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Celebrating 80<br />
Years of Public Higher Education in the Bronx<br />
1931 was not an auspicious year to open a new campus. What would later<br />
be called the Great Depression was nearing the end of its second year and<br />
would continue for the rest of the decade. Unemployment had doubled to more<br />
than sixteen percent, and a persistent drought in the Midwest was causing<br />
crop failures and soil erosion. But in September, in a quiet section of the northwest<br />
Bronx, a sign of faith in the future was rising: The fi rst building on the<br />
new campus of Hunter <strong>College</strong>—or Hunter Uptown, as it was called—opened<br />
for classes.<br />
By 1934, this first Gothic building, Gillet Hall, was joined by three others, set almost in the four corners<br />
of a square. The Music Building (known then as Student Hall) stood in the northwest, looking to the<br />
south across a manicured circular quadrangle to the Gym Building and to the east across a paved walkway<br />
to Gillet. Between Gillet and Davis Halls, along Goulden Avenue, sat a wide stretch of open space.<br />
A little more than three decades later, in 1968, the by-then historic campus would take on a new name:<br />
<strong>Lehman</strong> <strong>College</strong>.<br />
22 <strong>Lehman</strong> Today/<strong>Spring</strong> <strong>2011</strong>