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."

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". [1] [2]

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

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. [3]

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. [4]

The Hebrew Orphan Asylum, was erected in 1884 on Amsterdam Avenue between 136th and 138th Street, and designed by William H. Hume [5]. 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. [6] [7] [8]

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". [9]

Notable alumni

Nobel laureates

• Julius Axelrod 1933 - 1970 Nobel laureate in Medicine
• Kenneth Arrow 1940 - 1972 Nobel laureate in Economics
• Herbert Hauptman 1937 - 1985 Nobel laureate in Chemistry
• Robert Hofstadter 1935 - 1961 Nobel laureate in Physics
• Jerome Karle 1937 - 1985 Nobel laureate in Chemistry
• Arthur Kornberg 1937 - 1959 Nobel laureate in Medicine
• Leon M. Lederman 1943 - 1988 Nobel laureate in Physics
• Arno Penzias 1954 - 1978 Nobel laureate in Physics
• Robert J. Aumann 1950 - 2005 Nobel laureate in Economics

Rhodes Scholars

• James T. Molloy 1939
• Lev A. Sviridov 2005

Fulbright Scholars

• Vera Grant 1995

Truman Scholars

• Charles Claudio Simpkins 2005

Politics, government, and sociology

• Herman Badillo 1951, former Congressman and Chairman of CUNY's Board of Trustees, was an architect of the University's academic rebirth
• Daniel Bell - sociologist, professor at Harvard University
• Bernard M. Baruch - Wall Street financier and adviser to American Presidents for 40 years, from Woodrow Wilson to John F. Kennedy
• Abraham D. Beame 1928 - mayor of New York City, 1974 to 1977
• Stephen Bronner - political theorist, Marxist, professor at Rutgers University
• Felix Frankfurter 1902 - justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, January 30, 1939–August 28, 1962
• George Friedman - founder of Stratfor, author, professor of Political Science, security and defense analyst
• Nathan Glazer - neoconservative political pundit
• Irving Howe - coined the phrase "New York Jewish Intellectual"
• Ed Koch 1945 - mayor of New York City, 1978 to 1989
• Irving Kristol - neoconservative pundit
• Abraham Foxman - National Director of the Anti-Defamation League
• Robert T. Johnson 1972 - Bronx District Attorney
• Melvin J. Lasky 1938 - anti-communist, editor of Encounter 1958 to 1991
• Guillermo Linares 1975 - the first Dominican-American New York City Council Member
• Colin L. Powell - Former United States Secretary of State, 2001 to 2005
• Julius Rosenberg - infamous convicted spy during the Cold War
• Robert F. Wagner Sr. - United States Senator from New York, 1927 to 1949
• Michelle Wallace 1975 - a major figure in African-American studies, feminist studies and cultural studies

The arts

• Maurice Ashley 1993 - the first African-American International Chess Grandmaster.
• Paddy Chayevsky - famed playwright and screenwriter, wrote Marty, Hospital and Altered States
• Ira Gershwin 1918 - American lyricist, collaborator with, and brother of George Gershwin
• Marv Goldberg - Music historian in the field of rhythm & blues
• Hazelle Goodman 1986 - Stage, screen and TV actress, was the first African-American to hold a leading role in a Woody Allen film, Deconstructing Harry.
• Arthur Guiterman, humorous poet
• Luis Guzmán - actor
• E.Y. "Yip" Harburg 1918 - American lyricist (The Wizard of Oz, Finian's Rainbow, others)
• Oscar Hijuelos 1975 - won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
• Judd Hirsch 1960 - American actor
• Walter Mosley 1991 MA, best-selling author whose novels about private eye Easy Rawlins have received Edgar and Golden Dagger Awards.
• Michael Oreskes 1975 - Executive Editor of The International Herald Tribune
• Edward G. Robinson 1914 - actor
• A.M. Rosenthal 1949, former Executive Editor of The New York Times.
• Richard Schiff 1983 - Emmy award winning actor and a star of The West Wing
• Robert Sobel 1951 (BSS), 1952 (MA), best-selling author of business histories.
• Eli Wallach 1938 (MA) - actor
• Alan Abelson 1942 - columnist, former editor, Barron's
• Upton Sinclair 1897 (BA) - Author ( The Jungle (1906) )
• Jack Kroll 1937 - culture editor, Newsweek
• Stephen Shepard 1961 - editor in chief, Business Week
• Bernard Malamud 1936 (BA) - Author ( The Natural (1952) )
• William Gati, AIA 1981,1982,1984 (BS, BArch, MArch) - Architect and Educator
• Gary Weiss 1975 - Investigative Journalist, Author ( Born to Steal (2003), Wall Street Versus America (2005) )
• Ernest Lehman 1937 (BS) - Screenwriter ("North by Northwest," "The Sound of Music," "Sweet Smell Of Success," "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?")
• Mario Puzo - novelist "The Godfather,"

Science and technology

• Solomon Asch - psychologist, known for the Asch conformity experiments
• Julius Blank - engineer, member of the Traitorous Eight that founded Silicon Valley
• Adin Falkoff - engineer, computer scientist, co-inventor of the APL language interactive system
• George Washington Goethals 1887 - civil engineer, best known for his supervision of construction and the opening of the Panama Canal
• Dan Goldin - served as the 9th and longest-tenured administrator of NASA.
• Robert E. Kahn - Internet pioneer, co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocol, co-recipient of the Turing Award in 2004
• Gary A. Klein 1964 - research psychologist, known for pioneering the field of naturalistic decision making
• Leonard Kleinrock 1957 - Internet pioneer
• Solomon Kullback - Mathematician; NSA cryptology pioneer
• Michael A. Liguori 1979 - listed among the New York area's 100 best primary care doctors by New York Magazine
• Albert Medwin 1949 BSEE - engineer and inventor, developed CMOS integrated circuit technology
• Lewis Mumford - historian of technology
• Charles Lane Poor - noted astronomer
• Howard Rosenblum 1950 BSEE - NSA Engineer; developer of the STU (Secure Telephone Unit)
• Mario Runco, Jr. 1974 - astronaut.
• Jonas Salk 1934 - inventor of the Salk vaccine (see polio vaccine)
• Abraham Sinkov - Mathematician; NSA (National Security Agency) cryptology pioneer
• David B. Steinman 1906 - engineer; bridge designer (Class 1906)
• Leonard Susskind 1962 - physicist, string theory

Business

• Robert Catell 1958 - CEO of KeySpan.
• Andy Grove 1960 - 4th employee of Intel, and eventually its president, CEO, and chairman, and TIME magazine's Man of the Year in 1997
• Stanley H. Kaplan 1939 - founded Kaplan Educational Services.
• Jack Rudin 1941 - real estate developer.
• Frank J. Sciame 1974 - architect and developer
• Linda Kaplan Thaler 1972, the CEO of the fastest growing ad agency in New York, brought us the Aflac Duck.

Sports

• Red Holzman 1948 - legendary basketball coach for the New York Knicks.

Footnotes

• Template:Ent see article Nobel Prize laureates by university affiliation

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

• Official website
• City College Library Historical CCNY Exhibits
• The Lost World of CCNY exhibit at CCNY Library
• 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.

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