http://www.cshl.edu/About-Us/History/
History
1890: Founded as a biology teacher-training laboratory
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| First General Course on Biology |
At the end of the 19th century, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences founded a laboratory for training high school and college teachers in marine biology. As biologists and naturalists of that time worked out the consequences of Darwin’s theory of evolution, they often established their laboratories at the seashore, where there was an abundance of animals and plants for study. The pristine north shore of Long Island was a natural site for the Brooklyn Institute’s facility – a place to study nature at its source, the sea.
In 1889, John D. Jones gave land and buildings—formerly part of the Cold Spring Whaling Company on the southwestern shore of Cold Spring Harbor—to the Institute. The first course at the new Biological Laboratory (the General Course on Biology) began on July 7, 1890, establishing education in the biological sciences as the Laboratory’s first mission.