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Vassar College was founded in 1861, two miles from the banks of the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie by Matthew Vassar, a self-made businessman. The college grew to confirm its founder's precedent-breaking vision that women would profit from intellectual opportunities in the liberal arts similar to those that Ivy League institutions had long offered the other gender. The college has grown and changed with the times, first countering Victorian prejudices that women were not suited for serious study, always leading the way as opportunities to broaden the spectrum of women's education developed. In the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, Vassar College again broke precedent, turning itself from a single-sex institution into one in which true coeducation exists. After 139 years, Vassar is poised for the changes under way and yet to come in the twenty-first century.
About the author
Authors Maryann Bruno, associate director of college relations, and Elizabeth A. Daniels, Vassar historian and retired Vassar professor and dean, know their subject well and have worked together in the college libraries' collections to produce this book. They are both Vassar alumnae. Many photographers have had their cameras focused on the campus and environs since the 1870s, allowing these photographic chroniclers to sample Vassar's past.
