January 16, 1902

President Taylor announced in the Chapel that trustee John D. Rockefeller had pledged to duplicate every gift made to the college before Commencement in 1904 up to a total of $200,000. A trustee of the college from 1888 until his resignation in 1905, Rockefeller was a generous donor, providing partial funding for Strong House, named in honor of his daughter, Bessie Rockefeller Strong, a special student between 1886 and 1888, and fully funding Rockefeller Hall (1898) and Eliza Davison House (1903), honoring his mother. At Rockefeller’s death, in 1937, his gifts to Vassar, totalling $493,348.59, stood fifth among his philanthropies to colleges and universities, after The University of Chicago—which he helped found—Harvard, Yale and Brown.

The New York Times.