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City College of New York

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City College of New York
CCNY seal
MottoRespice, Adspice, Prospice
(Look back, look at, and look ahead)
TypePublic
Established1847
PresidentGregory Williams
Undergraduates8,408
Postgraduates2,116
LocationNew York, NY, USA
CampusUrban
Athletics10 sports teams
MascotBeaver
Websitewww.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 City University's twenty institutions of higher learning. City College's campus 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 to provide children of the poor and immigrants access to higher education. 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 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."

Looking down W 139 Street in Harlem, towards Shepard Hall at the City College of New York.

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 (refactored from Nobel1). 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".

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.

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

Old photo of the main City College building, Shepard Hall, looking West from St. Nicholas Avenue

City College was originally situated in downtown Manhattan, as the Free Academy Building (1849-1927). This building was home for CCNY from 1849 to 1907. It was designed by James Renwick, Jr. and was located at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street. It was likely the first Gothic Revival college building on the East Coast.

CCNY then moved to its current location in upper Manhattan village of Manhattanville in 1906, when the classical neo-Gothic campus was erected. It was designed by George Browne Post.

A separate library building was not in the original plan for the 1906 campus, so in 1937, a free-standing library was built, called The Bowker/Alumni Library and stood on 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 designed by William H. Hume . It was already there when City College moved to upper Manhattan. When it closed in the 1940's, 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 1946-1955, it was used as a dormitory, library and classroom space for the college. It was called "Army Hall" until it was demolished in 1955-1956.

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. It thereby assumed its current layout from 140th Street to 130th Street, from St. Nicholas Terrace, west to Amsterdam Avenue.

In 1957, after the expansion of the campus, a new library building was erected in the middle of the campus, near 135th Street on the South Campus, and named Cohen Library. The library was moved some decades later to be inside the North Academic Center building on the North Campus.

In the Fall of 2006, for the first time ever in its history, CCNY will have completed the construction of a 600-bed dormitory, located on its South Campus, and called "The Towers".

Notable alumni

Nobel laureates

Rhodes Scholars

Fulbright Scholars

Truman Scholars

Politics, government, and sociology

The arts

Science and technology

Business

Sports

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

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