Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also administers Hunter College High School and Hunter College Elementary School.
Hunter was founded in 1870 as a women's college; it first admitted male freshmen in 1946. The main campus has been located on Park Avenue since 1873. In 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated Franklin Delano Roosevelt's and her former townhouse to the college; the building was reopened in 2010 as the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. The institution has a 57% undergraduate graduation rate within six years.
History
Founding
Hunter College originates from the 19th-century movement for normal school training for teachers which swept across the United States. Hunter descends from the Female Normal and High School, a women's college established in New York City in 1870. It was founded by Thomas Hunter from Ardglass in County Down, Ireland, who was an exile over his nationalist beliefs. The Normal School was one of several institutions occupying a site that the New York City government had reserved for "institutions serving a public purpose". Hunter was president of the school during the first 37 years. The school was housed in an armory and saddle store at Broadway and East Fourth Street in Manhattan, was open to all qualified women, irrespective of race, religion or ethnic background, an exception in its day.Created by the New York State Legislature, Hunter was deemed the only approved institution for those seeking to teach in New York City. The school incorporated an elementary and high school for gifted children, where students practiced teaching. In 1887, a kindergarten was established as well.
File:Helen Campbell studying radio science at Hunter College LC-DIG-ggbain-24344.tif|thumb|Student Helen Campbell studying radio science in a program started at Hunter College in 1917 by the National League for Women's Service to train female radio operators during World War I.
During Thomas Hunter's tenure as president of the school, Hunter became known for its impartiality regarding race, religion, ethnicity, financial or political favoritism; its pursuit of higher education for women; its high entry requirements; and its rigorous academics. The first female professor at the school, Helen Gray Cone, was elected to the position in 1899. The college's student population quickly expanded, and the college subsequently moved uptown, in 1873, into a new red brick Gothic structure facing Park Avenue between 68th and 69th Streets. It was one of several public institutions built at the time on a Lenox Hill lot that had been set aside by the city for a park, before the creation of Central Park. After the park in Lenox Hill was canceled, the plots were leased to institutions like Hunter College.
In 1888, the school was incorporated as a college under the statutes of New York State, taking on the name Normal College of the City of New York, with the power to confer Bachelor of Arts degrees. This led to the separation of the school into two "camps": the "Normals", who pursued a four-year course of study to become licensed teachers, and the "Academics", who sought non-teaching professions and the Bachelor of Arts degree. After 1902 when the "Normal" course of study was abolished, the "Academic" course became standard across the student body.
Expansion
In 1913, the east end of the building, housing the elementary school, was replaced by Thomas Hunter Hall, a new limestone Tudor building facing Lexington Avenue and designed by C. B. J. Snyder. The following year the Normal College became Hunter College in honor of its first president. At the same time, the college was experiencing a period of great expansion as increasing student enrollments necessitated more space. The college reacted by establishing branches in the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. By 1920, Hunter College had the largest enrollment of women of any municipally financed college in the United States. In 1930, Hunter's Brooklyn campus merged with City College's Brooklyn campus, and the two were spun off to form Brooklyn College.File:Hunter College NY WAVES camp opening 1943.JPG|thumb|left|Opening of the Navy recruit camp for WAVES at Bronx Campus, February 8, 1943
In February 1936, a fire destroyed the 1873 Gothic building facing Park Avenue. Plans for a new building were announced in 1937, and by 1940 the Public Works Administration replaced it with the Modernist north building, designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon along with Harrison & Fouilhoux.
The late 1930s saw the construction of Hunter College in the Bronx. During the Second World War, Hunter leased the Bronx Campus buildings to the United States Navy who used the facilities to train 95,000 women volunteers for military service as WAVES and SPARS. When the Navy vacated the campus, the site was briefly occupied by the nascent United Nations, which held its first Security Council sessions at the Bronx Campus in 1946, giving the school an international profile.
In 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated a town house at 47–49 East 65th Street in Manhattan to the college. The house had been a home for Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt prior to the latter's presidency. The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College opened at that location in fall 2010 as an academic center hosting prominent speakers.
CUNY era
Hunter became the women's college of the municipal system, and in the 1950s, when City College became coeducational, Hunter started admitting men to its Bronx campus. In 1964, the Manhattan campus began admitting men also. The Bronx campus subsequently became Lehman College in 1968.In 1968–1969, Black and Puerto Rican students struggled to get a department that would teach about their history and experience. These and supportive students and faculty expressed this demand through building take-overs, rallies, etc. In Spring 1969, Hunter College established Black and Puerto Rican Studies. An "open admissions" policy initiated in 1970 by the City University of New York opened the school's doors to historically underrepresented groups by guaranteeing a college education to any and all who graduated from NYC high schools. Many African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Puerto Ricans, and students from the developing world made their presence felt at Hunter, and even after the end of "open admissions" still comprise a large part of the school's student body. As a result of this increase in enrollment, Hunter opened new buildings on Lexington Avenue during the early 1980s. In further advancing Puerto Rican studies, Hunter became home to the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños in 1982.
In 2006, Hunter became home to the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, which has training programs for young women to build their leadership, public speaking, business and advocacy skills.
Campuses
Main campus
Hunter College is anchored by its main campus at East 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, a modern complex of three towers – the East, West, and North Buildings – and Thomas Hunter Hall, all interconnected by skywalks. The institution's official street address is 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065. The address is based on the North Building, which stretches from 68th to 69th Streets along Park Avenue.The main campus is situated two blocks east of Central Park, near many New York cultural institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asia Society Museum, and the Frick Collection. The New York City Subway's 68th Street–Hunter College station on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line is directly underneath, and serves the entire campus. Adjacent to the staircase to the station, in front of the West Building, sat an iconic Hunter sculpture, Tau, created by late Hunter professor and artist Tony Smith.
The main campus is home to the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education. It features numerous facilities that serve not only Hunter, but the surrounding community, and is well known as a center for the arts. The Assembly Hall, which seats more than 2,000, is a major performance site; the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse, a 675-seat proscenium theatre, has over 100,000 visitors annually and hosts over 200 performances each season; the Ida K. Lang Recital Hall is a fully equipped concert space with 148 seats; the Frederick Loewe Theatre, a 50 x black box performance space is the site of most department performances; and the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery hosts professionally organized art exhibits.
Students have access to specialized learning facilities at the main campus, including the Dolciani Mathematics Learning Center, the Leona and Marcy Chanin Language Center, and the Physical Sciences Learning Center. Hunter has numerous research laboratories in the natural and biomedical sciences. These labs accommodate post-docs, PhD students from the CUNY Graduate School, and undergraduate researchers.
College sports and recreational programs are served by the Hunter Sportsplex, located below the West Building.
Satellite campuses
Hunter has two satellite campuses. The Silberman School of Social Work Building, located on Third Avenue between East 118th and East 119th Streets, houses the School of Social Work, the School of Urban Public Health, and the Brookdale Center on Aging. The Brookdale Campus, located at East 25th Street and First Avenue, houses the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, the Schools of the Health Professions, the Health Professions Library and several research centers and computer labs.The Brookdale Campus is the site of the Hunter dormitory, which is home to over 600 undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a limited number of nurses employed at Bellevue Hospital. Prior to the opening of City College's new "Towers," the Brookdale complex was the City University's only dormitory facility. In October 2022, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that the Brookdale Campus would be replaced by the CUNY Science Park and Research Campus, with construction set to begin in 2026. The campus is planned to contain space for Hunter College, Borough of Manhattan Community College, and the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy.