The Agricultural College of the State of Michigan was founded on February 12, 1855, as a bold experiment in higher education that opened college study to the common man and later woman, combined the mechanical and agricultural arts with the liberal arts, and brought science into everyday life. On a 677-acre campus south of the plank road from Lansing, students helped build the college itself while studying chemistry, English, mathematics, and agriculture, and a women's course in domestic economy was added in 1896. As it democratized higher education on a rapidly developing frontier, the college became a national model and was cited by advocates of federal support for such institutions. U.S. Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont secured congressional approval for that support during the Civil War, and President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act into law on July 2, 1862, providing for federal lands to fund colleges devoted chiefly to agriculture and the mechanic arts while also including other scientific and classical studies and military tactics. Chosen as Michigan's Morrill Act beneficiary in 1863, the institution that became Michigan State University introduced the nation's first course in scientific agriculture in 1865. The Women's Building on this site, completed in 1900 with a dormitory, became strictly instructional space in 1937, was named for Morrill, and in 2013 was razed because of structural deterioration, after which his name was given to the university's historic Agriculture Hall.