The Robert College: the bulding of an American school in İstanbul, 1863-1971

Date

2023-8

Author

Sarılıcan, Zeki Furkan

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

Subject Keywords

Robert College, American Missionary Schools, Aptullah Kuran, Boğaziçi University

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/104864

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis