Eastman College
Founded on December 19th, 1855 in Oswego, NY, Eastman College was one of the largest American commercial colleges of the 19th century. Conceived by Harvey G. Eastman on the principal of “Actual Business Operations,” the Eastman model promoted conducting actual business in the classrooms using college-themed bank bills and interacting with a college bank, offices, merchant’s exchanges, etc. Eastman also lays claim to having been the origin of the term “Business College.”
In 1857, during the second year of his operation, Eastman organized a series of lectures by some of the most prominent business men in the country, including Thomas H. Benton. These lectures were so well received and Eastman was so encouraged by their success that he decided to open a school in St. Louis, Missouri the following year.
The Missouri school was short-lived, however. The same plan of procuring prominent lecturers was less well received in St. Louis, due to “sectional prejudices,” and would result, ultimately, in Eastman selling the operation the following fall and looking back to the east, this time to Poughkeepsie, New York.
Selected for its central location and proximity to the Hudson River, the Poughkeepsie school promised to be a fresh start. Eagerly, Eastman printed and distributed thousands of prospectus pamphlets reading “Eastman National Business College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.— A model Commercial College, to be conducted on a Novel, Original and Pre-eminent Plan, combining Theory and Practice by the Eastman System of Actual Business Training.” before ever setting foot in Poughkeepsie.
This unusual manner of advertising and the resulting confusion regarding the origin of these circulars led the Albany, N.Y. post office to make a complaint to the Post office department in Washinton about the Poughkeepsie office. In response to the complaint the Poughkeepsie Postmaster replied that “no such circular had been mailed from his office, and that there was no such man as Eastman or his Business College in the city, and there never had been.” and that “there as nearly a bushel of letters in the office to the address of H. G. Eastman, and that was all he know about it.”
Upon his arrival in October 1859, Eastman received his mail and cleared up the confusion, but the impression of his unconventional marketing strategy had stunned the local business community. Undeterred, he rented his first room the following month in the old library building, and on November 3rd, 1859 he started his school with three in attendance. By the next week, attendance was at sixteen students, and by the end of the month it had outnumbered the Law College in the same building that had been established for years.
Over the next five years, the Poughkeepsie school would grow in number and reputation. In 1865, the college register boasted over seventeen hundred students in daily attendance.