In 1859, a proposition was submitted to the Massachusetts General Court to utilize recently filled terrains in Back Bay, Boston for a "Center of Art and Science", yet the proposition fizzled. A proposition by William Barton Rogers a contract for the joining of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, marked by the legislative leader of Massachusetts on April 10, 1861. Rogers, a teacher from the University of Virginia, needed to build up a foundation to address fast logical and innovative advances. He didn't wish to establish an expert school, yet a mix with components of both expert and liberal training, suggesting that:
The genuine and just practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I consider, the instructing, not of the moment subtle elements and controls of expressions of the human experience, which should be possible just in the workshop, however the teaching of those logical standards which frame the premise and clarification of them, and alongside this, a full and systematic survey of all their driving procedures and operations regarding physical laws.