The U Turns 100

The University of Miami: A Century of Higher Ed in Coral Gables

George Merrick’s idea for the City of Coral Gables started long before – perhaps even decades before – the city’s incorporation in 1925. In the years leading up to that seminal event, Merrick was constantly honing his concepts for the “City Beautiful” – a vision that always included a university that would educate and elevate the community. Merrick wanted a university that would not only represent Greater Miami and the state of Florida but would also have an international connection to Latin America. Even when bankruptcy threatened his real estate empire, he continued to maintain his dream for the future University of Miami (UM).

THE GENESIS

The importance of education was ingrained in Merrick long before he thought of starting a university. With a Yale-educated Congregational minister for a father and a college-educated artist mother, schooling was a core value in the Merrick household; so much so that in 1900, George’s mother Althea opened a school (named “Guavonia” for the guava trees that had made the family’s fortune) on the family farm. George, who was 13 when his father Solomon moved the family to recently founded Miami in 1899, did not attend his mother’s school or receive any more formal education until he attended Rollins College in his early 20s. Despite this, the joy of learning was implanted into him from an early age, when he would teach himself philosophy by reading books during his long trips into town to sell produce.

The early days of Coral Gables showed just how much Merrick prioritized education. The city’s elementary school opened in October 1921, and in an ad from December of that same year, Merrick proclaimed that “Miami should and can have… a university” and that “the ideal place for it is at Coral Gables.”

Former United States Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan (also one of Merrick’s biggest promoters) expressed his interest in building an institution of higher learning in Miami at a meeting of the North Miami Improvement Association in February 1916. His idea was to start a training school for students from the Americas, then expand it to include colleges for liberal arts and agricultural studies. Plans for Bryan’s proposed Pan-American University came together quickly but then evaporated. He was on the school’s first Board of Regents, along with his daughter Ruth Owen, but died before he was able to bring the university he envisioned to life. “The Ibis,” the University of Miami’s yearbook, dedicated their 1929 edition to him: “[For] William Jennings Bryan, who conceived the plan for a Pan American University in Miami, but who never lived to see his dream realized.”

The idea for a South Florida-based university picked up steam in 1924 when the Miami Herald printed several letters signed by William E. Walsh, the municipal judge of Miami Beach, that supported the proposal of an outdoor university in Miami. Walsh also organized the school’s founding Board of Regents, which applied for and received a charter for the University of Miami on April 8, 1925. Three weeks later, on April 29, the City of Coral Gables was incorporated.

The first task of the newly formed Board of Regents was to decide where in Miami their university would be located. They narrowed it down to four sites, but Merrick’s offer of 160 acres

of land and $5 million, which was to be matched with $5 million from other sources, proved irresistible. On May 25, 1925, Frederic Zeigan, the secretary of the Board of Regents, wrote to Merrick to let him know that Coral Gables had been selected as the location for the university.

THE “CARDBOARD COLLEGE”

Construction of the University of Miami began in January 1926, the same month the Biltmore Hotel opened; the first cornerstone of the Merrick Administration Building was laid on Feb. 4. The triumph of these early achievements quickly dissipated however, as financial problems plagued the area with the collapse of the South Florida Land Boom. Construction of the Merrick Building was halted in July, forcing the regents to instead shift their attention to completing the half-finished Anastasia Hotel. When the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 swept through South Florida that September, calls to delay the opening of the new school grew even louder. Many believed that it would never open.

As intense as the doubters of the university’s future were during this time, a strong-willed, optimistic group of supporters remained unfazed. “The judgement of the bankers, the cold-headed business heads of the community, counseled for waiting,” Merrick later wrote. “But that little group of citizens decided to open the university, and it was opened! They decided that it was essential because they thought the area right then needed inspiration!”

Somehow, on Oct. 15, 1926, the University of Miami opened on schedule. Led by Bowman F. Ashe, UM’s first president, the school was headquartered at the Anastasia Hotel, now re-dubbed the Anastasia Building. Time and budget constraints forced architects to lay out only the building’s first two floors, and to use thin partitions to divide the small spaces of this compact, makeshift school. Originally supposed to be temporary, the “Cardboard College,” as UM was nicknamed, was stationed at the Anastasia Building for the next 20 years.

Ashe, who served as UM’s president until his death in 1952, was a passionate and resilient leader. He navigated the school through bankruptcy in 1932 and then a world war, all within its first 20 years of existence. But through these early obstacles emerged promise for the long-term future of the university.

The Year of 1926 Saw the Collapse of the South Florida Land Boom, Followed by a Major Hurricane Later That Same Year.

In the 1940s, UM created several of its defining schools, notably a Marine Laboratory (now the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science) and a School of Engineering. The School of Medicine followed shortly in 1952. The student body also grew exponentially. During its inaugural year in 1926, the university had 561 students registered; that number ballooned to more than 10,000 by 1948.

The Merrick Building was finally completed in 1949, marking one of the last and greatest achievements of Ashe’s presidency and giving UM a psychological boost for the transitional years that followed.

“SUN-TAN U” AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Despite advancements that furthered its prestige, UM developed a reputation for putting education second and partying first. In a 1949 article by the Saturday Evening Post, the university’s tropical climate and country club-like atmosphere were highlighted, garnering it the nickname “Sun-tan U.”

In the decades that followed, UM worked tirelessly to rid itself of this impression of a school that didn’t prioritize academics. To accomplish this, the university actually decreased its student body from 12,000 to 8,500 students during Edward T. Foote II’s presidency from 1981 to 2001. “He cut the number of students going to UM so that the quality of students would be better,” says UM Senior Vice President Patricia A. Whitely, who began working at the university under Foote in 1982.

UM was the first Florida university, public or private, to desegregate, following a January 1961 vote by the Board of Trustees. Black students attended classes on the main campus for the first time in the university’s history that summer. This led to the formation of United Black Students (UBS), led in 1967 by its first president, Harold Long. The new group wanted to see improvements for Black students beyond integration. UBS presented proposals to then-university president Henry King Stanford which included the inclusion of African American studies in the school’s curriculum. Following an on-campus protest against UM’s slow progress on the proposals – which prompted the arrest of 14 Black students on May 14, 1968 – change began to happen more swiftly. More scholarships for minority students were approved, and a course that taught Black history and invited Black lecturers was created.

RISE OF “THE U”

UM’s split-U logo, as it is popularly known today, was developed by publicist Julian Cole and graphic artist Bill Bodenhamer after the university’s Athletic Federation pushed for a new, distinctive logo for the school in 1973. In the decade that followed, UM’s sports programs, competing nationally as the “Hurricanes” since 1927, began to gain serious traction, starting in 1982 with the baseball team’s first national championship. But it wasn’t until the football team won its first national championship in 1983 that the Hurricanes altered the landscape of college sports. From 1983 to 2001, UM’s football team won five national championships – the most of any college program during that span.

“I don’t think anybody could have foreseen [that] in 1983, when we won our first national championship against Nebraska in the Orange Bowl,” Whitely says. “I don’t think we could have said, ‘Oh, and by the way, we’re going to win four more national championships. And I actually think that the events of those 18 years, 1983 to 2001… really vaulted the campus, provided an identity that we didn’t have before, and has played a pivotal role in some of our success over the last 40 years.”

It’s not just the number of championships University of Miami won during this period that people remember, but also how it won them. With a roster heavily tied to South Florida’s tri-county region of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, the Hurricanes played with a unique swagger that fans, as well as opponents, were drawn to. Players were seen as celebrities far beyond the confines of Coral Gables.

“It wasn’t just on our campus…. We owned Miami,” says Kelvin Harris, who won three national championships as an offensive lineman at UM from 1987 to 1991. “They didn’t believe they could lose, and they worked extremely hard.”

Following the athletic notoriety of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s came an important period of fundraising and academic success for UM. Under the leadership of Donna E. Shalala, the former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and the only female president to serve at UM, the university raised $3 billion through its two “Momentum” campaigns. Miami also soared up the U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Colleges ranking, placing in the top 50 during Shalala’s last six years as president. When she began her presidential tenure in 2001, UM was slotted at No. 67.

In the quest to grow its reputation as a respected research institution, UM was invited to join the Association of American Universities, a prestigious organization that recognizes strong research universities, in June of 2023. This established Miami as one of only 69 U.S. universities to maintain membership and marked one of President Julio Frenk’s greatest achievements as the school’s leader. Today, former Deloitte LLP CEO and current UHealth CEO Joe Echevarria acts as president, and the university has schools of architecture, business, engineering, and medicine with national reputations.

CELEBRATING 100 YEARS

As UM celebrates its centennial this year, there is confidence among administrators that the university is well-positioned for what the next 100 years will bring – as well as pride in how far a school that almost never was has come.

“I think the sky’s the limit,” Whitely says. “We’re continuing to build out our academic medical enterprise with the Lennar [Foundation Medical Center] building, [UHealth’s] Doral Medical Center, [and] the SoLé Mia facility, which will be in the Aventura area.” She adds, “I think George and Solomon Merrick would be super proud of what they created and wouldn’t even believe it. It was such a consequential decision [to create a university] that shaped the City of Coral Gables, as well as the City of Miami.”