Spring 2011 Issue - Lehman College

Originally, construction was conceived on a far grander scale. In
1927, plans were drawn up for a series of Greek-inspired temples,
complete with Doric columns, designed by architects John Russell
Pope and Dwight James Baum; additional blueprints were soon
created for a cultural center and a Museum of Peaceful Arts. The
1929 Stock Market Crash and its aftermath, however, forced the
City to abandon that vision. Instead, the four original buildings that
stand to this day were created, designed by Charles B. Myers of
the architectural firm of Thompson, Holmes & Converse.
The Early Years
A major project of those early years was the establishment of
the Lehnerts Rock Garden, named after the faculty member who
formed the Hunter Geology Department. Initiated in 1936 and
York Times
reporter covering the sessions called the campus “the
diplomatic center of the universe,” as crises were handled in Iran,
Greece, Spain, Indonesia, Syria, and Lebanon.
Two months later, on a lovely autumn day in October, students returned.
This Class of 1950 was the first to include male veterans—
in 1951, the campus would officially become coeducational, and by
1957 men would outnumber women for day classes. For most students,
the green lawns were a welcome sight for their war-weary
eyes. “It was a delight for us all, students and staff, to walk across
the campus,” recalled Anne Trinsey, former dean of Hunter’s Bronx
Division and an English professor. Her memories were recorded
in the 1980s for a series of oral interviews directed by Professor
Gary Schwartz and Eileen Ourvan of the Lehman Scholars Program.
“The Navy and the Security Council had employed gardeners
to keep all the campus acreage in good trim.”
The campus, pre-1955. The tents
belonged to an Army unit that
guarded the reservoir in the 1950s
during the Cold War.
opened on May 29, 1940, this outdoor geological laboratory
was located immediately north of Gillet Hall. It housed close to
200 specimens of rocks and minerals from around the world,
was crossed with flagstone paths, and featured benches for
relaxing—themselves made of rock—as well as a pond stocked
with goldfish, turtles, and a variety of plants.
Not all the early years were taken up with academics. During
World War II, students vacated the campus to make room
for the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency
Service), a new branch of the military created by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. During their tenure on campus, the U.S.
Navy trained more than 80,000 servicewomen as mechanics,
decoders, and navigators, among other crucial wartime jobs.
With the war over, the nascent United Nations took over the
campus from March through August 1946, holding twentysix
sessions of the Security Council and the Economic and
Social Council in what is now the Old Gym Building. A New
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“I started at Hunter College on Park Avenue as an
adjunct in 1956. I taught in various places, but by 1964
I was hired in the History Department at Hunter-in-the-
Bronx. I taught urban history, early American history, and
Colonial history. In 1967, when the faculty had to make
a decision—did we want to go down to Park Avenue or
did we want to stay in the Bronx?—the History Department,
all five of us, decided to stay here in the Bronx.
We liked it here. It was a totally different period at the campus, which was
really quite nice. We had a good student body at Lehman. They were quite
dedicated and always came to class prepared in those days. That changed
over time. But I always remember in those years how much students
wanted to learn. I remember talking about it with a colleague of mine [Dean
Ratner] who said, recalling those early Lehman students, ‘They came to
class hungry.’”
— Lehman Professor of History Emeritus Jacob Judd
(pictured with his wife, Irene)
Lehman Today/Spring 2011 233