City College off New York

The City College off The City University off New York (City College of the University of the Town of New York), frequently named City College off New York , CCNY or, in a more familiar way, City , is an establishment of higher education depend on the Université of the Town of New York ( City University off New York , CUNY ). It is about oldest of the twenty-three institutions of higher education which compose the latter.

The campus, of a surface of: 14.16 hectares, is located along Convent Avenue , between the 130e street and the 141e street, on a hill overhanging the district of Harlem, in the north of Manhattan. The majority of its buildings, built in a style neogothic, are the work of the architect George Browne Post, and several of them received the distinction of landmarks .

The CCNY, founded in 1847, was moreover the first higher establishment public and free of the the United States. He, since many years, is also regarded as the most prestigious campus of the City University off New York .

History

The creation of the Free Academy off the City off New York

The City College off New York in the beginning was created under the name of Free Academy off the City off New York (free academy of the town of New York) by Townsend Harris in 1847, after the governor of the State of New York, John Young, had given his approval to the Board off Education (council delegated to education), following a referendum. Townsend Harris declared then:

Let us open the doors with all… Let us allow to the children easy classes and those of the mediums poor of côtoyer in the same place, without another distinction that which they can draw from their work, their control and their intelligence.

The same year, in 1847, Doctor Horace Webster, which was the first president of the Free Academy , declared:

The experiment must be tried, to so yes know or not the children of the people, of the whole of the people, can be educated, and so yes or not an institution of the more school high level, can be successfully controlled by the will of the people, and not by a privileged minority.

The finality was thus to propose to the children immigrants and with the most stripped the one access to a free higher education which would be based on the only school merit. The establishment was thereafter renamed College off the City off New York , before this name does not become that of the organization chapeautant the whole of the colleges (establishments of higher education with short cycle) managed by the city, predecessor of current the City University off New York (CUNY). Following this transfer of name, the CCNY off took officially the name of City College the College off the City off New York , before adopting its current denomination, City College off the City University off New York at the time of the foundation of the CUNY in 1961: in the everyday usage, however, it is commonly called City College off New York .

Progressive evolution of the establishment

In 1851, was adopted a course based on nine principal matters: Mathematical, History, Language, Literature, Drawing, natural Philosophy, experimental Philosophy, Right and political economy. The first handing-over of diplomas took place in 1853, with the Niblo' S Garden Theater , Théâtre and opera of Broadway, located near Houston Street . In 1866, the establishment was renamed The College off the City off New York (the college of the town of New York) and the color Lavande was selected to represent it.

In 1895, after ten years of tergiversations, the legislative body of the State (the New York State legislature ) voted the construction of a new campus for the establishment. A space of a surface of four blocks was then chosen, in the district of Manhattanville, was located between Morningside Heights, Harlem and the Hudson River. The first trainings of professors began in 1897 after the adoption of a law prohibiting to engage of the professors whose level of education was insufficient. However, the School off Education was created only in 1921. The newspaper of the university, baptized The Campus , as for him was published as from 1907. In 1947, the City College celebrated its centenary while paying homage to Bernard Baruch (graduate in 1889) and to Robert F. Wagner (graduate in 1898), two former students become thereafter of the influential personalities.

A fish pond of Nobel Prize

At the time where the most famous universities only Protestant students resulting from the Establishment recruited, thousands of brilliant students (primarily of Jewish origin ) off joined the benches of the City College New York , which then constituted for them the only possible choice. The excellent results of the CCNY were worth to him thus the title of “Harvard of the proletariat” or “Harvard of poor”.

Today still, after years of polemic about the level of education, force is to note that no public corporation of higher education of the type college formed as many Nobel Prize that the CCNY. The CCNY advances as “nine prizes winner of the Nobel Prize state to regard the CCNY as their alma to subdue , the record for a public corporation in the United States”. This score should not be confused with that of the researchers who obtained to them Nobel Prize in a public university, which placed its installations at their disposal because, in this case, it is the university of Berkeley which holds the record with 19 prizes winner.

Political and Community activism

During its most glorious period, which extends from the Années 1930 with the Années 1950, the CCNY made speak about him for the political actions radical which were held there, on bottom of fights of influence between trotskists and stalinists. Some alumni (former students) having studied with the City College about the middle of the 20th century consider thus that in comparison, the university of Berkeley in the Années 1960 has the appearance of an institution conformist rather.

In 1969, at the time of an occupation of the campus threatening to degenerate into racial riot, a group of activists composed not only of students Afro-American S and Porto Rican, but also of White, required the installation of a kind of Positive discrimination in favor of the visible minorities, so much so that certain demonstrators baptized the university “ Harlem University ”. The direction of the CCNY refused to answer at the requests of the demonstrators, by founding on the contrary a free program of admission allowing any pupil having finished his studies in one of the colleges of the town of be registered at the university. This program, which was applied starting from 1970, opened the doors of the university to many people who could not have followed studies differently. However, that was done with the detriment of the level of the establishment and the budgetary health of the town of New York. During Years 1990, the selection criteria nevertheless were reintroduced and the students not meeting the minimal requirements of the university were not allowed any more.

The CCNY today

In October 2005, the doctor Andrew Grove, graduate of the university in 1960 and cofounder of the company Intel, made a gift of 26 million dollars at the school of engineers of the CCNY, which for summer has renamed Grove School off Engineering . This gift most important ever is to date received by the establishment.

The various schools which are present today on the campus are:

  • the school of architecture ( School off Architecture )
  • the school of biomedical sciences ( Sophie Davis School off Biomedicals )
  • the school of teaching ( School off Education )
  • the school of engineers, opened in Undergraduate and Postgraduate ( School off Engineering )
  • the College of Sciences and liberal arts ( College off Liberal Arts and Sciences ) composed of:
    • the school of arts and letters ( Division off Humanities and Arts )
    • the school of Science ( Division off Science )
    • the school of Social sciences ( Division off Social Sciences )
    • the center of study of the workers ( Center for Worker Education )

There exists moreover a rerun routine of studies for the credits.

The campus

The campus of the Free Academy

The City College in the beginning was located at the south of Manhattan, in the Free Academy Building , which sheltered the establishment of 1849 with 1907. The building, works of James Renwick Jr, was located at the intersection of Lexington Avenue and the 23e street. According to certain sources, it is a question of the first building of higher education of the east coast to be built in a Style neogothic.

Removal with Manhattanville

Started in 1903, the construction of the new campus was completed in 1906, year during which it was inaugurated, with its current site, in the north of Manhattan, in the district of Manhattanville, close to Harlem. On the Web site of the CCNY, the campus is evoked in these terms: “The neogothic buildings recognized like landmarks

The original campus was composed of five buildings, which opened all their doors in 1906:

  • the Shepard Hall , which was the largest building of the campus, located in the center of this last. Conceived on the model of a Gothic Cathedral , its main entrance was on the level of St Nicholas Terrace . Besides the Shepard Hall sheltered large a Chapelle of gathering, baptized The Great Hall (the big room).
  • the Baskerville Hall which, during many years, sheltered the courses of Chimie, from where its nickname of Chemical Building (chemical building). It sheltered also more the big room of conference of the campus, the Doremus Lecture Hall .
  • the Compton Hall , with the departure baptized The Mechanical Arts Building (building of the mechanical arts).
  • the Harris Hall , which was called in the beginning Sub-Freshman Building , which sheltered the classes of preparation at the entry with the College for the high-school pupils. The Harris Hall fulfilled these functions of 1906 with 1930, before the preparatory classes are not transferred to the School off Business (business school).
  • the Wingate Hall , thus named in the honor of the lawyer George Wood Wingate, large defender of the cause of the sport, graduate former student in 1858. The Wingate Hall sheltered the principal gymnasium of the campus of 1907 with 1972.

The sixth building of the campus, the Goethals Hall - thus named in homage to George Goethals, former student of the CCNY, engineer having supervised celebrates the construction of the Canal of Panamá - opened its doors in 1930. The building sheltered off the School Technology (school of engineers), appendix of the Compton Hall .

No Library not having been envisaged in the original plans of 1906, the first to be built on the campus in a building especially envisaged for this purpose date of 1937: it was about the Bowker/Alumni Library , located on the spot of current the Steinman Engineering Building , which took its place in 1957.

In 1953, the campus off extended to the south thanks to acquisition from the Manhattanville College the Sacred Heart (College of the Sacred Heart of Manhattanville) which, on the charts of 1913, still appeared under the name of “convent of the Sacred Heart”. The campus then included many buildings located between the 130e and the 140e street, Amsterdam Avenue in the west and St Nicholas Terrace in the east. During their integration to the campus of the CCNY, the old buildings of the Manhattanville College were renamed: Stieglitz Hall , Downer Hall , Wagner Hall , Eisner Hall , Park Gym and Mott Hall , inter alia.

The construction of the Lewisohn Stadium

Once the first buildings built at the beginning of the 20th century, the president of the CCNY, John H. Finley, ardently wished to integrate a Stade in the enclosure of its campus, in order to provide the sportsmen of its establishment of the infrastructures of quality. The city did not offer any funds for the construction of the stage but it made gift of two blocks in the south of the campus, which was then allocated with the construction of parks. John Finley learned then that the business man and philanthropist Adolph Lewisohn were ready to finance the project. The foregrounds were thus set up in 1912, after Lewisohn agreed to make a gift of 75  000 dollars. Finley called then upon the architect Arnold W. Brunner to carry out the project, which was inspired by the memories that Finley had of a Roman theater cut in the rock.

The stage had a capacity of 6  000 seats, figure which could be increased at the time of events which did not require the totality of the central ground. It was inaugurated the May 29th 1915, that is to say two years after the end of the mandate of Dr. Finley, who had yielded his place to Sidney Edward Mezes. The inauguration of the stage was made by a representation of the Troyennes of the tragic Greek Euripide, under the direction of Granville Barker and Lillian McCarthy.

Current the North Academic Center (NAC) - whose construction, undertaken in the Années 1970, was completed in 1984 - was set up on the site of old the Lewisohn Stadium .

Evolution of the campus since the Years 1960

The Steinman Hall , which shelters the school of engineers, was built in 1962 on the site of the old library Bowker Library and of the Drill Hall , to replace the infrastructures already present in the Compton Hall and the Goethals Hall . It was thus named in homage to David B. Steinman, civil engineer graduate in 1906.

In 1963, the administrative building was in its turn set up in the north of the campus, opposite the Wingate Hall . It shelters the administrative offices of the establishment, in particular those of the president and the senior. It was moreover with the departure intended to be used as building of files for the many files of all the students having attended the CCNY since its opening in 1847. Since 2007, the building bears the name of Howard E. Wille Administration Building , in the honor of the philanthropist Howard E. Wille, former student graduate in 1955.

In 1971, was built the Marshak Science Building , thus named in homage to Robert Marshak, president of the CCNY of 1970 to 1979 and famous physicist. The building shelters not only the whole of the infrastructures devoted to sciences, i.e. the laboratories, but also of the sporting installations belonging to the Mahoney Gymnasium , among which a Piscine and courts of Tennis.

Thereafter, of many buildings were destroyed in the north and the south of the campus, while new infrastructures replaced them, in particular the North Academic Center (NAC), whose construction were completed in 1984, which shelters thousands of classrooms, as well as cafeterias, libraries and rooms of rest, inter alia.

Famous former students

Prizes winner of the Nobel Prize

Politicians

Artists

Literature and journalism

Science and technology

See too

Related articles

External bonds

  • Official site of the '' City College off New York ''
  • '' City College Library Historical CCNY Exhibits '', exposures on line of the CCNY
  • '' The Lost World off CCNY exhibit At CCNY Library '', exposure on line on the architectural jewels of the history of the CCNY

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