.
Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Bosporus University

65
Only after the Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti-DP) came into power in 1950, the
relationship of Turkey with the United States of America (USA) further developed,
and the architecture in the country witnessed significant changes. A report by
Skidmore Owings and Merrill prepared for the Robert College campus in 1955 and at
the time in 1958 and the first modernist building of the campus, the new engineering
building named as the Perkins Hall, transformed the dominant architectural character
of the campus. This chapter will analyze Robert College in the Republican period by
examining the adaptation of the school to the new conditions of Republican Turkey,
and the transformation of its campus according to the SOM report and the consequent
construction of a new building.

3.1. The Adaptation of the College in Republican Türkiye

In this part, the educational challenges and adaptation of Robert College to the newly
founded Turkish Republic will be analyzed. The transformation from late Ottoman
education policies to the republican policies will be analyzed in the early twentieth
century part and then the change after the Second Word War and its effects on Robert
College will be analyzed in the mid-twentieth century part.

3.1.1. Education in Early Twentieth Century

The missionary and non-Muslim schools like Robert College did not have Turkish
students but they took Muslims’ attention a lot because of the quality of their
education.155 During the First World War and then the Turkish Independence War,
these minority and missionary schools ran anti-Turkish campaigns, and even some of
these schools were used as shelters during the war.156 As a result, when the Republic

Aydın, S., Emiroğlu, K., Türkoğlu, Ö., & Özsoy, E. (2005). Eğitim, Bilim, Sanat ve Örgütlenme. In
155

Küçük Asyanın Bin Yüzü: Ankara (p. 466). Ankara: Dost Kitabevi.

Sakaoğlu, N. (2003). Osmanlıdan Günümüze Eğitim Tarihi. İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi
156

Yayınları, pp.17-18.
66
of Türkiye was founded in 1923, it adopted a policy of closing many of these
schools.157

When the Republic was founded, the new state faced the greater problem of educating
the masses. The Republic replaced the sıbyan schools of the Ottoman Empire with
“primary schools,” rüşdiye, idadi, and Sultani schools turned into “middle” and “high
schools.”158 These improvements were surely part of the new understanding that was
related to the need to raise new generations in line with the Republican ideology. The
traditional system was no longer enough to fulfil this need, so it was replaced with a
system that aimed to educate citizens as nationalist, revolutionary, secular, and
republican.

The Second Constitutional Monarchy (II. Mesrutiyet) of the Ottoman Empire had
aimed to bring all schools under the control of the Ministry of Education but this
attempt failed due to objections from religious groups and the given capitulations of
different countries.159 This unification could finally be realized by the new republic.
On March 3, 1924, the Law of Unification of Education (Tevhid-i Tedrisat Kanunu)
was accepted as a step toward the modern education system. This law mainly targeted
two ideas: the democratization and secularization of education. Finally, this law united
all schools under the control of the Ministry of Education, and all money controlled
by these schools was transferred to the general education budget.160

Following this historic event of the unification of education, another four years were
needed to take another historic step, i.e., the acceptance of the Latin alphabet in 1928.
On May 29, 1928, the Ministry of Education established a Language Board to adopt
Latin letters to the Turkish language. On November 3, 1928, the “Acceptance and
Application of Turkish Letters” law was accepted. By the beginning of the 1928-1929
academic year, schools would begin to teach the “Turkish Alphabet”. Soon after that

157
Aydın, &Emiroğlu, &Türkoğlu, & Özsoy, 2005, p. 466.
158
Yücel, H. A. (1994). Türkiyede Orta Öğretim. Ankara: T.C. Kültür Bakanlığı Millı̂ Kütüphane
Basımevi, pp. 20-21.

Toprak, Z. (2002, September). Türk Maarif Cemiyeti/ Türk Kültür Kurumu: Ankara'nln İlk Özel
159

Koleji 1928- 1938. Toplumsal Tarih Dergisi, 54–57.

160
Gençkaya, O. F. (2011). Ankara: Capital of Education. Ankara: Turkey, p.47.

67
on January 1st of 1929, Millet Mektepleri (public schools) would begin to teach the
public how to read and write with these new letters.

On the other hand, the beginning of the history of higher education in Türkiye is hard
to trace back to a concrete point. The German refugee professor of history Richard
Honig, who was working at İstanbul University in between 1933 to 1939, stated that
the Ottoman and Byzantine traditions could be analyzed together and thus dated the
beginning of İstanbul University back to the year 321.161 Another understanding dates
Turkish higher education back to 1453 when Constantinople was conquered by the
Ottoman sultan Mehmed II and the rise of Turkish madrasas.162 On the other hand, in
1846, the first Ottoman higher education institution based on European traditions, i.e
.Darülfünûn, was established. On April 21, 1924, the Republic of Türkiye recognized
İstanbul Darülfünûnu as a state school, and on October 7, 1925, the administrative
authority was recognized, and its Schools (within the traditional Medrese system) were
turned into modern Faculties. At the time Darülfünûn was housing five faculties which
are medicine, law, letters, theology, and science.163 On August 1, 1933, the school was
recognized as İstanbul University. In the same year with the foundation of the High
Agricultural Institute (Yüksek Ziraat Enstitüsü) in Ankara, the modern journey of
Turkish higher education moved into another step.

The road toward this next step was in fact prepared after the report of Professor Malche
in 1932.164 Professor Malche was invited by the Turkish government to prepare a
report on Darülfünûn. The report includes solid criticisms of the school. The lack of
Turkish publications was highlighted at the beginning of the report. In addition,
professors` salaries were not competitive and this caused them to have additional jobs.
The autonomy of the university isolated the school from the public and the
government, and the report suggested the need for better cooperation with the Ministry
of Education. Moreover, the harshest criticism of the report was about the teaching

161
The short paper of Kazım İsmail Gürkan (former rector of Istanbul University): İstanbul
Üniversitesinin Başlangıcı- Les Debuts de l’universite d’İstanbul (Tr&Fr). İstabul, 1953.
162
Widmann, Horst. Atatürk Üniversite Reformu, İstanbul,1981.

163
Gedikoğlu, Tokay. "Changing Models of University Government in Turkey". 1995, p: 152 Minerva.

164
A. Malche Rapport sur L`universite d`Istanbul, 29.05.1932. p:1. This report is located as a single
copy that was written with a typewriter, in the Swiss Federal Library in Bern, Switzerland. Quoted in
Widmann, Horst, Atatürk Üniversite Reformu, p: 32. İstanbul, 1981.

68
method. Malche defined the course method, and the curriculum as outdated and stated
that it promised nothing. Turkish students` lack of command in foreign languages was
also mentioned and the graduates of foreign schools and Galatasaray High School were
mentioned as distinguished cases.

The higher education transformed during the early Republican decades also with the
help of German refugee professors. They took an active role in the process of founding
several faculties in different universities. In 1935, Faculty of Language and Letters
(Dil ve Tarih Coğrafya Fakültesi) and in 1936 State Conservatory (Devlet
Konservatuarı) were founded in Ankara. In 1938, Mekteb-i Mülkiye moved to Ankara
and renamed as School of Political Sciences (Siyasal Bilgiler Yüksek Okulu). In 1942,
Faculty of Science (Fen Fakültesi), and in 1945, Faculty of Medicine (Tıp Fakültesi)
were founded. In 1946, all faculties were brought together under the name of Ankara
University. In İstanbul, on the other hand, in 1944, Engineering School (Yüksek
Mühendis Mektebi) was renamed as İstanbul Technical University. The schools
founded in Ankara and İstanbul during the early Republican decades played an
important role; and with the law of universities (Üniversite Kanunu) accepted in 1946,
the organizations that had been opened until that time were brought together with the
aim to give them a solid organization path. The autonomy of the universities was also
stated in this law.165

The significant development in higher education was also accompanied by

transformations in primary and secondary education. The young republic was well
aware of the importance of education and in line with the new politics of Turkish
Republic in the field of education that redefines of mass education, Turkish Education
Society (Türk Maarif Cemiyeti) was established in 1928. This society was a result of
an earlier call that was made by President Atatürk, at the Grand National Assembly in
November 1st, 1925, that highlights the need to support of wealthy people for poor
children who were financially unable to go to school. This is important to highlight
the importance given to poor masses by the young republic.166

165
Widmann, 1981. p: 22.

Tanyer, T. (2011). Cumhuriyetin Meşalesi TED Ankara Koleji: 80 Yılın Hikayesi. Ankara: TED
166

Ankara Koleji Vakfı, p. 57.

69
On the other hand, the status of foreign schools was a significant issue, and the Turkish
Republic was strict about taking these schools under control from the very beginning.
Therefore, in the Treaty of Lausanne (Lozan Antlaşması), i.e. the foundational treaty
of the new republic, foreign and non-Muslim schools` identity was redefined and the
privileges given to them in the Ottoman period were completely taken back. They all
would be allowed to continue their education by being completely subordinated to
Turkish laws. After that, with the Law of Unification in Education, the Ministry of
Education would control these schools and they were banned from giving religious
education. In 1925 and 1926, circulars also prohibited these schools to have any
religious symbol, and they were obliged to teach Turkish language, Turkish history,
and geography courses in Turkish to be given by Turkish teachers appointed by the
Ministry of Education. Lastly, with the acceptance of the law no.1778 on March 29,
1931, all citizens would be allowed to go only to Turkish schools to take their primary
education.167 By this law, non-Muslim citizens were no longer allowed to go to foreign
primary schools. Following these, on November 7, 1935, Foreign Schools Directive
prohibited these schools to open new classes or increase the number of existing
classes.168

Robert College was not an exception to these laws and continued its education
according to the laws enacted. The college mainly followed a neutral policy as much
as possible during the First World War and during the Turkish Independence War, and
this played a significant role in the trust of Republican Türkiye in Robert College
during the foundation of the new country. When İstanbul was occupied by the allied
powers, President Gates told everyone on the campus not hanging any American,
Greek, or British flags and staying away from involving in activities that could hurt
the feelings of the society in which they lived for over seventy years.169 Moreover, the
British asked President Gates about deploying two hundred English soldiers on the

167
Milli eğitim ile ilgili Kanunlar, Ankara Milli Eğitim Vekaleti Yayın Müdürlüğü, 1950: Nevzad Ayaş,
Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Milli Eğitimi, Ankara, Milli Eğitim Basımevi, 1948, s.670-67, Türkiye’de ilk
Tahsillerini Mektepte Yapacak Türk Vatandaşı Çocukların Türk Mekteplerine Girmelerine Dair ve 23
Eylül 1329 Tarihli Tedrisatı İptidaiye Kanuna Müzeyyel Kanun:
“Madde 1: Türkiye’de ilk tahsillerini yapmak üzere mektebe girecek Türk vatandaşı çocuklar bundan
böyle bu tahsilleri için ancak Türk mekteplerine girebilirler. Madde 2: Bu kanun neşri tarihinden
itibaren muteberdir. Madde 3: Bu kanunun icrasına Maarif Vekili memurdur.”

168
Mutlu, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Yabancı Okullar, p: 333-334.
169
Gates, Not To Me Only, 1940, p: 245. Can-Korkut, Osmanlı Mülkünde Amerikan Okulları, p: 102.
70
campus to protect Robert College, but this was evaluated as a way to control the
seaways that went to the Black Sea and considered dangerous for the neutrality of
Robert College and hence denied.170

Following the Turkish Independence War, Hüseyin Pektaş, who was the first Turkish
graduate of Robert College, attended the Conference of Lausanne as the translator and
secretary of the Turkish delegation.171 The efforts of Pektaş were recognized and he
gained the appreciation of the Ankara Government.172 Thus, the relationship between
Robert College and the young Turkish Republic began rather positively.173 President
Gates also attended the Conference of Lausanne as the councilor of Admiral Bristol174,
the representative of the USA at the conference.175 The attendance of President Gates
can be understood as a search for assurance from the Turkish Government to both
American schools and Robert College in particular.176 Moreover, the conference
resulted in the decision of allowance to foreign schools by only banning them from
involving in any kind of religious propaganda.177 The attendance of Gates and the

170
Can-Korkut, Osmanlı Mülkünde Amerikan Okulları, Yalın Yayıncılık, 2013, p: 104.
171
Gates, Not To Me Only, p: 182. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1940. Grew, Amerika’nın İlk
Türkiye Büyükelçisi’nin Anıları: Yeni Türkiye. İstanbul: Multilingual. 1999. p: 26. Yalman, Yakın
Tarihte Gördüklerim ve Geçirdiklerim, II, İstanbul: Pera Yayıncılık. 1997. p: 819. Kılıç, Kılıçtan Kılıç’a
Bir Dönemin Tanıklığı. İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi. 2005. p: 100. Acun, “Robert Kolej Mezunları ve
Meşhurları,” Turkish History Educational Journal (Türk Eğitim Tarihi Dergisi). 2015, vol: 4 (2). p: 149.
Akaş, Tepedeki Okul Robert Kolej’in Üç Yüzyılı. İstanbul: NMC Yayınları. 2017. p: 286.

Before Hüseyin Pektaş there were several Turkish students who attend the college but none of them
successfully graduated. There was not an official ban for Turkish students to attend but it was strongly
not suggested by the Ottoman government.
172
Grew, 1999, p: 26.
173
Can-Korkut, 2013, p: 105.
174
Admiral Bristol was appointed as the high commissioner on behalf of the USA on August 12, 1919.
He later stayed till 1927 as a diplomatic officer and was known for his pro-Türkiye policies. See, Gates,
Not To Me Only, p: 300. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1940. Kurat: Türk-Amerikan
Münasebetlerine Kısa Bir Bakış (1800-1959), Ankara: Doğuş Matbaası, 1959. p:43. Şimşir,” Türk-
Ameriikan İlişkilerinin Yeniden Kurulması ve Ahmet Muhtar Bey’in Vaşington Büyükelçiliği (1920-
1927), Belleten, cilt: 41. Vol: 162. April, 1977. p: 278. Bulut, Atatürk Dönemi Türkiye-ABD İlişkileri
(1923-1938), Ankara: Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi. 2010. p:24.

175
Mehmet Zeki, Türkiye Tercüme-i Ahval Ansiklopedisi. İstanbul. 1929. p: 355. The Robert College
Herald Board, Dr. Caleb Frank Gates President of Robert College An Appreciation, İstanbul. 1932.
p:39. Gates, Not To Me Only, p: 287. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1940. Açıkses,
Amerikalıların Harput’taki Misyonerlik Faaliyetleri. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu. 2003. p:313.

176
Gates, 1940, p: 288.

Kılınç, “Cumhuriyet Döneminde Yabancı Okullar,” Atatürk Araştırmaları Merkezi Dergisi. Cilt: 21.
177

Vol: 61. March 2005. p: 272-273. Yazıcı, Türkiye’de Azınlık, Yabancı ve Türk Özel Okulları, Marmara
71
President of American College for Girls, Marry Mills Patrick 178, were found
significant since they both stood with the Turks, and their support was heavily
criticized by the British delegation at the conference.179

Despite the positive atmosphere, the effort to take control of education by both the
Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic surely affected Robert College. As early as
1915, during the Ottoman period, the private school regulation (Mekâtib-i Hususiye
Talimatnamesi) had been announced.180 According to this regulation, schools in which
instruction was in another language than Turkish should include courses of Turkish
language, Turkish geography, and Turkish history in Turkish.181 In 1917, another law
suggested to schools to remove religious courses from their curriculum step by step.
This suggestion was not taken into account at first by President Gates since he strongly
believed that Protestant moral values played an important role in the education system
of Robert College but the school would later adopt itself to the regulations of the Law
of Unification of Education of the Republican period.182 On the other hand, the college

Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Yüksek Lisans Tezi, 2010. p:60. Gürtunca, Evrim
Şencan. Robert Kolej’de Öğrenim Gören Türk Öğrenciler Üzerine Prosopografik Bir Çalışma (1863-
1971), Hacettepe Üniversitesi Atatürk İlkeleri ve İnkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü Atatürk İlke ve İnkılap Tarihi
Ana Bilim Dalı Doktora Tezi. 2017. p: 103

178
Marry Mills Patrick was one of the significant presidents of American College for Girls. She was
born in New England in 1850. She came to the Ottoman Empire and worked in the college between
1875-1924. Before working at American College for Girls, she worked in Erzurum for four years and
learned Turkish, Kurdish, and Persian as well as having the chance to improve her Armenian since the
college was in an Armenian village. She was known as a true feminist and showed this throughout her
life. Once she began working at American College for Girls, she was working with the daughter of
Cyrus Hamlin, Clara Hamlin. After Clara Hamlin went to learn Bulgarian and later got married to Dr.
Lucious O. Lee from Maraş American School, Marry Mills Patrick was in charge of the college for over
thirty years between, 1889-1924. She was the one who turned the college from a missionary school into
a higher education institution that serves girls from the Middle East and thanks to her efforts, in 1890,
the USA recognized the school as a college-level higher education institution. Just like Cyrus Hamlin,
the efforts of Marry Mills Patrick were heavily criticized by the Women Missionary Organization of
the American Board, and they wanted her to resign several times.

For further reading about Marry Mills Patrick, see her books: Under Five Sultans, New York, 1929,
Century and Co.; A Bosporus Adventure, California, 1934, Stanford University Press.

179
Yalman, Ahmet Emin. Yakın Tarihte Gördüklerim ve Geçirdiklerim, I, 1997, p: 456.
180
Soysal, Funda. “Robert Kolej’in Osmanlı Dönemi,” in Bir Geleneğin Anatomisi: Robert Kolej’in
150 Yılı (1983-2013) (ed.: Cem Akaş), İstanbul Aaraştırmaları Enstitüsü, İstanbul, 2013, p: 78.

181
Gates, 1940, p: 183.

Sabev, “1910’larda Savaş ve Eğitim: Savaş Koşullarında İstanbul Robert Koleji ve Amerikan Kız
182

Koleji,” p: 527.

72
granted the right to make its own exams with its own professors and to graduate its
engineering school students who would work at different levels of the government.183

In 1921, the preparatory department of English language turned into the Robert
Academy, the curriculum was updated to six years from four years and the amount,
and the variety of elective courses were increased. With the acceptance of the Law of
Unification of Education of 1924 (Tevhid-i Tedrisat Kanunu) in 1924, Robert College
was directly tied to the Ministry of Education. All religious activities were banned and
the attendance of Muslim students to the non-Muslim rituals was also strictly
banned.184 The courses given to Armenian and Greek students in their languages were
also removed.185 Moreover, the courses known as culture courses, i.e. history,
geography, and citizenship lectures, started to be given by Turkish professors.186
Following that, in 1926, it was required that one of the professors giving the Turkish
culture courses must be appointed as a vice principal and that all professors who were
Turkish Republican citizens must be able to speak enough Turkish, including the non-
Muslim professors. In the same year, it also became necessary that the professors who
were eligible to give Turkish culture courses could only be “Turkish”, thus excluding
all minority groups in Türkiye to be able to give those courses.187 In the same year, the
course books that would be used in education became also required to be approved by

183
Can-Korkut, 2013, p: 98-111.
184
Gates, Not To Me Only, Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1940. p: 297. Kılıç, Sezen.
“Cumhuriyet Döneminde Yabancı Okullar,” Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi Dergisi, cilt: 21, sayı: 61, Mart
2005. p: 274. Ulusoy, Robert Koleji ve Yabancı Okullara Yönelik Atatürk Döneminde Yapılan
Düzenlemeler. Van Yüzüncü Yıl Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Yüksek Lisans Tezi. 2005. p:
16. Baykan-Çıracıoğlu, Bilim Yolunda 100 Yıl Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi. İstanbul:
Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi. 2013. p: 52. Acun, Fatma and Gürtunca, Evrim Şencan. “Osmanlıdan
Cumhuriyete Robert Kolej’in Türk Öğrencileri,” Türk Tarihçiliğinin Asırlık Çınarı Halil İnalcık’a
Armağan (ed: Mehmet Öz- Serhat Küçük). Ankara: Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü. 2017. p: 52.
Gürtunca, Evrim Şencan. Robert Kolej’de Öğrenim Gören Türk Öğrenciler Üzerine Prosopografik Bir
Çalışma (1863-1971), Hacettepe Üniversitesi Atatürk İlkeleri ve İnkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü Atatürk İlke
ve İnkılap Tarihi Ana Bilim Dalı Doktora Tezi. 2017. p: 103.
185
Akaş, Tepedeki Okul Robert Kolej’in Üç Yüzyılı, 2017, p: 287. Baykan-Çıracıoğlu, Bilim Yolunda
100 Yıl Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi, p: 52.

186
Scipio, Lynn. My Thirty Years In Turkey, New Hampshire, 1955, p: 213.

Kılıç, 2005, p: 275. Ulusoy, Robert Koleji ve Yabancı Okullara Yönelik Atatürk Döneminde Yapılan
187

Düzenlemeler, 2005, p: 18.

73
the Ministry of Education.188 In order to get approved by the Ministry, the course
books must not have any derisive information about Turkish history and traditions.
There must be no misinformation about Turkish geography and borders, and no
imaginative explanations and thoughts of another nation upon the Turkish Republic
could be included within the course books and these books must not make any
propaganda of other nations or religions.189 In 1925, another law was legislated that
banned foreign schools to have professors apart from their home country. This banned
Robert College from having Bulgarian and Greek professors who were teaching Slavic
and Greek.190

These nation-building efforts of the new Turkish Republic surely caused problems for
foreign schools about having professors, giving a competitive education and even
being able to import course books. The Republicans were well aware of the need for
educating the masses and providing equality in these terms within the society;
therefore, they made education free for everyone in state schools, creating also a
challenge for foreign schools that charged families in different amounts. This situation
already made schools to face declines in their classroom sizes, but Robert College
rather stayed strong with these challenges. Its classroom population had already
decreased to 605 a year before the Turkish Republic was founded and then increased
to 653 in 1924 and 768 in 1926.191 The ethnicity within the college changed gradually
and in 1929, over 70% of the students became Turkish.192 In addition, the Ministry of
Education asked the school to give full scholarship to the 10% of the students and
President Gates did his best to fulfil this order and the college gave full scholarship to
15 students.193 The Rockefeller Foundation helped the college a lot during this period

188
Akgün, “Türkiye’de Cumhuriyet Öncesi Amerikan Eğitim Kurumları,” 1990, p: 598.

189
Ulusoy, 2005, p: 19.

190
Can-Korkut, 2013, p: 110.
191
Sabev, Orlin. Spiritus Roberti: Shaping New Minds and Robert College in Late Ottoman Society, p:
292.

Although Greeks that were living in Istanbul were excluded from the population exchange between
Greece and Türkiye in 1923, the number of Greek students in the college partially decreased.

192
Freely, John. A History of Robert College, II, 2009, p: 46.

193
Erken, Amerika ve Modern Türkiye’nin Oluşumu, p: 98.

74
and donated over a million dollars to both Robert College and Arnavutköy College for
Girls.194 Robert College might stand still in the early years of the Republic and even
grew in classroom population but the Great Depression in 1929 hit the college hard.
The devaluation of dollar resulted in many of the American professors leaving the
college, which resulted in a weakness when compared to state schools. The Great
Depression also affected the classroom population and the college lost more than half
of its students decreasing to 230 in 1936 when compared to 717 in 1929. This was
causing a continuous problem as the decrease in the number of students resulted in
economic problems that resulted in the decrease in the number of students.195

These problems were affecting both American schools and the economic crisis would
lead the board of trustees of Robert College to take the hardest decisions and
administratively unify in 1931, Robert College and American College for Girls under
the name of İstanbul American College (İstanbul Amerikan Koleji). After President
Gates had retired, they appointed Paul Monroe, a professor of Columbia University,
as the president of the two colleges.196 Although the colleges were unified in order to
decrease the expenses of professors, and school needs, and to make it easier to manage
both colleges, they kept the original names of the schools, and the boys’ part continued
as the Robert Academy and the girls part continued as Arnavutköy Girls College.197

By the time of the Second World War, Robert College continued education, the
graduates of the school were valued a lot within the society, and the relationship of the
school with the Turkish government went relatively fine. It seems that Robert College
did its best to adapt itself to the Republican reforms and regulations. The Turkish
Republic, from the beginning, was having good relations with the Soviet Union and
its relation with the USA was kept at a certain degree; nonetheless, towards the Second
World War this began to change, and with the new era that would begin after the war,
a new era also started for Robert College.

194
Akaş, 2017, p: 342.

195
Akaş, 2017, p: 356.

196
Scipio, 1940 p: 255. Bulut, Atatürk Dönemi Türkiye-ABD İlişkileri (1923-1938), p: 159.

197
Toprak, “Robert Kolej’den Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’ne,” p: 42.

75
3.1.2. Education in Mid-Twentieth Century

At the end of the Second World War, the leading power in the world became the USA,
shifting power away from Europe. Entering the war at its last stage, Türkiye was still
deeply affected by the war, and once it was over, another era in Türkiye was about to
start. In the 1950 elections, Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti-DP) won the elections
and ended up the one-party era of the Republican People`s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk
Partisi-RPP). This was not only a political transformation but rather a divorce from
the past cultural and economic priorities. The new government would open the Turkish
economy to a world that was driven by the USA and its capitalist system. Far more
liberal economic policies in line with the modernization of agriculture as well as a
mass population shift from rural to urban areas were the marking events of the post-
war period in Türkiye. The shift would surely affect the cities and reshape them in
order to house the newly migrated population.198

In this new era of capitalism, the Turkish Republic ended up its balance policy in
between the Soviet Union and the USA and had strong ties with the USA. These ties
brought the Marshall Plan and its aid to the Turkish Republic in 1947 and later Türkiye
became an ally and joined NATO in 1952, taking its position on the “Western” side of
the world. The American influence in the country was rising in this context and the
American lifestyle with its consumer goods, were introduced with the slogan of DP as
“becoming Little America”. Another shift was in the method of transportation; the
earlier railroad-prioritized policy of RPP was changed by DP to building roads and
highways for motor vehicles. Together with the highway policy, the mechanization in
agriculture also fueled mass migration toward cities, and the country started to face
the problems of urbanization and modernization.199 Post-war Türkiye was classified
as one of the most successful examples of the “modernization theory” as proof of the
process that must be followed by every nation to modernize like the so-called

198
Bozdoğan, Sibel, Art and Architecture in Modern Turkey: The Republican Period, The Cambridge
History of Turkey, vol.4: Turkey in the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
P: 443.

199
E D. Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society (New York: Free Press, 1958) and B. Lewis, The
Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968).

76
developed Western countries.200 On the other hand, as recent literature argues, every
country follows its own path of modernization. Therefore, the terminology has
changed from “convergent theories of modernization” to “divergent theories of
modernization” as to represent the heterogeneity and plurality of modernizations in the
world.201 Instead of defining the process as “Westernization/Americanization” or
“modernization”, the experience in Türkiye should be understood with its
complexity.202 The adaptation of Robert College in mid-twentieth century presents an
exemplary case to analyze the transformation in Türkiye as related to the relations with
the USA. (Figure 44) Ege University in İzmir and Karadeniz Technical University in
Trabzon were examples of this first type. The second type was to adopt the American
land-grant university system. Atatürk University in Erzurum was an example of this
system. The Turkish government asked the University of Nebraska to cooperate in
running a university in those less developed parts of Anatolia, adopting the structure
of the American land-grant college.203

The third type was to have institutions that would provide educated graduates in the
fields of community planning, technology, and health. These institutions were planned
to have their own laws that empowered them to supply the needed graduates. Middle
East Technical University (Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi) in Ankara was an example
of this third group and Hacettepe University in Ankara was a hybrid of the first and
third types. Similarly, the ninth university of Türkiye, Boğaziçi (Bosphorus)

200
Bozdoğan, Sibel. “Turkey’s Post-War Modernism: A Retrospective Overview of Architecture,
Urbanism and Politics in the 1950s”, in M. Gürel (ed.) Mid-Century Modernism in Turkey: Architecture
across Culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Routledge, 2016. p: 11.

For further reading about modernization see: D. Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society:
Modernizing the Middle East, Glencoe, Free Press, 1958. C.E. Black, The Dynamics of Modernization:
A Study in Comparative History, New York, Harper &Row, 1966. S. N. Eisenstadt et.al, Post-
Traditional Societies, Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1972.
201
See the following sources that discuss “multiple modernities” and capitalist modernity: D. Gaonkar,
Alternative Maternities, Durham, Duke University Press, 2001. A. Dirlik, Global Modernity:
Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism, Boulder: Paradigm Publisher, 2007.

202
Bozdoğan,2016. p: 13.

203
Reed Howard A., Hacettepe, and Middle East Technical University: New Universities in Turkey,
Minerva Vol. XIIIs, No.2, 1975. p:204.

77
University, to be founded in 1971 as the successor of Robert College, was a transitional
example, having characteristics of both the first and third types.204

Figure 44: Turkish and American Flags at Robert College.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

In addition to junior high school and high school, Robert College was also giving
higher education and its engineering school was quite successful. In the 1940`s there
were three engineering schools in Türkiye. The first one was at İstanbul Technical
University, which housed many German professors. The other one was at Yıldız
Technical University, and the last one was the Robert College Engineering School.
The graduates of this school were accepted to universities in the USA, Canada, and
the United Kingdom to be granted the title of engineer with MSc degree after two years
of graduate education. However, they were not accepted as graduates of higher

204
Reed Howard A., Hacettepe, and Middle East Technical University: New Universities in Turkey,
Minerva Vol. XIII, No.2, 1975. p:205. Karayalçın, Y. “Üniversitelerin İdare ve Murak Ebesi” (“The
Administration and Supervision of Universities”) in Ord. Prof. Ernst E. Hirsch’e Armağan (Ankara:
Ankara Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi, Ajans-Türk Matbaası), p: 651-694.

78
education in Türkiye because Robert College was officially accepted as consisting of
only a junior high school and high school.205

Three decades after the engineering school was founded, with the cabinet decision on
August 28, 1957, the Robert College engineering faculty turned into an institution of
higher education under the name of Robert College School of Higher Education
(Yüksek Okul).206 According to this cabinet decision, the engineering school was
renamed as the engineering faculty; and the faculties of science, administrative
sciences, and foreign languages were also opened, which formed the Robert College
School of Higher Education. A year after Robert College was granted the school of
higher education status, civil and mechanical engineering programs were opened.207

Figure 45: Robert College Quadrangle before Co-Education.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

205
Baykan- Çıracıoğlu, Bilim Yolunda 100 Yıl Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi, p: 71-72.
During the 1950s several excursions were made in the country according to the wishes of students and
their interests. Such as an excursion to Zonguldak and Karabük was shown to students the difficulties
of coal miners. Also, some of the college graduates will start to work in the factories that they visited.

206
Gürtunca, Robert Kolej’de Öğrenim Gören Türk Öğrenciler Üzerine Prosopografik Bir Çalışma
(1863-1971), p:145. Akaş, Tepedeki Okul Robert Kolej’in Üç yüzyılı, p: 441. Baykan- Çıracıoğlu,
Bilim Yolunda 100 Yıl Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi, p: 83-84.

207
Erken, Amerika ve Modern Türkiye’nin Oluşumu, p:105.

79
By 1958, the high school (lise) and the junior high school (ortaokul) continued under
the name of Robert Academy, and the junior high school was later closed.208 An
important event of these years was that two women were registered for the engineering
faculty in 1957, and after almost a century since its foundation, Robert College finally
welcomed female students at the Bebek Campus.209 Again in 1958, Robert College
and Arnavutköy College for Girls merged and the co-education of boys and girls
began.210 (Figure 45)

In Robert College, there was a President chosen by the board of trustees, and a Senior
Vice-President, who was often called as the “Turkish President” (Türk Müdür). The
Ministry of Education did not recognize the American president and none of the
documents would be accepted without the Turkish president`s signature. The
American president was a delegate of the board of trustees and the Turkish president
was the “bridge” between the board of trustees and the government.

3.2. The Transformation of the College Campus

In this part, the college campus will be analyzed in Republican period. The early
Republican period and the development both within and around the campus will
initially be examined. Then, the effort of the maintenance of the campus will be
analyzed with reference to the report prepared in 1955 about the campus by the well-
known construction company Skidmore, Owings and Merill (SOM), and this part will
conclude by the analysis of the New Engineering Building as suggested in the SOM
report, and also its architect and Robert College graduate Aptullah Kuran.

208
İstanbul Amerikan Koleji Mezunları Derneği, RC-ACG Mezunlar Topluluğunda Kim Kimdir?, p:22.
209
Freely, 2009, II, p: 118. Hortaçsu, “Robert Kolej Mühendis Mektebi’nin Tarihi”, p: 184.

The first two women of the engineering school were Fatoş Arf and İnci Üsküdarlı. Fatoş Arf was the
daughter of the well-known mathematician Cahit Arf who also worked at Robert College.

At that time, Robert College had 1150 students and Arnavutköy College for Girls had 650 students.
210

Milliyet, November 29, 1958.

80
3.2.1. The Campus in the Early Republican Period

At the beginning of the Republican period, there were two American colleges in
Istanbul, namely Robert College in Bebek, Hisarüstü Hill, and the American College
of Girls in Arnavutköy. (Figure 46) These schools were considered outside of the city
until the early 1950s; therefore, in Ottoman times dormitory buildings occupied a large
area of the Robert College campus.

Figure 46: The Property of American Colleges in Istanbul, 1920.

Source: Boğaziçi University Archive and Documentation Center, Aptullah Kuran Archive

After the foundation of the Republic, Ankara as the new capital city became the focus
of attention for new building activities. In line with the old capital Istanbul`s fate,
Robert College did not witness many building activities in the early Republican
decades. The Robert College campus was located on an area of 73 acres (23 of it in
farm properties). The main entrance of the college and campus circulation was planned
far before the advent of automobiles and remained unchanged until the 1950s. The
entrance of the college was from down the hill through a narrow path211 that was not
suitable for automobile reach. (Figure 47)

211
Today’s Bebek Gate.
81
 Figure 47: Entrance to Robert College, 1944.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

The Black Sea Highway (later Trans European Motorways) was introduced in 19??212
to connect the central parts of İstanbul to its northern borders. The highway would pass
via the west side of the Robert College campus, and the city started then to grow
towards the Black Sea, especially after the Second World War, causing the need for
another entrance to the campus up the hill.

Van Millingen Hall

Almost all of the buildings in the campus had been built during the Ottoman period,
and the built environment of the campus remained mostly unchanged through the early
Republican decades. Nonetheless, Alexander Van Millingen Hall, constructed in 1932,
is a worth-mentioning example of the early Republican-era addition to the campus.
The building was designed by Lynn A. Scipio, the dean of the Engineering School,
according to the order of the Italian “Palazzo”.213 (Figure 48) It was located next to the
Gates Hall, the engineering building at the time. This location was the place where the
blue limestone had been for early buildings. Due to being used for this purpose for
several decades, the place was already dug and proven to be strong enough to construct
a building on. (Figure 49)

212
This information was given in SOM`s report but in the research, I could not have reached the official
document.

Ersoy, Ahmet, Bavullardan Kataloglara: Boğaziçi Arşivlerine Doğru, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’nde

213

Mimarinin Sahne Arkası: Tarihi Proje Koleksiyonu, Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, 2015 p: 348.

82
The Engineering School played an important role in the construction of the building.
“The balcony railings, the sash pulleys and the radiator taps are genuine Robert
College products, having been made in the Engineering shops.” The heating system
was drawn by Professor Lynn A. Scipio, the steel structure of the building was
designed by Mr. Sarkis Kurdjian. Messrs. Tahsin Ali and Affan Halet involved in as
assistants to the supervising architect. Overall, Alexander Van Millingen Hall is
important as being the first College building which the graduates of the Engineering
School took part in the construction process. 214

Figure 48-49: Van Millingen Hall.

Blue Limestone Mining and Location for Van Millingen Hall.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

214
Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Near East Colleges Newsletter, October 1935. Volume 15.
83
It is significant that photographs were taken during the construction of the building
(Figure 50), and the architect of the building is also seen at the construction site - for
the time, quite a unique case for the photographs of the campus buildings probably
because the architects of the earlier buildings used to live in the USA and traveling to
İstanbul had not been easy. (Figure 51)

Figure 50: Construction of Van Millengen Hall,

“Attention [Dikkat]” written in Turkish on the Sign.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Figure 51: Construction of Van Millengen Hall.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

84
Alexander Van Millingen Hall is a 5-story building. According to the level differences
of the site, the fourth floor stays on the campus’s quadrangle square level and the
entrance is from this floor where the marble lobby and the president`s and the vice
president`s offices were located. The fifth floor served as a library, and the ground
floor and the second and third floors were also used by the library and used as stack
areas. An internal elevator connects these floors. (Figure 52) Rather than reinforced
concrete that began to spread in Türkiye at the time, the building has a steel frame
structure that shares the weight of the building with the outer walls.215 The usage of
steel is worth mentioning since both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic
faced a lack of contemporary construction materials such as steel, iron and concrete
although these materials had been in use at the Robert College campus for over fifty
years, showing the privileged position of the school.216 (Figure 53)

Figure 52: Second Floor Plan of Van Millengen Hall.

Source: Architectural Drawing Collection, Boğaziçi University

215
Freely, A Bridge of Culture: Robert College, 2009, p:417.

216
For readings about the usage of concrete in the Turkish Republic, see: Selah, Z., (1934), “Türkiye’de
çimento bir lükstür”, volume: 5, p: 155, İstanbul. Sey.,Y, (2003), “Çimentonun tarihçesi”, TÇMOB ve
Tarih Vakfı Yayınları, Ankara. Sey., Y., (2004), “Modernlesmenin Simgesi”, Betonarmenin
Türkiye’deki Kısa öyküsü, Betonart, İlkbahar-Yaz , p: 57-69, Ankara.

85
Finally, although modern design began to spread in the early decades of the twentieth
century,217 the Alexander Van Millingen Hall was neo-renaissance in its style,
designed in the historicist approach of the nineteenth century as the earlier buildings
in the campus. Thus, the new construction in the campus during the early Republican
decades did not change but kept its visual and spatial identity intact. (Figure 54-55)

Figure 53: Construction of Van Millingen Hall with Students Around.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections.

Figure 54: RC Campus before 1927. Left to Right. Hamlin Hall, Washburn Hall,
Social Hall, Dodge Gymnasium, and Kennedy Lodge in the front.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

217
See the chapter on the International Style: Frampton, Kenneth, The International Style: theme and
variations, 1925-65, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Thames and Hudson, 1980 p:248-262.

86
 Figure 55: Robert College Campus Quadrangle.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

3.2.2. The Analysis of the Campus in Mid-Twentieth Century: The SOM Report
(1955)

The Skidmore, Owings, and Merill (SOM) report that was prepared in 1955 was
another turning point for the school as one of the most detailed analyses of Robert
College, also prospecting the future of the campus and buildings.

Cyrus Hamlin laid the cornerstone of the Hamlin Hall on July 5, 1868 and the building
was finished in 1869 as the oldest building on the campus. In time, the campus grew
with the construction of several buildings especially during the late Ottoman and also
the early Republican decades. As among the best examples of craftsmanship, these
limestone buildings stand strong for decades. Although the material decisions make
this campus strong enough to stand still, the maintenance of these buildings was
always an issue. The effort to maintain the campus can be traced back to as early as
1909, as examined in Chapter 2. Under the presidency of Caleb. F. Gates, a report on
the physical conditions of Robert College Campus was prepared by A. D. F. Hamlin
who served on the board of trustees at the time. The report that was sent to trustees on

87
November 6,1909, contained an analysis of the buildings as well as an analysis about
the entrance to the campus.218

In the year 1955, upon the invitation of President Dr. Duncan S. Ballatine, another
report was prepared by the famous American architectural office Skidmore, Owings
& Merrill (SOM).219 The aim of this report was mainly to develop a preliminary master
plan for the Robert College campus in order to establish a long-range program for its
development, to bring the physical facilities as nearly as possible in line with the
current minimum standards of American colleges.220

SOM was the architectural office that played a leading role in opening a new era in
architecture in Türkiye in the 1950s as well as redefining the profession of architecture
by bringing together the procedures of designing and constructing. SOM worked with
the famous Turkish architect Sedad Hakkı Eldem as the local collaborating architect
in the design and construction of the canonic Hilton Hotel in İstanbul that was built
between 1952-1955. (Figure 56-57) The regular grid “honeycomb” façade was one of
the features of the hotel that represented the democratization of comfort and luxury via
giving every guest a separate equally designed “cell”. The fine and clean look that was
provided by the imported white cement was another important design feature of the
building from the outside. Bozdoğan also mentioned that “the interior and technology
used within the rooms such as air conditioning, private baths, hot water, wall-to-wall
carpeting, and radio cabinet were other features that represented the modern
comfort.”221

218
Detailed report can be seen in Columbia University Rare Collections of Robert College, RC9-53.

219
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is an American architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm. It
was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois, USA. In 1939,
John Merrill joined as an engineer. They built the first International Style office building in New York
City, Lever House. This building was constructed as a high-rise with the harmony of glass and steel,
unlike the other masonry buildings. For further reading see: Adams, Nicholas. "Skidmore, Owings &
Merrill: The Experiment since 1936." Milan: Electa. 2006.
220
SOM mentioned the usage of Architectural Graphic Standards, Time-Saver Standards, and Building
Planning and Design Standards.

221
Bozdoğan, 2016, p:19.

Also see: T. E. Altan, İ. Akpınar, Z. Akay, “Cumhuriyet Dönemi İstanbul Mimarlığı”, içinde Coşkun
Yılmaz (der.) Antik Çağdan XXI. Yüzyıla Büyük İstanbul Tarihi, İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi Kültür
A.S., İstanbul, 2015, ss.558-597.

88
The building and its features would immediately become a symbol of technical
excellence. The basic typology and features of the Hilton were repeated in other hotels,
offices, and apartments. The mid-century modernism in Türkiye was shaped by these
prismatic blocks that were horizontally situated that reflected the grid on the façade as
well as using reinforced concrete frame. The buildings were then mostly lifted on
pilotis by providing a transparent ground floor and also a rooftop that were open to use
by the habitants of the buildings.222 These typical characteristics of the contemporary
so-called International Style of modern architecture would be seen in SOM report on
the Robert College campus, and the company`s architectural perspective would mark
itself as the new engineering building in the near future, to be examined in the next
part of this study.

Figure 56: Construction works of the Hilton Hotel in 1953.

Source: SALT Research

Figure 57: İstanbul Hilton Hotel.

Source: SALT Research

222
Bozdoğan, 2016, p:19-20.
89
The report was prepared and submitted by SOM on December 20, 1955. It was
carefully prepared with several different methods. Firstly, the existing campus was
surveyed by SOM for approximately three weeks by analyzing the sizes and conditions
as well as the ground conditions of the buildings. The location of the Robert College
campus was also analyzed within the context of growing İstanbul. (Figure 58)

Figure 58: Vicinity Map by SOM.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

As well as these surveys, the academics, and the staff were engaged in the process of
writing this report with their comments on what was needed. With their help, SOM
determined the physical requirements and estimated them according to the minimum
American standards. These standards included areas for different facilities like
academic and administrative spaces, student housing areas, and service requirements.

Upon determining the requirements, the existing buildings were remodeled with new
room layouts. In this process, the spaces of the existing buildings were tried to be used
at their most, and new construction apart from New Engineering Building, was not
offered unless it would become impossible to fit a new function in an existing building.

90
Finally, the report also proposed a master plan for new construction of New
Engineering building and how it would connect with the existing campus. The cost
factors for remodelling and new constructions were applied based on the average
American building costs. Eventually, the final report was proposed for a period of ten
years. At the end of the report, SOM mentioned that, in their operations in Europe and
Türkiye, they found out that the building cost in these places, which were designed
according to American Standards, was generally 20 % less than the American cost. It
was also mentioned that, with the adoption of local techniques, an additional 15 %
could be discounted with the result of a reduction in the standards. Although this was
possible, SOM mentioned that the construction quality should be kept tight in order to
protect the college from higher costs in the upcoming future; therefore, locally
developed costs should be carefully reviewed. At the end of the report, it was also
stated that the detailed cost could only be ascertained by local experts in Türkiye.

In this report on the Robert College campus, the spectacular location of the college
was constantly mentioned, as in the following sentences of SOM:

The site of the College is one of the most dramatic imaginable and the views
overlooking the Bosporus are superb. The terrain, however, is extremely
rugged and building sites have had to be literally carved out of the hillside.223

Although the site is called dramatic, it is still in need of being planned. The report
mentioned İstanbul as a city growing towards the college campus, and within ten years
the campus would be surrounded by suburban areas. In line with this, an entrance from
the west of the campus was suggested in order to have an entrance from Black Sea
highways.224

The report also suggested that all buildings should be inspected by engineers due to
their old ages and as the existing plant of buildings (such as water tanks and power
plants) were in really harsh conditions. The report continued with detailed suggestions
but significantly, to have these suggestions realized, it was initially suggested that to
commission a good local architect. Overall, the age of the buildings was forty-five at
the time the report was prepared. The heating, plumbing, and electrical conditions of

223
See SOM Preliminary Report, Columbia University Rare Collection of Robert College, RC-
0090AD-001

224
Today’s Etiler Gate.
91
the buildings were mostly called poor and inadequate. It was also mentioned that many
buildings were in use of two or three unsuited functions, causing problems as well as
inadequate fire exits and fire protection. (Figure 59)

Figure 59: SOM Report Existing Campus Map.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

During the Republican period, Robert College used several names as the Robert
Academy, Robert College School of Higher Education. On the campus, different
institutions provided education as junior high school, high school, and university but
the co-existence of students from different age groups from children to teenagers was
also criticized in the SOM report.

The existing buildings in the campus were heavily criticized for the low ratio of their
usable areas. This was explained as related to the large areas for service and
circulation, the thick walls of the buildings with wide corridors and large stair halls
(Figure 60); the basements were also defined as not suitable for prolonged habitation.

92
 Figure 60: Gates Hall, Old Engineering Building Ground Floor.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

As a result, although proposing new construction was not the main aim of the report,
several new constructions seemed necessary and the idea of removing the academy
from the campus also gained strength after the report. (Figure 60) As well as
suggesting new construction, the report made significant suggestions about re-
modelling the existing facilities. Special attention was paid to replacing or repairing
the roofing and exterior windows and doors. It was suggested that all wooden stairs
must be replaced with reinforced concrete stairs and new fire escapes must be located
where needed. All existing floorings must be levelled and covered with asphalt tile.
All steam pipes of the buildings must be refitted according to where it was needed and
all electrical system must be rewired with a three-phase system. Many of these
suggestions were taken into account and gradually applied to the campus. In this
report, a new engineering school (A-Red in Figure 61), a new auditorium (F-Blue in
Figure 61), a dining hall (G-Green in Figure 61) as well as new faculty housing (K-
Yellow in Figure 61) were proposed to be constructed.

93
 Figure 61: New Construction Suggestions by SOM.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

While calculating the requirements of these buildings as re-modelling the existing

campus, minimum American standards were applied. The current condition of the
campus was defined as already below the standards; thus, all requirements were
organized and tabulated with the calculations. (Figure 62) In addition, it is possible to
see that the central quadrangle, which had been protected from the beginning of the
campus and was serving as a football field, was designed as an open green area by
SOM that proposed to plant trees and flowers and to make paths to connect different
buildings around area.

Figure 62: SOM Standards for space requirements.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

94
The most crucial of the proposed buildings and the only built one is the new
engineering building. In the report, it was stated that the assembly hall for 900 persons
and the Engineering Schools Laboratories could not be fitted in one of the existing
buildings as none of them had a clear span to house such a large space. The
requirements of modern engineering laboratories and then the decision of having a
new Engineering School to be built are explained in the report as follows:

Modern engineering laboratories require structural arrangements, utilities,

daylighting, and flexibility which cannot be obtained in any of the old
buildings. Since it is desirable to have many engineering classrooms adjacent
to the laboratories, they also must be new construction. The Engineering
School and the Chemistry and Physics Laboratories of the Arts and Sciences
School require approximately 77, 000 square feet and it was felt that this was
too large an area to attach to any existing building. It is therefore proposed
that a completely new Engineering School be built.225 (Figure 63)

Figure 63: Robert College Bebek Campus, photo from the airplane
before the New Engineering Building, not dated.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

225
SOM Report on Robert College. Columbia University Rare Collections.
95
3.2.3. The New Engineering Building and Aptullah Kuran as the Architect

The story of the spaces for engineering education at Robert College can be traced back
to 1910 when the Old Engineering Building construction began. As examined earlier,
this was designed as a U-shaped building to be constructed on the south side of the hill
but only the west wing was finished in 1912 due to the problems of the era and named
as Gates Hall. The design of the Gates Hall was also in harmony with the neo-classic
style of the campus. (Figure 64)

Figure 64: Old Engineering Building named Gates Hall.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

In mid-twentieth century, this building was no longer able to fulfil the needs of an
engineering department and the construction of a new building was suggested in the
SOM report. The idea of having a new building was also an exciting moment for the
college itself as being the first construction since 1932 when Van Millingen Hall was
opened to serve as the library, as examined above. This new engineering building
would house the laboratories and classrooms needed by the department and would thus
allow the Albert Long Hall, used by the engineering department, to be allocated for
other uses while the Gates Hall would only house the larger laboratories. The new
engineering building would be the result of a functional need; nonetheless, it is
96
significant not only functionally but also with its modern style as the turning point for
the architectural harmony of the neo-classical style in the campus.

The idea of completing the unconstructed parts of the old engineering building was
totally abandoned upon the SOM report and the decision of having a new engineering
building was taken. In the report, the building was proposed with a gross new
construction area of 58,612 sqft (5445.23 sqm) and with a cost of 1,289,472 $. It was
suggested to locate this new building on the hillside behind Anderson Hall and allow
the building for future increments. This suggestion would be accepted and the building
built in this location. In the preliminary suggestion, the was planned as an L-shaped
three-story building with one ground level and two upper floors. (Figure 65) It was
proposed to be constructed with reinforced concrete flooring and concrete blocks in
the exterior walls. The floor finishing was planned with the dustproof monolithic
finish, with the addition of exposed concrete treated with synthetic reins for acid and
alkali resistance at the laboratories.

Figure 65: SOM Preliminary Drawing for New Engineering Building.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

In a report submitted to the Ford Foundation in 1957 for fundraising for the
engineering building, the size of the building rose to 86,000 sqft (7989.66 sqm) and

97
89,000 sqft (8268.37 sqm) under two possible plans with a budget of 2,800,000
Turkish liras and 135,000 $. The efforts continued to find funding for the construction
through the years, and in the meantime, Robert College decided to make a call for
project submissions for the building. In the summer of 1958, five different architects
submitted their scaled models and plans, and the jury picked one of them.226 The
chosen project was by Robert College `48 graduate architect Aptullah Kuran227 (Figure
66), and architect Toğrul Devres would be the contractor.228

Figure 66: Architect Aptullah Kuran.

Source: Boğaziçi University Archive and Documentation Center, Aptullah Kuran Archive

In the competition folder, it is possible to see similarities to SOM`s suggestion;

moreover, in the sketch by Kuran, the modernist approach of the design clearly shows
itself. (Figures 67-68) In this project, there is one main laboratory block, which is the
east-west wing of the main L-shape planned building; the main body of the building
is connected with other wings to complete a rectangular shape and has a central garden

226
The news can be seen in Robert College Alumni Magazine November 1958.

227
Prof. Aptullah Kuran finished his high school education in Robert College and then continued his
education at Yale University, USA at the architecture department. After he turned back to Turkey, he
worked as an architect in Ankara for a while when he participated in this competition. In 1957, he started
to work at Middle East Technical University in Ankara and became the dean of the faculty of
architecture between 1960-1968.

228
This information is from Robert College Alumni Magazine; however, any further information on the
submitted projects could not have been found.
98
in the middle. The building adapts itself to the slope in the east-west direction and rises
upon pilotis where needed. The prismatic look and wide long window grids on the
façade, transparent ground floor, and being lifted on pilotis, and flat roof are the
features of the modernist International Style of the period229 as exemplified in the case
of Hilton Hotel in Taksim-İstanbul, designed by SOM. The central garden idea, on the
other hand, can be an inspiration from the Hamlin Hall.

Figure 67: Robert College Science and Engineering Building,

Competition Model submitted by Aptullah Kuran.
Source: Boğaziçi University Archive and Documentation Center, Aptullah Kuran Archive

Figure 68: Sketch by Aptullah Kuran for New Engineering Building.

Source: Boğaziçi University Archive, and Documentation Center, Aptullah Kuran Archive

229
Frampton, Kenneth, The International Style: theme and variations, 1925-65, Modern Architecture:
A Critical History, Thames and Hudson, 1980 p:248-262.
99
In the ground floor plan, the central garden, and the L-shaped body completed into a
rectangle with a closed walkway and sitting area can be seen. (Figure 69) In the
section, it is possible to see the auditorium with a clear span, also the pilotis and
rectangular grid are visible. (Figure 70) The building also had its heating plan separate
from the rest of the college buildings.

Figure 69: Ground Floor Plan for New Engineering Building, by Aptullah Kuran.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Figure 70: Sections for New Engineering Building, drawn by Aptullah Kuran.
Source: Boğaziçi University Archive and Documentation Center, Aptullah Kuran Archive

100
On Wednesday, September 30, 1959, at the beginning of the 90th academic year of
Robert College, a ground-breaking ceremony was held with the attendance of the
governor of İstanbul Ethem Yetkiner, US Ambassador Leon Cowles, and Robert
College President Ballantine. In this ceremony, Robert College was defined as “an
enduring symbol of international friendship.” It was also mentioned that, the
engineering school had been opened in 1911 as one of the first civilian schools of
engineering. This was followed by speeches about the role of Robert College in
Turkish-American relationships. After this ceremony, the construction of the new
engineering building was officially started.230 (Figures 71-74)

Figure 71: Ceremony of New Engineering Building.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Unfortunately, the period was not quite static politically and economically, and with
the revaluation of the Turkish lira, the budget of 3,350,000 Turkish liras would no
longer be enough to construct the building according to the original design. Therefore,
Kuran re-modeled his design according to the new budget. Accordingly, the main L-
shaped “Laboratory Block” was connected with its extensional north-west corner; and
the basement was enlarged and has three stories upon it. This new design of the

230
Istanbul American Colleges, Alumni Bulletin, November 1959. p:2.
101
building would still be able to host all the laboratories without any reduction in their
total floor space.

Figure 72-73-74: Photographs of the Construction of New Engineering Building, not dated.
Source: Boğaziçi University Archive and Documentation Center, Aptullah Kuran Archive

In the photographs taken from the construction site, the rectangular concrete grid and
brick walls are visible. Another typical element is the sun-breaking panels, brise soleil,
commonly used in the post-war modernist design approach especially in countries of
hot climate like Türkiye.231 (Figure 74)

When this building was under construction, Kuran was working at Middle East
Technical University Faculty of Architecture and also in his private office. In president
reports of the American College for Girls and Robert College by interim President
Harold L. Hazen, it was stated that the new engineering building was supposed to be
completed by September 1961, but it was delayed to December due to the fault in
laying glass bricks and forced further postponement until spring. The report also says

231
Jean-Francois Lejeune, Michelangelo Sabatino, Modern Architecture and The Mediterranean,
London: Routledge, 2010. p: 1-11.
102
that the full working opening of the new engineering building could be no sooner than
fall 1962. Problems like that resulted in criticism of both the architect and the
contractor in the following paragraph:

Certain morals can be drawn from the experience with the Engineering
Building. The first is that acceptance of a low bid by a relatively inexperienced
contractor is an illusory economy in money, generating many serious problems
that are very costly for top-level college time and effort. A second moral is that
saving the salary of a thoroughly competent full-time, independent, college-
employed supervising engineer can be at the expense of additional costs far
above the salary saved, and of mistakes, misunderstandings, and less than
uniformly first-quality construction. We are attempting to heed these morals in
our subsequent projects.232

Although the process was rough and even longer than expected in this report, the new
engineering building was finally completed on May 18, 1963, on the 100th anniversary
of Robert College. The building was named as the Perkins Hall in memory of George
Walbridge Perkins, the former president of the board of trustees. (Figure 75-76)

Figure 75: New Engineering Building, Perkins Hall.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

232
The report of interim president Harold L. Hazard.
103
 Figure 76: Aerial Photographs of the Robert College Campus
after the completion of the New Engineering Building, Perkins Hall.
Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

3.2.4. Concluding Notes on the Transformation of the Campus

The spatial and architectural characteristics of the Robert College campus remained
intact with buildings constructed around the college quadrangle from the late
nineteenth to the early twentieth century in blue limestone historicist/neo-classical
style. The transformation of the campus started to be seen in the mid-twentieth century
with the modernist design understanding that arrived with the New Engineering
Building.

The so-called Perkins Hall was one of the most significant architectural events of the
post-war era for the college. The route that led to its construction had been carefully
planned and analyzed in the reports prepared in different periods of the early and mid-
twentieth century. The campus was almost a hundred years old in the 1950s and the
trustees of the college were well aware of the need for new constructions. Especially
the report of SOM played a significant role as prepared by one of the most active and
104
valued firms at the time, which was involved in large-scale construction projects
around the world and Türkiye.

Indeed, various reports were prepared at different times for finding donations from
foundations like Ford Foundation or Rockefeller Foundation. In all the reports, not
only were the needs listed but the past and current conditions of the college carefully
explained, including its importance as the representative of the American institutional
presence in İstanbul. The SOM report presented a more detailed analysis of the
conditions of the campus, re-modeling every single building, and taking their
observations into account as a reference to upcoming solutions.

SOM was also important as one of the actors in introducing the post-war modern
design approach in architecture in Türkiye and as the representative of American
know-how in the field of contemporary architecture. Their modernist approach is also
seen in the proposal for the Perkins Hall. The modern design with the grid on the
façade and material choices were in line with the spirit of the age both in Türkiye and
in the USA.

The design of the building by architect Kuran was in line with SOM`s contemporary
design understanding that transformed the spatial and visual character of the campus.
Kuran’s role in affecting Robert College was beyond his design and construction
practice by adopting the construction process according to the economic needs of the
time and redesigning the building according to the new conditions. It should be noted
that Kuran, a graduate of Robert College, turned back there first as an architect and
then as the Vice President also to become the founding rector of the Boğaziçi
University, which was formed by the institutional transformation of Robert College.

Coda: From a Private American School to a Public Turkish University

After the Turkish Republic had been founded, Robert College turned into a high
school; however, in 1957, the Ministry of Education allowed the college to give
graduate and post-graduate education in science and letters, administrative sciences,
and engineering, and Robert College School of Higher Education (Robert Kolej
Yüksek) was officially founded, which provided the college to give university level

105
education and bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The new engineering building was
built as a result of this development as well.

Robert College and its departments improved quickly with the help of the American
Agency for International Development (A. I. D). As a result, the college was well
developed and deserved to be accepted as a university; however, due to the law in
Türkiye, universities could only be founded by the state. Therefore, Robert College
departments started operating as higher schools rather than university.

In Robert College, there was a president, chosen by the board of trustees, and a Senior
Vice-President, who was often called as the “Turkish President”. The Ministry of
Education did not recognize the American president and none of the documents would
be accepted without the signature of the “Turkish President”. The American president
was a delegate of the board of trustees and the Turkish president was acting as the
bridge between the board of trustees and the government.

In December 1968, President Dr. John Scott Everton came to Ankara and met with
Prof. Aptullah Kuran in his office at Middle East Technical University (METU) where
he was working at the time. President Everton asked Kuran to be his Turkish Vice
President. Kuran asked for three days to think and eventually accepted the offer. Dr.
Everton then offered Kuran as the Turkish Vice President to the board of trustees, and
in March, he was officially appointed in this duty. After the academic year finished at
METU, Kuran and his family moved to İstanbul and he was back in Robert College
twenty years after his graduation, on July 1, 1969.

When Kuran started to work, the college was not in good condition financially, and
the former reports also showed that it was not running properly, and the building
conditions and the educational system were facing challenging problems. The Robert
College School of Higher Education had been founded with the financial support of
the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and A. I. D. However, the expenses of the
college always exceeded its financial limits, and this made the college to take some
serious actions about its future. Debates after debates, it was concluded that education
would be merged in one campus and the other campus at Arnavutköy would continue
education as a state school. In these debates, at one point the board offered to sell the
Arnavutköy campus to raise funds but the Law No. 625 regarding private schools
stated that if the school was closed the rights of the land and buildings on the land
106
would pass to the Turkish government. As a result, in November 1970, the board of
trustees officially decided of giving Robert College School of Higher Education to the
Turkish Republic.

In January 7, 1971, the supreme court decided that private schools giving higher
education were against the Law No.120 and sentenced them to be closed within six
months. Due to the law, Robert College School of Higher Education only had six
months before the school would be officially closed. Nonetheless, the Ministry of
Education did not want to let Robert College be closed down that. Şinasi Orel, the
Minister of Education, asked to meet with Dr. Everton and Prof. Kuran and listened to
their concerns about the unknown future. In this meeting, the minister suggested that
the school could turn into a university, i.e. a public university as private universities
were not allowed. Upon this suggestion, the Turkish state asked for the Bebek campus,
and Dr. Everton’s earlier idea of selling the Arnavutköy campus to the state could not
be realized.233

Following months, the law for the transformation of Robert College into a public
university was in progress but the final deal was not certain yet. At this point, Kuran
and the chairman of the board of trustees, Jim Lawrence, went to meet with Minister
Orel in March, 1971. In their meeting, Dr. Lawrence explained the requests of the
board of trustees to Minister Orel. Finally, on May 18, 1971, Mr. Lawrence and
Minister Orel came to a protocol of understanding. Mainly, it was decided that the
successor of Robert College School of Higher Education would be a Turkish public
university, and the land of the Bebek campus would be given to this new university.234

By that time, Robert College moved to its new location in Arnavutköy, and the two
high school, Arnavutköy Girls College and Robert College merged under the name of
Robert College and education started. On the other hand, the Turkish senate accepted
the law of Boğaziçi University on September 7, 1971 and published it in the official
newspaper on September 9, and thus Boğaziçi University was officially founded.

233
Kuran, Bir Kurucu Rektörün Anıları, İstanbul, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2002, p:32.

234
The land would include the site of the “Farm” (Çiftlik) but not the site called as the “Triangle”
(Üçgen). Kuran, 2002, p:33.

107
(Figure 77) Aptullah Kuran, the last Turkish President of Robert College, became the
first rector of Boğaziçi University and continued this duty for eight years.

Robert College stood as a strong bridge between the two nations and found its own
way of finding the balance between the two countries over a century. The policies of
the campus evolved through the relationship between Turkish-American relations. In
line with this political change, the Robert College campus was changed throughout the
century as a representation of the American know-how and excellence in architecture.

With the foundation of the Boğaziçi University, Robert College founded by Cyrus
Hamlin in 1863 continued its education as a high school in the other campus in
Arnavutköy, and it’s almost a hundred-year-old campus in Bebek became the site of
Boğaziçi University from 1971 onwards.

Figure 77: Publication of the law about the foundation of Boğaziçi University.
Source: T.C. Resmi Gazete, 12.09.1971, Sayı:13954

108
 CHAPTER 4

CONCLUSION

Robert College was founded in 1863 in İstanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire,
by American founders Cyrus Hamlin and Christopher R. Robert with the dream of
bringing Western education to the Middle East. The college grew over the years from
the late Ottoman period to the period of the Turkish Republic, and when its campus in
the Bebek region of the city began to host Boğaziçi University in 1971, it was standing
as a symbol of American educational know-how in Türkiye. This thesis investigated
Robert College in the context of not only education but also architecture, i.e. from the
spatial perspective, by focusing on the formation and transformation of its campus
from its establishment as an American missionary school in the Ottoman context to its
transformation into an American private school in the Republican context until its
conversion 1971 into a public university under the name of Boğaziçi University, with
Turkish architect Aptullah Kuran as the founding rector.
The study examined Robert College by focusing on firstly the Ottoman, and then the
Republican context. The term “formation” defines the Ottoman period while the
Republican period is with the term “transformation”.
In its period of formation, Robert College played a vital role in the relations between
the United States of America (USA) and the Ottoman Empire. Aiming to understand
the foundation process of Robert College, the political relations of the empire with the
USA formed the basis of the study. Analyzing the building of the campus, on the other
hand, the choice of the site and the construction of buildings in time to form the campus
played an important role.
Robert College and its significant location on the Bosphorus was a result of long
diplomatic efforts of the USA. Although the location was spectacular and many other

109
foreign consulates were shocked by this decision235, it is also worth mentioning that
the site of the college campus was rather distant from the centre of the capital city,
while Darulfünun, the first university of the empire, for example, was located in the
Sultanahmet district at the center of İstanbul.236 (Figure 78-79)

Figure 78: Robert College Bebek Campus and Rumeli Fortress.

Source: Columbia University Rare Collections

Figure 79: Panoramic view of Old Darulfünun building and Hagia Sophia Mosque.
Source: SALT Research

See: Freely, John. 2009, A Bridge of Culture, İstanbul: Boğaziçi University, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi
235

Yayınları.

236
Built in 1846-1863, demolished after a fire in 1933. See: Göksun Akyürek, 2011, Bilgiyi Yeniden
İnşa Etmek: Tanzimat Döneminde Mimarlık, Bilgi ve İktidar, Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları.

110
Although, the site was spectacular, the campus itself was not in monumental scale
compared to the other American education campuses. Rather than being monumental,
the campus literally carved itself on top of the Rumeli Fortress, and the steepness of
the site became a main concern for the construction of buildings. The Robert College
campus was formed in time around a central quadrangle. Nonetheless, there was not a
master plan for the development of the campus in the beginning, and it grew up rather
slowly in time with the construction of buildings as needed. Robert College through
the its history, housed different levels of education and the buildings were constantly
tried to be adopted to different usages. In one of the first reports regarding the college
and the current condition of its campus written in 1909 by Alfred D. F. Hamlin and
Caleb F. Gates, suggestions about the construction of new buildings, and maintaining
the buildings that had already been built were included.

In the formation of the campus, drawings of the projects were exchanged overseas,
and different architects and companies were involved in the process of design and
construction. The formation of the campus was indeed the result of the relationships
with the non-Muslim community of the Ottoman Empire, such as Armenians and
Greeks, as well as with the Muslim groups such as Bektashi dervishes. As well as the
architects, different local construction workers were involved in the building of the
campus such as Kurds, Armenians and Greeks. Moreover, the individuals from both
Ottoman and American bureaucracy and their show of force to each other point at the
complicated local and international networks in the process of the formation of Robert
College and its campus.

The neo-classical style dominated the character of the campus, and each building had
some additional historicist features from neo-Gothic to neo-Renaissance influences.
This formal design approach was applied during the nineteenth century in the Ottoman
Empire as in other countries, mainly in Europe and also in the USA.237 Thus, like the
buildings in the Robert College campus, Darülfünun, for example, was also designed

237
See: Çelik, Zeynep. 1986, “Architectural Pluralism and the Search for a Style”, The Remaking of
Istanbul, p.126-154. Seattle and London: Univ. of Washington Press.

111
in 1845 in the neo-classical style by the Italian architect Gaspare Fossati.238 (Figures
80-81)

Figure 80: Hamlin Hall.

Sources: Columbia University Rare Collections

Figure 81: Old Darülfünun Building.

Sources: SALT Research

The study examined the twentieth century as a period of little transformation but
mainly maintenance for the Robert College campus. The effort for keeping the campus
running was the duty of different individuals from the USA and the Turkish Republic.
The report of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) of 1955 is important in the
transformation of the campus in the mid-twentieth century, leading to the building of

238
Batur, Afife, “Batılılaşma Döneminde Osmanlı Mimarisi”, Tanzimattan Cumhuriyete Türkiye
Ansiklopedisi, c. 4, 1985, p. 1057-58.

112
the New Engineering Building as a significant intervention in the spatiality of the
campus. SOM changed the practice of design and construction as being responsible of
both processes within itself as an office. The modernist design approach of SOM was
also dominant worldwide, as in Turkey, in the post-war period, called as the
International Style. In their report on the Robert College campus, the need for a new
engineering building was officially stated, and this was fulfilled by Turkish architect
Aptullah Kuran, who was a Robert College graduate educated as an architect later in
the USA. Following the understanding of the period, Kuran’s design for the building
was modernist, as different from the dominant neo-classical character in the campus.
Aptullah Kuran was an important figure for Robert College not only as the first
Turkish architect who designed a building in the campus in the twentieth century but
also as he would later be the last Turkish president of the college, and the first and the
founding rector of Boğaziçi University that would be founded in the campus that had
been formed by Robert College.
As analyzed in this study, from its formation to transformation in this long period from
the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Robert College, both as a campus that
was situated at a spectacular location on top of Bosporus, and as an educational
institution that answered different requirements of changing times, maintained its
“image” as a successful example of building for the education of multiple and
changing identities.
Specifically, the analysis of the case of Robert College has shown that the school and
its campus were representing the American education standards and American know-
how. It is also possible to say that what was dominant in the USA was mostly what
was dominant in different countries as well. This study of the case of Robert College
can be taken as an introduction to a broader study that will extend to include the
analysis of various American interventions in different regions of the world via not
only educational practice but also its spatialization as exemplified in this study.
Moreover, the system formed by the USA in a certain region constantly adapted itself
to changing situations and acted accordingly, and one of the most effective ways of
formation and transformation was architecture. The study has exemplified this in the
formation and transformation of the Robert College campus from the Ottoman to the
Republican contexts.

113
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Yıldız, Özgür. Misyonerlik ve Amerikan Board Teşkilatı: Türkiye’de Siyasi ve Sosyal

Hayata Etkileri. İstanbul: IQ Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık. 2009. p: 42.

Yücel, Hasan Ali. Türkiyede Orta Öğretim. Ankara: T.C. Kültür Bakanlığı Millı̂
Kütüphane Basımevi, p: 20-21. 1994.

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 APPENDICIES

A. TURKISH SUMMARY/TÜRKÇE ÖZET

ROBERT KOLEJ:
İSTANBUL’DA BİR AMERİKAN OKULUNUN İNŞAASI, 1863-1971

Bu çalışma bir Amerikan misyoner okulu olarak kurulan Robert Kolej’i ve kolejin
İstanbul’daki varlığını sadece eğitim değil mimari bağlamı içinde de inceler.
Çalışmanın odağı, geç Osmanlı ve Cumhuriyet dönemlerinde, Robert Kolej’in resmi
açılış tarihi olan 1863 ile okulun Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’ne çevrildiği 1971 tarihleri
arasını kapsar. Okulun kurucusu Cyrus Hamlin ve kuruluş için fonu sağlayan
Christopher R. Robert ile okulun son Türk müdürü, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’nin kurucu
rektörü ve aynı zamanda kampüsünde inşa edilen son yapının mimarı Aptullah Kuran,
okulun kuruluşundan dönüştürülmesine kadar geçen sürecin başlangıç ve bitişinin
önemli aktörleridir.

Amerikan toprakları dışında kurulan ilk ve eğitime devam eden en eski eğitim kurumu
olan Robert Kolej, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun Beyrut, Kahire ve Kudüs gibi farklı
şehirlerinde kurulan okullar içinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun başkenti İstanbul’da
kurulması nedeniyle farklı bir yerde konumlanmaktadır. Bu çalışma, Robert Kolej
üzerinden Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nin eğitimdeki rolü ile mimari temsilini ve
Robert Kolej’in bu bağlamlardaki rolünü anlamaya çalışmaktadır. Her ne kadar
Amerikan misyoner aktiviteleri çokça çalışılmış olsa da, bu çalışmaların önemli bir
kısmı, mimari kanıtları merkeze almamaktadır. Oysa inşa edilen yapılar, yüzyıllar
boyunca ayakta kalabilir ve bu yönleriyle fikir, ideoloji ve yetkinliklerin en belirgin
temsilcileridir. Yapılar ile birlikte, yapılı çevreye dair fotoğraflar ve çizimler gibi
dokümanlar da mimari hakkında çokça bilgi verebilmektedir. Bu nedenle, bu

125
çalışmada genel anlamda mimari belgeleri bu araştırmanın merkezine
konumlandırmayı hedefledik.

Bu çalışmanın kapsadığı yüzyıl içerisinde, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun son

dönemlerinde, Christopher R. Robert tarafından sağlanan fon ile Cyrus Hamlin
tarafından bir misyoner okulu olarak kurulan Robert Kolej, yeni kurulan Türkiye
Cumhuriyeti’nin eğitim reformları çerçevesinde bir özel okula çevrilmiştir. Tezin
kapsadığı yüzyılın sonuna geldiğimizde ise, Bebek Kampüsü yeni kurulan Boğaziçi
Üniversitesi olarak devam ederken, Robert Kolej ise Arnavutköy kampüsünde eğitim
hayatına bir özel lise olarak devam etmektedir. Cyrus Hamlin ve Christopher R. Robert
Robert Kolej’in kuruluş sürecinin iki önemli aktörü olurken, okulun son Türk müdürü
ve Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’nin kurucu rektörü Aptullah Kuran, aynı zamanda kolejin
yeni mühendislik binasının da mimarı olarak, kolejin son döneminin önemli aktörü
olmuştur.

Bu çalışma, Robert Kolej’i geç Osmanlı ve Cumhuriyet dönemlerinde eğitim ve

mimari bağlamında anlamaya çalışırken, incelediği dönemin politik gelişmeleri de bu
çalışmada önemli rol oynamaktadır. Amerika Birleşik Devletleri sınırlarının ötesinde
kurulmuş en eski eğitim kurumu olan Robert Kolej, dönemindeki diğer okullardan bu
özelliğinin dışında pek çok noktada ayrışmaktadır. Diğer misyonerlik okullarının
aksine, pozitif bilimleri eğitim anlayışının merkezine koyan Robert Kolej, kurulduğu
bölgenin yerel dili yerine İngilizceyi eğitim dili olarak benimsemiştir. Robert Kolej’in
geç Osmanlı döneminde kuruluşundan Cumhuriyet dönemine geçişi eğitim
bağlamında incelenirken bu özellikler kolejin anlaşılmasında önemli rol
oynamaktadır.

Öte yandan, Robert Kolej’in mimari bağlamında incelenmesi ise bu çalışmanın

merkezini oluşturmaktadır. Rumeli Hisarı’nın tam üstünde konumlanan kolej
arazisinin satın alınmasına giden süreci de içine alan bu araştırma, kolejin kampüsünün
oluşumunun önceden planlanmış bir ajandaya göre değil ihtiyaç oldukça
mekansallaşması sürecini incelemektedir. Mekansallaşma ihtiyaca binaen olurken, her
yapıda izlenen neo-klasik üslup uzun yıllar kampüsün biçimsel kimliğinde hakim
olmuştur. Yirminci yüzyılın ortalarına gelindiğinde Aptullah Kuran tarafından 1963
yılında tasarlanan ve modern bir dile sahip olan yeni mühendislik binası ile bu hakim
üslubun dışına çıkılmıştır. Robert Kolej’in geç Osmanlı döneminde kuruluşu ve neo-

126
klasik üslübu ile Cumhuriyet dönemindeki dönüşümü ve modern üslubu, kampüsün
mekânsal ve mimari karakterinin anlaşılması için değerlendirilmektedir.

Bu çalışma, mimari veri ve belgeleri araştırmanın merkezinde konumlandırıp, buradan

hareketle Robert Kolej kampüsünün mimari tarihini incelemektedir. Robert Kolej
kampüsünün mekânsal gelişiminin tarihi üzerine bir tartışma geliştirmek, şüphesiz on
dokuz ve yirminci yüzyılların Osmanlı ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti mimari tarihlerinin
birincil kaynaklarına referans vermeyi gerektirmektedir. Bunlarla beraber, Osmanlı ve
Cumhuriyet bağlamında ikincil kaynaklar da İstanbul ve özellikle Robert Kolej
kampüsünün çevresinin mimari gelişimini daha iyi anlamak ve anlatmak için
kullanılmıştır.

Bu bağlamda, ikincil kaynaklar, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun içinden geçtiği bunalımlı

dönemi anlamaya yardımcı olurken, sadece savaşlarda alınan mağlubiyetlerin ötesinde
daha geniş bir bağlamda, başta Amerika Birleşik Devletleri olmak üzere, farklı
ülkelerle yürütülen ilişkileri incelemede yardımcı olmaktadır.239 Osmanlı
İmparatorluğu’nun her alanda kendini yenilemek için ıslahatları birbiri ardına
gerçekleştirmeye çalıştığı bir dönem olan Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun son döneminde
mimari de bu yenilik çabasından etkilenmiştir.

Afife Batur bu dönemi klasik anlamda “batılılaşma” teriminin ötesinde bir değişim
olduğunu ifade etmiştir. Saraylar, kışlalar ve eğitim binaları başta olmak üzere pek çok
yapı türünü incelemiş, aynı zamanda mimarlığın Osmanlı İmparatorluğu içinde nasıl
bir meslek grubuna dönüştüğünü de irdelemiştir.240 Ayrıca, Robert Kolej’in kurulduğu
şehir olan İstanbul’un bu süreçte geçirdiği gelişme ve dönüşümde Zeynep Çelik
tarafından ulaşımın yeni türleri, şehir yangınları ve sonrasında yeniden planlanması
başta olmak üzere detaylıca incelenmiştir.241 Robert Kolej’in kurulmasında çeşitli

239
Quataert, D. (2002) “The Nineteenth Century”, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922, pp.54-74.
Cambridge University Press.

Batur, A. (1985) “Batılılaşma Döneminde Osmanlı Mimarlığı”, Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye

240

Ansiklopedisi, vol.4, p.1038-1067.

241
Çelik, Z. “Regularization of the Urban Fabric,” “Transportation,” “The Grand Schemes,” The
Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century. Seattle and London:
University of Washington Press, 1986. p. 49-125.

127
şirketler, mimarlar ve farklı alanlardan profesyonellerin dahil olduğu sürecin
anlaşılmasında ve kolejin İstanbul mimari ve Batur ve Çelik başta olmak üzere pek
çok ikincil kaynak yardımcı olmuştur.

Geç Osmanlı döneminin ardından, 1923 yılında kurulan Türkiye Cumhuriyeti,

yirminci yüzyılın ilk yarısında sosyo-kültürel, eğitim ve mimari alanda birçok değişim
geçirmiştir. Sibel Bozdoğan başta olmak üzere çeşitli ikincil literatür, genç
cumhuriyetin ulus inşaası ve sonrasında yirminci yüzyılın ortalarındaki politik değişim
ve bunun mimariye yansımalarının anlatılmasında kullanılmıştır.242 Mimari ve
politikanın ötesinde, eğitim alanındaki gelişmeler de tezin ikincil kaynaklarının önemli
rol oynadığı bir alan olmuştur. Geç Osmanlı döneminden Cumhuriyet dönemine geçiş
süreci ve öncesi Robert Kolej’in eğitimsel bağlamda nasıl bir yere konumlandığını
anlamakta önemli rol oynamıştır. Bu noktada, Benjamin C. Fortna tarafından Osmanlı
İmparatorluğu ve eğitim detaylıca incelenmiş, din, mimari ve yapılaşma ile ahlaki
değerler konuları irdelenmiştir.243 Cumhuriyet döneminde ise Horst Widmann
tarafından yazılan ve erken Cumhuriyet dönemindeki eğitim reformları
incelenmiştir.244 Bu eserler ve devamındaki ikincil literatür, çalışmanın eğitim
perspektifini belirlemeye ve Robert Kolej’i bu çerçevede konumlandırmaya yardımcı
olmuştur.

Bir Amerikan misyonerlik okulu olarak kurulan ve devamında bir Amerikan okulu
olarak devam eden Robert Kolej’i misyonerlik bağlamında incelemek için Uygur
Kocabaşoğlu ve devamında ikincil literatür önemli bir rol oynarken, Amerikan
politikaları, Orta Doğu ile olan ilişkileri ve yerel milliyetçilik akımının etkileri ise
Doğan ve devamındaki ikincil literatür ile incelenmiştir. 245

Bozdoğan, S. (2001). Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early
242

Republic. University of Washington Press.

243
Fortna, Benjamin C., Imperial Classroom: Islam, Education and the State in the Late Ottoman
Empire, Oxford University Press, 2002.
244
Widmann, Horst. (1981), Atatürk Üniversite Reformu, İstanbul Matbaası.

245
Kocabaşoğlu, U. (1985). Amerikan Okulları. In Tanzimat'tan Cumhuriyet'e Türkiye Ansiklopedisi,
Cilt 2 (p. 495). İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları. Vahapoğlu, H. (1992). The Minority and Foreign Schools
from Ottoman Times to the Present Day. İstanbul: Boğaziçi Publications. M. A. Doğan, American
Missionaries, and the Middle East: Foundational Encounters (2011). Utah: University of Utah Press.
128
İkincil kaynaklar kadar Robert Kolej’e dair yazılı ve görsel dokümanlar, yani
fotoğraflar, kampüsteki yapıların mimari çizimleri ve kolejin resmi kayıtları,
kampüsün nasıl ihtiyaçlara binaen geliştiğini ve bu ihtiyaçlara mimari anlamda nasıl
cevap verildiğinin araştırılması sürecinde önemli rol oynamıştır. Bu çalışmayı mimari
bağlamına oturtup geliştirme sürecinde, tezin yazım aşamasında maalesef kapatılan,
Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Arşiv ve Dokümantasyon Merkezi bünyesinde bir kısmı
bulunan “Mimari Çizim Koleksiyonu” en önemli arşiv olarak öne çıkmaktadır. Robert
Kolej’in Bebek Kampüsü veya devamında Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Güney Kampüsü
olarak adlandırılan arazinin üzerine inşa edilen Robert Kolej binalarına dair 400
civarında plan, kesit, görünüş gibi mimari çizimlerden oluşan arşivin küçük bir kısmı
dijitalleştirilmişken, arşivin kalan kısmı Boğaziçi Üniversitesi kurum arşivi
bünyesinde saklanmaktadır. Amerika’dan gelen çizimlerin ve yerel bağlantıların
destekleriyle inşa edilen yapıları anlama sürecinde, çizimlerin üzerinde kendini
Fransızca, İngilizce ve Osmanlı Türkçesi olarak gösteren notlar, isimler ve şirketler
Robert Kolej kampüsünün mimari mekansallaşmasının hikayesinin anlaşılmasında
büyük rol oynamaktadır.

1858 yılında başlayan arazi satın almaları ve kampüs binalarının inşası 1963 yılına
kadar devam etmiştir. Bu sürecin anlaşılmasında, “Mimari Çizim Koleksiyonu” ile
beraber Columbia University Libraries Rare Book and Manuscript Library bünyesinde
bulunan ve 1858 ile 2018 yıllarına dair kolej kayıtları ve mütevelli raporlarını içeren
“Robert College Records” bir arşiv olarak önemli bir rol oynamaktadır. 208 kutu arşiv
kaydının dijitalleştirilip Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Arşiv ve Dokümantasyon Merkeziyle
paylaşılmasıyla bu arşiv de çalışmada önemli bir rol oynamaktadır. Ayrıca çalışmanın
son döneminin önemli aktörlerinden olan Aptullah Kuran’ın da yine Boğaziçi
Üniversitesi Arşiv ve Dokümantasyon merkezinde bulunan arşivi, Robert Kolej ve
Bebek Kampüsünün son dönemini ve Boğaziçi Üniversitesine dönüşmesi sürecinin
anlaşılmasında önemli rol oynamaktadır. Ayrıca SALT Araştırma bünyesindeki
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) arşivi de sahip
olduğu sayısız dokümanla önemli bir başvuru noktası oldu.

Robert Kolej daha önce sıklıkla çalışılmış olmasına rağmen, kampüsünün mimari
okumasına temel oluşturmak üzere Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’nin 150. Yılı projesi

129
kapsamında Paolo Girardelli ve Ahmet Ersoy tarafından “Mimari Çizim Koleksiyonu”
göz önüne çıkarılmış ve bu arşive dair ilk yayınlar yapılmıştır.246

Arşivlerin ve ikincil kaynakların, tezin amacı ve literatür taramasının olduğu giriş

bölümünü takiben, bu çalışmanın “Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Robert Kolej” adlı
ikinci bölümü, Robert Kolej’in geç Osmanlı döneminde kuruluş sürecini
incelemektedir. Bu incelemeyi yaparken, Amerikan-Osmanlı ilişkileri ve eğitim
alanındaki Amerikan misyonerlik hareketlerine odaklanmaktadır. Robert Kolej’in
kurucuları Cyrus Hamlin ve Christopher R. Robert bu bölümün iki önemli aktörü
olmakla birlikte, farklı kişiler ve kurumlar da Robert Kolej’in kuruluşuna giden uzun
süreçte rol oynamıştır. Robert Kolej’in kampüsünün kuruluşunu anlatmaya, arazi
seçinden başlayan çalışmanın ikinci bölümü neo-klasik yapılardan oluşan kampüs
binalarının inşa süreciyle devam eder. Kuruluşu kadar kampüs binalarının yaşaması
ve gerekli bakımlarının düzenli yapılması da önemli bir ihtiyaç ve Robert Kolej’in
önem verdiği bir konu olmuştur. Bu çalışmanın ikinci bölümü de kampüsün ilk
kapsamlı analizlerinden olan 1909 yılında Cyrus Hamlin’in oğlu ve aynı zamanda
Amerikalı bir mimar olan ve kolej binalarının önemli bir kısmının tasarımında rol alan
Alfred D. F. Hamlin ve okulun o dönemki müdür Caleb F. Gates tarafından hazırlanan
kampüsün fiziksel analiz raporuyla sonlanmaktadır. Bu rapor, Robert Kolej’in geç
Osmanlı dönemindeki mimari ve fiziki durumunun anlaşılmasında rol oynamaktadır.

“Cumhuriyet Döneminde Robert Kolej” adlı üçüncü bölüm, kolejin Cumhuriyet

dönemine uyum sürecini ve yaşadığı dönüşümü anlamaya çalışmaktadır. Yirminci
yüzyılın ortalarına kadar izlenen Cumhuriyet sonrası eğitim politikalarının
incelenmesiyle başlayan bu bölüm, Robert Kolej’in bu değişim ve dönüşüm sürecine
nasıl cevap verdiğini de analiz etmektedir. Robert Kolej kampüsünün dönüşümünü
odağa alan bu bölümde, erken Cumhuriyet döneminde inşa edilen “Van Millengen
Hall” ve ardından 1955 yılında Amerikalı mimarlık firması Skidmore Owings and
Merrill (SOM), tarafından hazırlanan kampüsün en kapsamlı fiziksel durum analizi

Girardelli, Paolo. (2015). Mimari Çizimler Koleksiyonu. In C. Kırlı, Boğaziçi Arşivleri'ne Doğru:
246

Bavullardan Kataloglara (pp. 322-329). İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi.

Ersoy, A. (2015). Boğaziçi Üniversite'sinde Mimarinin Perde Arkası: Tarihi Proje Koleksiyonu. In C.
Kırlı, Boğaziçi Arşivleri'ne Doğru: Bavullardan Kataloglara (pp. 338-353). İstanbul: Boğaziçi
Üniversitesi Yayınevi.
130
raporunu incelenmektedir. Bu raporu incelerken, SOM mimarlık firmasının
Türkiye’nin modern mimarlık sürecinde oynadığı rol ve etkileri, mimarlık pratiğinin
değişmesi sürecine katkısı da raporun kapsamını anlatırken önemli bir veri olarak öne
çıkmaktadır. SOM mimarlık firması ve Türkiye’de mimarinin yaşadığı modern
dönüşümün kampüse etkisi olarak öne çıkan yeni mühendislik binası anlatılmakta ve
yapının mimarı aynı zamanda Robert Kolej mezunu Aptullah Kuran bu bölümün öne
çıkan aktörü olmaktadır. Aptullah Kuran mimar olmasının yanı sıra, Robert Kolej’in
son Türk müdürü hem de bir devlet üniversitesi olarak Bebek Kampüs’te kurulan
Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’nin kurucu rektörü olarak bu bölümde anlatılmaktadır.

1863 yılında Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun başkenti İstanbul’da Batı tarzında eğitimi

Orta Doğu’ya taşıma hayaliyle kurulan bir okul olan Robert Kolej, geç Osmanlı
döneminde başlayan gelişme sürecini Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin erken döneminde
sürdürmüş ve yirminci yüzyıl ortasında,, 1971 yılında da Bebek Kampüsü’nde
Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’ne dönüşene kadar Amerikan eğitim yetkinliğinin bir sembolü
olmuştur. Bu çalışma Robert Kolej’i sadece eğitim alanında değil mekansallaşması
gibi konular üzerinden mimari anlamda da incelemiştir. Robert Kolej kampüsünün
Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda bir Amerikan misyoner okulu olarak kuruluşu ve
devamında Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde bir Amerikan özel okulu olarak gelişim ve
dönüşümünün, en sonunda ise 1971 yılında Boğaziçi Üniversitesi adıyla bir devlet
üniversitesine okulun son Türk Müdürü ve mimar Aptullah Kuran’ın kurucu
rektörlüğünde dönüşmesi sürecini kapsayan bir süreç bu çalışmada incelenmiştir.

Bu çalışma öncelikle Robert Kolej’in Osmanlı dönemini “kuruluş” terimi altında

incelerken, Cumhuriyet dönemini ise “dönüşüm” terimleri altında incelemektedir.
Robert Kolej kampüsünün kuruluş süreci, okyanus ötesinden gelen çizimler, farklı
mimarlar ve şirketlerin tasarım ve inşasında rol aldığı kompleks bir süreç olarak dikkat
çekmektedir. Kampüsün oluşması süreci, aynı şekilde, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda
bulunan Ermeni ve Yunan gayrimüslimlerin olduğu kadar, kampüsün çevresinde
yaşayan Bektaşi dervişlerinin bulunduğu Müslümanların da rol oynadığı bir ilişkiler
bütünü olarak incelenmektedir. Robert Kolej kampüsünün inşa sürecinde mimarlar
kadar, Kürt, Ermeni ve Yunan ustaların da rol aldığı bir Amerikan okulu olarak Robert
131
Kolej’in kuruluşunda oluşturduğu ağı gözler önüne sermektedir. Kampüsün kuruluş
sürecinde dikkat çeken bir diğer önemli nokta ise, Osmanlı ve Amerikan
bürokrasisinin birbirlerini diplomatik anlamda test ettiği, karmaşık yerel ve
uluslararası ilişkiler ağının işlediği bir süreç olmasıdır.

Neo-klasik üslup Robert Kolej kampüsünün hâkim üslubu olarak öne çıkarken, inşa
edilen her binada neo-Gotik, neo-Rönesans gibi tarihselci yaklaşımın farklı
uygulamalarının da yansımaları görülmektedir. Robert Kolej kampüsünün hâkim
üslubu olarak öne çıkan neo-klasik üslup, on dokuzuncu yüzyılda Osmanlı
İmparatorluğu başta olmak üzere, Avrupa ve Amerika’da da hâkim üslup olarak öne
çıkmaktadır.

Yirminci yüzyıla gelindiğinde ise, dönüşüm dönemi olarak adlandırılan bir sürece
giren Robert Kolej kampüsü ve kampüsün fiziksel olarak incelenmesi süreci yine
Amerika ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nden farklı kişilerin rol aldığı bir süreç olmuştur.
Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) mimarlık firmasının 1955 yılında hazırladığı
rapor, Robert Kolej kampüsünün yirminci yüzyılın ortasına geldiğimizde içinde
olduğu dönüşüm süreci ve yeni mühendislik binasının inşasına giden süreçte
kampüsün mekansallaşmasında öne çıkan önemli bir rapor olmuştur. Raporu
hazırlayan SOM mimarlık firması hem tasarım hem de inşa süreçlerini tek bir şirket
olarak sağlamaya başlayarak, mimarlık pratiğini değiştirmiştir. SOM mimarlık
firmasının modern tasarım anlayışı tüm dünyada da “International Style” adıyla baskın
hale gelmiştir. Robert Kolej kampüsüne dair hazırlanan bu raporda, yeni bir
mühendislik binasına olan ihtiyaç açıkça ifade edilirken, bu ihtiyaç hem Robert Kolej
mezunu hem de devamında Amerika da mimarlık eğitimi almış olan Türk mimar
Aptullah Kuran tarafından tasarlanan yapının inşasıyla giderilecektir. Dönemin hâkim
anlayışıyla uyumlu bir şekilde modern bir üslupla tasarlanan bu yapı, Robert Kolej’in
hâkim mimarlık üslubu olan neo-klasik mimariden farklıdır. Aptullah Kuran, sadece
Robert Kolej’de yirminci yüzyılda bir yapı tasarlamasıyla değil, aynı zamanda kolejin
son Türk müdürü ve devamında Bebek Kampüs’te kurulan devlet üniversitesi olan
Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’nin kurucu rektörü olarak kolejin son döneminin önemli
aktörlerinin başında gelmektedir.

Robert Kolej üzerine yapılan bu çalışmanın sonucu olarak kolejin bir eğitim kurumu
olarak ve kampüs tasarımı ile mekansallaşması göz önüne alınarak, Amerikan eğitim

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standartlarının ve Amerikan ekspertiz ve yetkinliğinin bir sembolü olduğu
görülmüştür. Robert Kolej’den yola çıkarak Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nde hâkim
olan anlayışın çoğunlukla dünyanın farklı ülkelerinde de hakim olduğu
söylenebilmektedir. Bu çalışmanın Robert Kolej’i odağa alarak, Amerikan etkisinin
dünyanın farklı noktalarında eğitim bağlamının ötesinde mekansallaşmasının da
incelendiği daha geniş kapsamlı bir çalışmaya giriş niteliğinde olması
hedeflenmektedir.

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 B. THESIS PERMISSION FORM / TEZ İZİN FORMU

(Please fill out this form on computer. Double click on the boxes to fill them)

ENSTİTÜ / INSTITUTE

Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences

Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Social Sciences

Uygulamalı Matematik Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Applied Mathematics

Enformatik Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Informatics

Deniz Bilimleri Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Marine Sciences

YAZARIN / AUTHOR

Soyadı / Surname : SARILICAN

Adı / Name : ZEKİ FURKAN
Bölümü / Department : Mimarlık Tarihi / History of Architecture

TEZİN ADI / TITLE OF THE THESIS (İngilizce / English):

THE ROBERT COLLEGE: THE BUILDING OF AN AMERICAN SCHOOL IN İSTANBUL, 1863-1971

TEZİN TÜRÜ / DEGREE: Yüksek Lisans / Master Doktora / PhD

1. Tezin tamamı dünya çapında erişime açılacaktır. / Release the entire

work immediately for access worldwide.

2. Tez iki yıl süreyle erişime kapalı olacaktır. / Secure the entire work for
patent and/or proprietary purposes for a period of two years. *

3. Tez altı ay süreyle erişime kapalı olacaktır. / Secure the entire work for
period of six months. *

* Enstitü Yönetim Kurulu kararının basılı kopyası tezle birlikte kütüphaneye teslim edilecektir. /
A copy of the decision of the Institute Administrative Committee will be delivered to the library
together with the printed thesis.

Yazarın imzası / Signature ............................ Tarih / Date ............................

(Kütüphaneye teslim ettiğiniz tarih. Elle doldurulacaktır.)
(Library submission date. Please fill out by hand.)
Tezin son sayfasıdır. / This is the last page of the thesis/dissertation.

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