Louisiana State University System. Office of the President.

The Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy opened in 1859 in Pineville, La. It moved to quarters in the Louisiana Institution for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind at Baton Rouge after its Pineville building burned in 1869. It changed its name to Louisiana State University the following year and the Louisiana State Agricultural and Mechanical College merged with it in 1877. It occupied a campus on the former U.S. Military Reserve in downtown Baton Rouge between 1886 and 1926. It moved to its present campus on the former Gartness Plantation in Baton Rouge in 1926.

The Louisiana State University System was established by an act of the Louisiana Legislature on February 6, 1965. John A. Hunter, president of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, became the first president of the LSU System. It consists of ten campuses in five cites: Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, LSU Agricultural Center, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Paul M. Hebert Law Center (all in Baton Rouge), University of New Orleans, LSU Eunice, LSU Shreveport, LSU Alexandria, LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, and LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport. The system also administers seven public hospitals through its Health Care Services Division.