City College of New York

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City College of New York
Motto:	Respice, Adspice, Prospice (Look back, look at, and look ahead)
Established:	1847
Type:	Public
Endowment:	$220 million
President:	Dr. Gregory H. Williams
Provost:	Dr. Zeev Dagan
Faculty:	508 (full time)
Staff:	401
Undergraduates:	10,314
Postgraduates:	2,930
Location:	New York City, NY, USA
Campus:	Urban
Athletics:	16 sports teams
Colors:	Lavender      and Black
Mascot:	Beaver
Affiliations:	City University of New York
Website:	www.ccny.cuny.edu

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 the City University's twenty three institutions of higher learning.^[1] City College's thirty-five acre Manhattan campus along Convent Avenue from 130th Street to 141st Street^[2] 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 was the first free public institution of higher education in the United States^[3] and also for many years has been considered the flagship campus of the CUNY public university system.^[4]

[edit] History

A view of the original entrance to Shepard Hall, the main building of City College of New York, in the early 1900's, on its new campus in Hamilton Heights, from St. Nicholas Avenue looking up westward to St. Nicholas Terrace.

The City College of New York was originally founded as the Free Academy of the City of New York in 1847 by former mayor Townsend Harris. A combination prep school and college, it would provide children of immigrants and the poor access to free higher education based on academic merit alone.It is ranked as Top 200-400 Universities in World by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in the year 2007.

It was subsequently renamed 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 ^[5], 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."

Dr. Horace Webster, first president of The Free Academy on the occasion of its formal opening, January 21, 1849, said:

"The experiment is to be tried, whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people, can be educated; and whether an institution of the highest grade, can be successfully controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few."^[6]

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 [4], 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 titles "Harvard of the Proletariat", the "poor man's Harvard", and "Harvard-on-the-Hudson".^[7]

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 a degree from a particular public college.^[8] 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". [5] [6] 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 is the only team in men's college basketball history to win both the NIT and the NCAA Tournament in the same year, 1950. However, this accomplishment has been overshadowed by a point shaving scandal in which, during the course of 1951, seven CCNY basketball players were arrested for taking money from gamblers to affect the outcome of games.^[9] This led to the decline of CCNY from a national powerhouse in Division I basketball to a member of Division III and damaged the national profile of college basketball in general.

During a 1969 takeover of South campus, under threat of a race riot, African American and Puerto Rican activists and their white allies demanded, among other policy changes, that City College implement an aggressive affirmative action program (Traub). At some point, campus protesters began referring to CCNY as "Harlem University." The administration of CCNY at first balked at the demands, but instead, came up with an open admissions or open-access program under which any graduate of a New York City 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. In 2003, the college's Model UN Team was awarded as an Outstanding Delegation, an honor that it would repeat for four years in a row.

The U.S. Postal Service issued a postcard commemorating CCNY's 150th Anniversary, featuring Shepard 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, which has since been renamed the Grove School of Engineering. It is the largest donation ever given to the City College of New York.

[edit] Campus history

The Free Academy at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street in New York City in the 1800s.

Old photo of the main City College building, Shepard Hall, looking West from St. Nicholas Avenue to Shepard Hall's main entrance on St. Nicholas Terrace

[edit] Downtown

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. [7]

[edit] North campus

CCNY then moved to its current location in the upper Manhattan village of Manhattanville in 1906, when the classical neo-Gothic campus was erected. [8] [9] [10] [11]

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 designed to be on St. Nicholas Terrace.[12] It also contained a large cathedral or chapel assembly hall called "The Great Hall". [13]

Harris Hall, named in the original architectural 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. [14]

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. [15] [16] [17]

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. [18]

Compton Hall was originally designed as and called The Mechanical Arts Building in the original plans.[19]

Five of these new Gothic campus buildings opened in 1906. The sixth, Goethals Hall [20], 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.

A stone grotesque on a CCNY building from 1906, holding a model of Shepard Hall.

There are six hundred grotesques on the original Gothic buildings made to represent the practical and the fine arts. [21] [22]

The North Campus Quadrangle contains four great arches on the main avenues entering and exiting the campus:

• the Hudson Gate on Amsterdam Avenue [23]
• 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 1900s, 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.[24]

Old photo of the former Adolph Lewisohn Stadium, now the site of the North Academic Center

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. College graduation services were held in Lewisohn for many years.

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. [25]

The Hebrew Orphan Asylum was erected in 1884 on Amsterdam Avenue between 136th and 138th Street, and was designed by William H. Hume [26]. 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. [27] [28] [29]

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. [30]

[edit] South campus

1950's aerial view of the old South Campus of City College, bought in 1953 from Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. The photo is taken from the south looking northeast.

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, 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, 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 north end of the campus, 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. [31]

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. [32] [33]. In early 2007, the Administration Building was formally named The Howard E. Wille Administration Building, in honor of Howard E. Wille, class of 1955, a distinguished alumnus and philanthropist. ^[10]

In 1971, the Marshak Science Building was built and opened, the former place of the open space known as Jasper Oval and previously an open football field [34] [35]. The building was named after a past president of CCNY in the 1970s (1970-1979), 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. [36]

In the 1970s, the construction of the massive North Academic Center (NAC) 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. Designed by architect John Carl Warnecke, the building has received criticism for its lack of design, and lack of scale in comparison to the surrounding neighborhood.

At about this same time, many of the old buildings of the South Campus [37] 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 [38]), Eisner Hall (built in 1941 by Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart as a library, later remodeled and housed CCNY's Art Department and named for the Chairman of the Board of Higher Education in the 1930s) [39], 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 [40]).

Annotated 1950's aerial view of the main part of the old South Campus of City College, with many former CCNY buildings marked with their names. (Click on photo to enlarge)

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) [41], Wagner Hall (housed various social science and 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) [42], Stieglitz Hall, and Downer Hall, amongst others.

New buildings were erected on the South Campus, including Aaron Davis Hall in 1981, and the Herman Goldman sports field in 1993. In August 2006, for the first time ever in its history, the college completed the construction of a 600-bed dormitory, called "The Towers", and opened it for use.^[11][12][13] There are plans to rename The Towers after a distinguished alumnus or donor, who has not yet been named.

Within the NAC, a student lounge space was created outside the campus bookstore, and murals celebrating the history of the campus were painted on the doors of the Undergraduate Student Government. Founded in 1869, it claims to be the oldest continuously operating student government organization in the country. Across Convent Avenue, the first floor of the Administration Building was given a postmodern renovation for use as the admissions and registrar office.

The former Cohen Library is to be used as the new home for the School of Architecture, with the renovation headed by architect Rafael Viñoly. Near the 133rd Street gate, a new science building is under construction in order to relieve pressure from Marshak Hall, which had a beam collapse in 2005. Part of this project is the elimination of the Herman Goldman sports field, a controversial move which will dramatically alter the South Campus.

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. In the summer of 2006, the historic gates on Convent Avenue were restored.

The campus is served by the 137th Street-City College and 135th Street subway stations. The express stops at 125th and 145th are both accessible by shuttle buses.

[edit] 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.

In 2003, the college decided to create a logo distinct from its seal, with the stylized text "the City College of New York." [43]

[edit] Rankings

City College was recently ranked in a study [44] by Shanghai Jiao Tong University as 88-118 nationally and 201-300 internationally. It should be noted however that the study focuses heavily on institutions with strong hard science backgrounds, as the rating is based on a number of factors including articles published in scientific journals and Nobel laureates.

[edit] Popular culture

Film

• Crossing Delancey - Sam is wearing a City College of New York sweater when playing handball

• The Royal Tenenbaums - Shepard Hall's tower can be seen in the opening montage of this 2001 film as the young Richie Tenenbaum releases his eagle. Much of the film was shot at or near CCNY.

• Reversal of Fortune - The CCNY campus was used to depict Harvard for this 1990 movie. Many of the scenes taking place in the law school, including the office of Professor Alan M. Dershowitz and several classroom scenes, were filmed in late 1989 at the CCNY School of Architecture, located in Shepard Hall.

• 25th Hour (2002) - Most scenes were shot in Shepard Hall, when Monty Brogan (Mr. Edward Norton's character) visits (and reminisces about the past) his old high school and friend Jacob Elinsky (Mr. Philip Seymour Hoffman's character) who teaches at a fancy private high school.

• The Substance of Fire (1996) - Scenes in the publishing firm run by Isaac Geldhart (Mr. Ron Rifkin's character), a Holocaust survivor, were shot in Shepard Hall.

Literature

• Allen Ginsberg - Allen Ginsberg referenced CCNY in multiple poems.

• Woody Allen - Sidney Kugelmass, the protagonist of Allen's short story "The Kugelmass Episode," is stated to be a professor of humanities at C.C.N.Y.

[edit] Presidents

1. Horace Webster, 1847-1869
2. General Alexander S. Webb, 1869-1902
3. John H. Finley, 1903-1913
4. Sidney Edward Mezes, 1914-1927
5. Frederick Robinson, 1927-1938
6. Harry N. Wright, 1941-1952
7. Buell G. Gallagher, 1953-1969
8. Robert Marshak, 1970-1979
9. Bernard W. Harleston, 1981-1992
10. Yolanda T. Moses, 1993-1999
11. Gregory H. Williams, 2001- [45]

[edit] Notable alumni

Main article: List of City College of New York people

[edit] Notes

1. ^ CUNY's list of its 23 institutions
2. ^ CCNY campus map which shows the lower section extending to 130th St. where the new Towers dormitory is, and up north to 141st St. where Steinman Hall ends and CCNY Alumni House stands.
3. ^ "... the founding, in 1847, of the Free Academy, the very first free public institution of higher education in the nation.", Baruch College history website. [1]
4. ^ Alfred S. Posamentier, City College: Past and Future, Education Update, Oct. 2002; Sandi E. Cooper, Remediation's end: Can New York educate the children of the "whole people"?, Academe, Jul./Aug. 1998. Note that Prof. Posamentier is dean of CCNY's School of Education, and Prof. Cooper teaches at the College of Staten Island and the CUNY Graduate Center.
5. ^ Subway College, in Time magazine, October 28, 1946
6. ^ Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Report of the Commission on the Future of CUNY: Part I Remediation and Access: To Educate the "Children of the Whole People", 1999. [2]
7. ^ Robert Sobel (1994-11-21). Review of City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College by James Traub. Electronic News. Retrieved on 2007-12-12.
8. ^ see article Nobel Prize laureates by university affiliation
9. ^ Explosion: 1951 scandals threaten college hoops
10. ^ "Administration Building Named for Howard E. Wille, ‘55", 138@Convent, CCNY newsletter, Volume 2, n.1, February 1, 2007, Office of Communications of The City College of New York.
11. ^ CCNY Towers website
12. ^ "Going to College, and Living There, Too", by Manny Fernandez, New York Times, August 26, 2006, New York Region Section [3]
13. ^ Photos of the residence hall at the City College of NY

[edit] References

• S. Willis Rudy, College of the City of New York 1847-1947, 1949.
• James Traub, City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College, Addison-Wesley: 1994.
• Paul David Pearson, The City College of New York: 150 years of academic architecture, 1997.
• Sandra S. Roff, et al., From the Free Academy to Cuny: Illustrating Public Higher Education in New York City, 1847-1997, 2000.
• Sydney C. Van Nort, The City College of New York, Arcadia Press, February 2007. ISBN 0738549304.

[edit] See also

• Mid-InfraRed Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE) (largely based at Princeton University)

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

City College of New York

• City College of New York
• http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/athletics/
• Site on 1980s Chancellor Joseph S. Murphy
• City College Library Historical CCNY Exhibits
• The Lost World of CCNY exhibit at CCNY Library
• 100 Years on Hamilton Heights
• Old CCNY photographs and memorabilia
• The Campus - Student Newspaper
• Arguing the World - PBS documentary about the "New York Intellectuals," who came of age at City College
• Press release regarding Dr. Andrew Grove's 2005 donation of $26,000,000 to the Engineering School
• Economist article on emerging 'elitism' at the City University of New York.
• Some photos of CCNY from a walking tour of Harlem Heights
• Special report on preserving CCNY architecture, "Architectural Janus", in the April 2006 issue of CUNY Matters
• Alumni Association of The City College of New York
• The City College Fund
• CCNY Timeline until 1999
• Report of the Commission on the Future of CUNY, Association of the Bar of the City of New York: Part I Remediation and Access: To Educate the "Children of the Whole People", 1999.
• [46] - Grove School of Engineering Video
• City College of New York is at coordinates 40°49′10″N 73°57′00″W / 40.8194, -73.9500 (City College of New York)Coordinates: 40°49′10″N 73°57′00″W / 40.8194, -73.9500 (City College of New York)