Between 1926 and 1930, Harkness made major donations to Yale his alma mater and Harvard to establish residential college systems at each school. Harkness admired the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge in England and proposed to Yale President James Rowland Angell that he would fund a similar system for Yale's undergraduate college to relieve overcrowding and improve social intimacy. When the Yale Corporation failed to accept Harkness' offer by 1928, Harkness went to Harvard with a similar offer. Harvard's president, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, quickly accepted, and eight houses for Harvard College were completed by 1931 with a $10 million gift from Harkness. Dismayed, Yale administrators appealed to Harkness to reconsider his offer, and in 1930 he agreed to give Yale $11 million for nine residential colleges of its own. Harkness persuaded Yale to retain his friend James Gamble Rogers as the colleges' architect. He also made gifts that established the Yale School of Drama, the first independent drama faculty in the country, and erected its theatre.