and in 1866 became the College of the City of New York, with the Board of Education as its Board of Trustees. In 1900 a separate Board of Trustees (nine members appointed by the mayor) was created. Before 1882 no one was eligible for entrance unless he had attended the city’s public schools for one year. In 1907 the College removed to new buildings on St Nicholas Heights between 138th and 140th Streets, the old buildings at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street being used for some of the lower classes of the seven years’ course. The retention of the secondary school in connexion with college, although there are now well-equipped public high schools, is one of the anomalies of the New York educational system. In 1871 a Normal School for Girls, since 1910 the Woman’s College of the City of New York, was established as a part of the public system. Since 1888 public lectures for adults have been given under the auspices of the Board of Education, usually in school-houses; and in 1899 the Board opened evening recreation centres in school-houses, in which literary, debating and athletic clubs meet. For the charitable schools see § Charities.
The oldest institution of higher education is Columbia University (q.v.). New York University was chartered in 1831 as the University of the City of New York, and in 1896 received its present name. The University Council is the corporation; it consists of 32 members, eight going out of office annually. The University Senate has immediate control; it is composed of the chancellor,[1] two professors of the University College, and the dean and a professor from each of the following schools—law, medicine, pedagogy, graduate and applied science. The work of the collegiate department was begun in 1832; a university building at Washington Square was erected in 1832–1835; a law school, on a plan submitted by B. F. Butler of New York, was established in 1835, a medical school in 1841, the School of Applied Science in 1862, a graduate school in 1886, a school of pedagogy in 1890, a veterinary college (formed by the union of two previously existing schools) in 1899, and a School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance in 1900. In 1894 the College of Arts and Pure Science and the School of Applied Science were removed to a commanding and beautiful site on Washington Heights (about E. 181st Street) above the Harlem river, the schools of law and pedagogy remaining at Washington Square where a Collegiate Division was opened in 1903; in 1895 the Metropolis Law School was consolidated with the University; in 1898 the Bellevue Hospital Medical College became a part of the University school of medicine. On the Washington Heights Campus the principal buildings are the library (1900), around a part of which extends an open colonnade, 500 ft. long, which is known as the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, and in which the names of great Americans (chosen at intervals by the ballots of 100 prominent educators, historians, &c.) are inscribed on memorial tablets; and Gould Hall, a dormitory, which like the library and the Hall of Fame was the gift of Miss Helen Miller Gould. In 1909–1910 the University library contained about 65,000 vols. and the law library 22,000, and there were 254 instructors and 4036 students (966 in the School of Commerce and 739 in the Law School).
For Fordham University see Fordham. Other Roman Catholic colleges are: the College of St Francis Xavier (Society of Jesus; opened 1847; chartered 1861); and Manhattan College (Brothers of the Christian Schools; opened 1853; chartered 1863) at Broadway and 131st Street, in the district formerly known as Manhattanville.
Among the technical and professional schools, excluding those of Columbia University and New York University, are: the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church (opened 1819; in 1820–1822 in New Haven; then re-established in New York City), beautifully situated in “Chelsea Village” on a block (Ninth-Tenth Avenues and 20th-21st Streets) given for the purpose by Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863)[2] in buildings largely the gift of Eugene Augustus Hoffman (1829–1902), dean of the Seminary in 1879–1902, and of his family, who put it on a sound financial basis; the Union Theological Seminary (1836; Presbyterian), which is representative of the most liberal tendencies in American Presbyterianism (q.v.), especially in regard to text-criticism; the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1886), chiefly supported by the synagogues of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore; the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York (1892; see Columbia University); the Cornell University Medical College (1897; see Cornell University); the Eclectic Medical College (1865); the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital (1882); the New York Polyclinic Medical School and Hospital (1882); the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women (1863); the New York College of Dentistry (1865); and the College of Dental and Oral Surgery of New York (1892). Among the normal schools are: the Teachers’ College of Columbia University (q.v.); the School of Pedagogy and the kindergarten training school of New York University; the kindergarten training school of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (q.v.); the Kraus Seminary for Kindergarteners; and the Kindergarten Normal Department of the Ethical Culture School under the Ethical Culture Society. Of the many private secondary schools in New York the oldest are the Collegiate School and Trinity School (see above). The Columbia Grammar School (1764) was originally a preparatory department of Columbia College.
Other educational institutions of a popular character are Cooper Union (q.v.) and the People’s Institute[3] (incorporated in 1897), which holds its meetings and lectures in the Cooper Union Building. Its most active promoter and long its managing director was Charles Sprague Smith (1853–1910), who was professor of modern languages at Columbia University in 1880–1891, and in 1896 organized the Comparative Literature Society; he was especially assisted by Richard Heber Newton (b. 1840), a Protestant Episcopal clergyman of broad and radical religious and social views, and by Samuel Gompers. The aim was to supply a “continuous and ordered education in social science, history, literature and such other subjects as time and demand shall determine” and “to afford opportunities for the interchange of thought upon topics of general interest . . . to assist in the solution of present problems.” The Institute is primarily a free evening school of social science and a forum for the discussion of questions of the day. There are, besides, Sunday evening ethical services, “a people’s church,” which has attracted much attention, and several “Institute Clubs” of a social nature, some of them for children. The People’s Institute organized a censorship of “moving pictures” to which most American manufacturers of these films voluntarily submit. Cheap concerts are given in Cooper Union by the People’s Symphony Concert Association in conjunction with the People’s Institute.
For the Brooklyn Institute see Brooklyn. The Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations have classes, especially for working people.
Libraries.—“The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations,” was the result of the consolidation in May 1895 of the Astor Library (founded by the bequest of $400,000 by John Jacob Astor; incorporated in 1849; opened in 1854; further endowed by William B. Astor, who gave it about $550,000 and by John Jacob Astor, the younger, who gave it about $800,000 and built the hall in Lafayette Street in which the library, for general reference, was housed until 1911), the Lenox Library (originally the private collection, particularly rich in incunabula, Americana, genealogy and music, of James Lenox (1800–1880), a bibliophile and art amateur, given by him to the city in 1870 and until 1911 housed as a special reference library, in a building, designed by R. M. Hunt, on Fifth Avenue, between 70th and 71st streets), and the Tilden Trust (to which Samuel J. Tilden left his private library and about $4,000,000 (most of his estate) for the establishment of a public library, but which, owing to a contest by the heirs, was unable to secure the entire bequest and received only about $2,000,000 from one of the heirs). In 1902–1911 a new building was erected to house these collections. With the Public Library the New York Free Circulating Library (incorporated in 1880; re-incorporated in 1884) was consolidated in 1901; and in the next two years several other free libraries, including one for the blind. In 1901 Andrew Carnegie gave more than $5,000,000 for about 65 branch libraries, the city to furnish sites for them and maintain them. The largest and best equipped of the college libraries is that of Columbia University. The library of Cooper Union has a complete set of patent office reports and files of newspapers. The Mercantile Library (1820; established by an association of merchants’ clerks) is a subscription library at Astor Place; the New York Society Library[4] (on University Place) is a subscription library, the oldest in the city, being the outgrowth of a reading room established in the City Hall in 1700 by the earl of Bellomont; it was incorporated in 1754 as the City Library and in 1772 under its present name. The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen (founded in 1785) since 1820 has had a circulating library; which with the DeMilt (reference) and the Slade (architectural collections), contains about 99,000 volumes.
Charities.—The city has a commissioner and two deputy commissioners of public charities, but this municipal department works largely through private organizations, the municipal appropriations to which exceed the amount actually expended through institutions controlled by the city.[5] Municipal institutions include: Bellevue Hospital (opened 1816), which in 1869 established the first hospital ambulance service in the world, near which there is an Emergency Hospital (1878) for maternity cases, and in connexion with which
- ↑ The chancellors have been: in 1831–1839 James H. Mathews (d. 1870); in 1839–1850, Theodore Frelinghuysen (d. 1862); in 1852–1870, Isaac Ferris (1798–1873); in 1870–1880, Howard Crosby; in 1881–1891, John Hall; and in 1891–1910, Henry Mitchell MacCracken (b. 1840). Dr Ferris was a minister of the (Dutch) Reformed Church and the three chancellors since his time have been Presbyterian clergymen; but the University is not sectarian.
- ↑ C. C. Moore (1779–1863), son of Benjamin Moore (1748–1816), who was Protestant Episcopal bishop of New York and president of Columbia College in 1801–1811, was professor of Biblical learning in the Seminary in 1821–1850, compiled a Hebrew and English Lexicon (1809) and wrote some poetry including the popular juvenile verses beginning “Twas the night before Christmas.”
- ↑ See C. S. Smith, Working with the People (New York, 1904), and the Annual Reports of the Managing Director of the People’s Institute.
- ↑ See A. B. Keep, History of the New York Society Library (New York, 1909).
- ↑ See H. R. Hurd (ed.) New York Charities Directory (19th ed., 1910), published annually by the Charity Organization Society; and W. H. Tolman and Charles Hemstreet, The Better New York (1904), published by the American Institute of Social Service.
