City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York (more commonly referred to as the City College of New York, or simply City College, CCNY, or City) is a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY) in New York City. It is the oldest of City University's twenty-four institutions of higher learning. City College's 35-acre (14 ha) Manhattan campus along Convent Avenue from 130th to 141st Streets is on a hill overlooking Harlem; its neo-gothic campus was mostly designed by George B. Post, and many of its buildings are landmarks.

ccny was the first free public institution of higher education in the United States and is considered the flagship campus of the cuny public university system. The college counts 10 winners of the Nobel Prize among its alumni, the latest being Harlem native John O'Keefe (2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine).

History
The City College of New York was originally founded as the Free Academy of the City of New York in 1847 by wealthy businessman and president of the Board of Education 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. The Free Academy was the first of what would become a system of municipally-supported colleges – the second, Hunter College, was founded as a women's institution in 1870; and the third, Brooklyn College, was established as a coeducational institution in 1930.

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, a West Point graduate, was the first president of the Free Academy. On the occasion of The Free Academy's formal opening, January 21, 1849, Webster 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.


A view of the original entrance to Shepard Hall, the main building of City College of New York, in the early 1900s, on its new campus in Hamilton Heights, from St. Nicholas Avenue looking up westward to St. Nicholas Terrace.
In 1847, a curriculum was adopted which had nine main fields: mathematics, 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, a large theater and opera house on Broadway, near Houston Street at the corner of Broadway and Prince Street.

Even in its early years, the Free Academy showed tolerance for diversity, especially in comparison to its urban neighbor, Columbia College, which was exclusive to the sons of wealthy families. The Free Academy had a framework of tolerance that extended beyond the admission of students from every social stratum. In 1854, Columbia's trustees denied Oliver Wolcott Gibbs, a distinguished chemist and scientist, a faculty position because of Gibbs's Unitarian religious beliefs. Gibbs was a professor and held an appointment at the Free Academy since 1848. (In 1863, Gibbs went on to an appointment at Harvard University, the Rumsford Professorship in Chemistry, where he had a distinguished career. In 1873, he was awarded an honorary degree from Columbia with a unanimous vote by its Trustees with the strong urging of President Barnard.Later in the history of CCNY, in the early 1900s, President John H. Finley gave the College a more secular orientation by abolishing mandatory chapel attendance. This change occurred at a time when more Jewish students were enrolling in the College.