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The City College of The City University of New York (known more commonly as City College of New York or simply City College, CCNY, or colloquially as "City") is a senior college of the City University of New York, in New York City. It is also the oldest of City University's twenty institutions of higher learning. City College's thirty five acre campus along Convent Avenue from 131st Street to 141st Street is on a hill overlooking Harlem; its neo-Gothic campus was mostly designed by George Browne Post, and many of its buildings are landmarks.

CCNY is widely considered to be the flagship municipal college of New York City.

History

City College was originally founded as the Free Academy of the City of New York in 1847 by Townsend Harris, a combination prep school and college, to provide children of the poor, and immigrants also, access to free higher education based on academic merit and other significant criteria.

It was subsequently named the College of the City of New York, but that name was later transferred to the complex of the municipally-owned colleges in New York City, which was the predecessor of the modern City University of New York. At that time, CCNY became officially City College of the College of the City of New York, and later adopted its current name when CUNY was formally established as the umbrella institution for New York City's municipal-college system in 1961. The name City College of New York, however, is in general use.

In 1847, New York State Governor John Young had given permission to the Board of Education to found The Free Academy, which was ratified in a statewide referendum. Founder Townsend Harris proclaimed,

"Open the doors to all ... Let the children of the rich and the poor take their seats together and know of no distinction save that of industry, good conduct and intellect."

In 1851, a curriculum was adopted which had nine main fields: Math, History, Language, Literature, Drawing, Natural Philosophy, Experimental Philosophy, Law and Political Economy.

The Academy's first graduation took place in 1853 in Niblo's Garden Theatre *, a large theater and opera house on Broadway, near Houston Street at the corner of Broadway and Prince Street.

In 1866, the name was changed to The College of the City of New York and lavender was chosen as its color, while in the next year, the academic senate, the first student government in the nation, was formed.

Having struggled over the issue for ten years, in 1895 the New York State legislature voted to let the college build a new campus. A four-square block site was chosen, located in Manhattanville, within the area which is today enclosed by the North Campus Arches.

Education courses were offered in 1897 as a result of a city law which prohibited hiring teachers who lacked proper education. The School of Education was established in 1921.

The College newspaper, The Campus, published its first issue in 1907, and the first degree-granting evening session in the United States was started.

Separate Schools of Business and Civic Administration and of Technology (Engineering) were established in 1919. Students were also required to sign a loyalty oath.

In 1947, the college celebrated its centennial year, awarding honorary degrees to Bernard Baruch (class of 1889) and Robert F. Wagner (class of 1898). A 100 year time capsule was buried in North Campus.

In the years when top-flight private schools were restricted to the children of the Protestant Establishment, thousands of brilliant individuals (especially Jewish students) attended City College because they had no other option. CCNY's academic excellence and status as a working-class school earned it the title "Harvard of the Proletariat."

Even today, after three decades of controversy over its academic standards, no other public college has produced as many Nobel laureates who have studied and graduated with an undergraduate degree from a particular public college . CCNY's official quote on this is "Nine Nobel laureates claim CCNY as their Alma Mater, the most from any public college in the United States". * * This should not be confused with Nobel laureates that earned the distinction at a public university as UC Berkeley boasts 19.

In its heyday of the 1930s through the 1950s, CCNY became known for its political radicalism. It was said that CCNY was the place for arguments between Trotskyites and Stalinists. Alumni who were at City College in the mid-20th century said that City College in those days made Berkeley in the 1960s look like a school of conformity.

CCNY may be best known as the only team in college basketball history to win both the NIT and the NCAA Tournament in the same year, 1950.

In the 1969, black and Puerto Rican activists and their white allies demanded that City College implement an aggressive affirmative action program. The administration of CCNY at first balked at the idea, but instead, came up with an open-admissions or open-access program under which any graduate of a NYC high school might be able to matriculate either at City College or somewhere in the CUNY college system. Beginning in 1970, the program opened doors to college to many who would not otherwise have been able to attend college, but came at the cost of City College's academic standing and New York City's fiscal health.

City College began charging tuition in 1976, and by the 1990s stopped accepting and working with students who didn't meet its formal entrance requirements.

CCNY's new Frederick Douglass Debate Society defeated Harvard and Yale at the "Super Bowl" of the American Parliamentary Debate Association in 1996.

The U.S. Postal Service issued a postcard commemorating CCNY's 150th Anniversary, featuring Shephard Hall, on Charter Day, May 7, 1997.

In October 2005, Dr. Andrew Grove, a 1960 graduate of the Engineering School in Chemical Engineering, and co-founder of Intel Corporation, donated $26,000,000 to the Engineering School. It is the largest donation ever given to the City College of New York.

The Engineering School has been renamed as the Grove School of Engineering.

Campus history

City College was originally situated in downtown Manhattan, in the Free Academy Building, which was CCNY's home from 1849 to 1907. The building was designed by James Renwick, Jr. and was located at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street. According to some sources, it was the first Gothic Revival college building on the East Coast. *

CCNY then moved to its current location in the upper Manhattan village of Manhattanville in 1906, when the classical neo-Gothic campus was erected. *" target="_blank" > [http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/public_safety/Graphics/panoramic.jpg

This new campus was designed by George Browne Post.

According to CCNY's published history, "The Landmark neo-Gothic buildings of the North Campus Quadrangle were designed by the noted architect George Browne Post. They are superb examples of English Perpendicular Gothic style and are among the first buildings, as an entire campus, to be built in the U.S. in this style. Groundbreaking for the Gothic Quadrangle buildings took place in 1903".

The original neo-Gothic buildings on the new upper Manhattan campus were:

  • Shepard Hall, standing on its own, across the street from the campus quadrangle on Convent Avenue
  • Baskerville Hall
  • Compton Hall
  • Harris Hall
  • Wingate Hall

Shepard Hall was the largest building and the centerpiece of the campus, and modeled after a Gothic cathedral plan, and whose main entrance was deisgned to be on St. Nicholas Terrace.It also contained a large cathedral or chapel assembly hall called "The Great Hall". [http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/img/CCNY_GreatHallInt.jpg

Harris Hall, named in the original architectual plans as "the Sub-Freshman Building", housed City College's preparatory high school from 1906 until it moved in 1930 downtown to the School of Business. *

Wingate Hall, was named for George Wood Wingate (Class of 1858), an attorney and promoter of physical fitness. It served as the college's main gymnasium between 1907 and 1972. *

Baskerville Hall, for many years housed the Chemistry Department, was also known as the Chemical Building, and had one of the largest original lecture halls on the campus, Doremus lecture hall. *

Compton Hall was originally designed as and called The Mechanical Arts Building in the original plans.*

Five of these new Gothic campus buildings opened in 1906. The sixth, Goethals Hall *, finished in 1930, was named after George Goethals the famous civil engineer who was chief engineer of the Panama Canal and who had attended CCNY as an undergraduate student. Goethals Hall housed the School of Technology (engineering) adjoining The Mechanical Arts Building, Compton Hall.

There are six hundred grotesques on the original Gothic buildings made to represent the practical and the fine arts. * * The North Campus Quadrangle contains four great arches on the main avenues entering and exiting the campus:

  • the Hudson Gate on Amsterdam Avenue *
  • the George Washington Gate at 138th Street and Convent Avenue
  • the Alexander Hamilton Gate at the northern edge of Convent Avenue
  • the Peter Stuyvesant Gate at St. Nicholas Terrace.

In the early 1900's, after the Gothic campus had been built, CCNY President John H. Finley had a dream of a stadium, later to be realized as Lewisohn Stadium, since he knew the need for adequate facilities for the college's athletic teams. New York City did not give money, but it donated two blocks south of the College, which was open park land. He also learned that businessman and philanthropist Adolph Lewisohn wanted to finance the project. They spoke about it for the first time in 1912. Lewisohn agreed to donate $75,000 for the Stadium. Finley commissioned the architect, Arnold W. Brunner, to do the project, which was built on Finley's memories of a small rock-hewn theatre in the Trastevere section of Rome, Italy.*

Lewisohn stadium was built as a 6,000-seat stadium, with thousands more seats available on the infield during concerts, and was dedicated on May 29, 1915, two years after Dr. Finley had left his post at the College and Dr. Sidney Edward Mezes had become CCNY's fourth president. The stadium's dedication was enhanced by a performance of "The Trojan Women", produced by Granville Barker and Lillian McCarthy.

A separate library building was not in the original plan for the 1906 campus, so in 1937, a free-standing library was built. The Bowker/Alumni Library stood at the present site of the Steinman Engineering building until 1957. *

The Hebrew Orphan Asylum was erected in 1884 on Amsterdam Avenue between 136th and 138th Street, and was designed by William H. Hume It was already there when City College moved to upper Manhattan. When it closed in the 1940s, the building was used by City College to house members of the U.S. Armed Forces assigned to the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). From 1946 to 1955, it was used as a dormitory, library, and classroom space for the college. It was called "Army Hall" until it was demolished in 1955 and 1956. [http://origin.admin.ccny.cuny.edu/library/exhibitions/lostworld/armyhall.html * *

In 1946, on the North Campus, CCNY purchased a former orphanage administered by the Episcopal Church and named it Klapper Hall, for Paul Klapper (Class of 1904) Professor and the Dean of School of Education and who was later the first president of Queens College/CUNY (1937-1952). Klapper Hall was red brick in Georgian style and it served until 1983 as home of the School of Education. *

In 1953, CCNY bought the campus of the Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart (which, on a 1913 map, was shown as The Convent of the Sacred Heart), which added a south section to the campus. This expanded the campus to include many of the buildings in the area between 140th Street to 130th Street, from St. Nicholas Terrace in the east to Amsterdam Avenue in the west.

Former buildings of the Manhattanville College campus to be used by CCNY were re-named for City College's purposes: Stieglitz Hall, Downer Hall, Wagner Hall, the prominent Finley Student Center which contained the very active Buttenweiser Lounge, Eisner Hall, Park Gym, and Mott Hall, and others.

Generally, the South Campus of CCNY, as a result of this expansion, contained the liberal arts classes and departments of the college. The North Campus, also as a result of this expansion, generally housed classes and departments for the sciences and engineering, as well as Klapper Hall (School of Education), and the Administration Building.

In 1957, as a result of this campus expansion, a new library building was erected in the middle of the campus, near 135th Street on the South Campus, and named Cohen Library, after Morris Raphael Cohen, an alumnus (Class of 1900) and celebrated professor of the college from 1912 to 1938. The library was moved some decades later to be inside the North Academic Center building on the North Campus.

Steinman Hall, which houses the School of Engineering, was erected in 1962 on the site of the Bowker Library and the Drill Hall to replace the facilities in Compton Hall and Goethals Hall, and was named for David Barnard Steinman (CCNY Class of 1906), a well known civil engineer and bridge designer. *

Also, in 1963, the Administration Building was erected and put in use on the North Campus across from Wingate Hall. It houses the college administration offices, including the President's and Provost's, and the Registrar's Office. It was originally intended as a warehouse also, housing the huge number of records and transcripts of students since 1847 when the college opened. [http://origin.admin.ccny.cuny.edu/library/exhibitions/lostworld/dsc6.html

In 1971, the Marshak Science Building was built and opened, the the former place of the open space known as Jasper Oval and previously an open football field Robert Marshak, who was a renowned physicist. The Marshak building houses all science and labs, and also houses and adjoins the Mahoney Gymnasium and athletic facilities including a swimming pool and tennis courts. [http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/aboutus/campus/campuspictssmall/sciencebuildingfrombpark2.jpg" target="_blank" >*

In the 1970's, the construction of the massive North Academic Center was begun, in the place of Lewisohn Stadium and Klapper Hall (which housed the School of Education from 1946 to 1983). It was completed in 1984 and houses thousands of classrooms, cafeterias, the Cohen Library, student lounges and centers, and the like, and became the main building for holding classes on the North Campus for the liberal arts and some sciences. At about this same time, many of the old buildings of the South Campus were demolished, some which had been there since the Academy of The Sacred Heart days. The buildings remaining after this on the South Campus at this time were Cohen Library (later moved into the North Academic Center), Park Gym (now a Structural Biology Research Center *, the Schiff House (former President's residence, now a childcare center), Mott Hall (formerly the English Department, now a New York City Department of Education primary school *).

Some of the buildings which were demolished at that time were Finley Hall (housed The Finley Student Center, student activities center, originally built in 1888-1890 as Manhattanville Academy's main building, and purchased in 1953 by City College) Wagner Hall (housed various Liberal Arts departments and classes, originally built as a dormitory for Manhattanville Academy, and was named in honor of Robert F. Wagner Sr., member of the Class of 1898, who represented New York State for 23 years in the United States Senate) [http://origin.admin.ccny.cuny.edu/library/exhibitions/lostworld/images/wagnerhall_07.gif, Stieglitz Hall, and Downer Hall, amongst others.

New buildings were erected on the South Campus, including Aaron Davis Hall, and, in the Fall of 2006, the new dormitory, for the first time ever in its history, the college will have completed the construction of a 600-bed dormitory, called "The Towers". *

The former Cohen Library is to be used as the new home for the School of Architecture.

The New York Landmarks Preservation Commission made the North Campus Quadrangle buildings and the College Gates official landmarks, both in 1981. The buildings in the Quadrangle were put on the State and National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

The City College seal and medal logo

The design of the three-faced college seal took its roots in the 19th century when Professor Charles Anthon was inspired by views of Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces connect the past and the future. He broadened this image of Janus in three faces to show the student, and consequently, knowledge, developing from childhood through youth into maturity. It was redesigned again in 1947 by Professor Albert D'Andrea for the college's Centennial Medal.

The logo was changed again sometime in 2003, to be a stylized version of the lettering of CCNY.*

Presidents of City College

Notable alumni

Nobel laureates

Rhodes Scholars

Fulbright Scholars

Truman Scholars

Politics, government, and sociology

The arts

Literature and journalism

Science and technology

Business

Sports

Fictional

Footnotes

References

  • S. Willis Rudy, College of the City of New York 1847-1947, 1949.
  • Paul David Pearson, The City College of New York: 150 years of academic architecture, 1997.

External links

City University of New York | 1847 establishments

ニューヨーク市立大学シティカレッジ | 纽约市立学院

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "City College of New York".

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