Spring 2011 Issue - Lehman College

The 1950s
By the end of the 1950s, world-renowned architect Marcel Breuer,
a Hungarian-born Modernist who taught at the Bauhaus School in
Germany, had updated the College’s Neo-Gothic architectural style
by adding the Fine Arts Building (1959) and the following year,
Shuster Hall. Both filled the undeveloped land that students
called the “sunken garden” and adhered to Breuer’s Modernist
aesthetic: clean lines, geometric shapes, and pre-fabricated
material like flue-shaped terra cotta tiles, which originally
adorned each building. Only Shuster Hall still retains this
distinct “honeycomb” look, however; in 1980, the Fine Arts
Building, which originally served as the College’s library, was
outfitted with black glass and converted into a home for both
the Art Department and the Lehman College Art Gallery.
For urban students, the ability to escape to these greener
pastures of the Bronx was a benefit that was worth the commute.
“I much preferred going to the uptown campus, where it
was like a private school,” recalled Marion Wylie (Hunter ’53)
during the 1980s series of oral histories. “It had a wonderful
location…and the spaciousness and the cleanliness of the
whole place was just wonderful.”
The lush green settings were part of the allure—and something
that set it apart from Hunter’s downtown location. “What
I remember was the North Lawn,” said Associate Professor
of English Emerita Eileen Allman in those same oral histories.
She graduated from Hunter in 1961 and later joined the
English faculty. “As soon as spring came, everybody was out
there reading. I make a lot of associations with that North
Lawn and literature: I pick up Milton, I see green grass.”
For alumna Marsha Ellis Jones, who graduated from Lehman in
1971 (see her profile on page 27), the lawns and grassy knolls
invoked the image of a private, elite college. “For those of us who
lived in the city,” she said, “the campus was like an oasis; an education
oasis.”
“I got my B.A. in Latin, and I minored in Ancient Greek.
We read The Iliad in the original Ancient Greek. I was
fluent in Latin at one time, but if you don’t use it, you
lose it. I still know some of it to this day.
“I arrived at the Bronx campus in September 1942. I
was only there for six months before the Navy took
over the campus for the training of the WAVES. But
the campus made a great impression on me. Going
there was like going away to college. In those days, all they had were the
four Gothic buildings—we called them ‘the castles.’ There were benches all
along the path to the north end of the campus—you would sit there and do
your homework or practice the language you were studying.
“I remember that we didn’t have to buy books. You could rent books for
a semester for $5. Then at the end of your class, you returned the books,
and you would get your $5 back. Hunter-in-the-Bronx was the only school
that did that, I’m not sure why. But I know that at Brooklyn and City
College you had to buy books. It was well worth it for the education
that I received.”
— Anna (Budesa) Thompson, Hunter ‘46
The campus also boasted clay tennis courts—the kind usually
found only at a country club—that were open to the student body.
“It was a great luxury for me to be able to play tennis on a clay
court,” said Professor Emerita of History Ruth Zerner, who graduated
from Hunter in 1956 and returned to teach in the History
Department until her retirement in 2007. “It was the most beautiful
campus in all of CUNY.”
Leon Cooperman and
Toby Alowitz Cooperman,
Hunter Class of ’64
When Leon Cooperman attended
French class during his sophomore
year at Hunter-in-the-Bronx, he knew
one thing for certain: this wasn’t going
to be an easy class. “I had difficulty
with languages,” he admits.
What he didn’t know was that he
would find the love of his life in that class, his wife of forty-seven
years, Toby (née Alowitz). “She helped with my French,” he says with
a laugh. It wasn’t long before they were a couple: she was the junior
class president; he was the vice president. Their first date was the
junior prom.
These days, Mr. Cooperman is the chairman and CEO of Omega
Advisors, a hedge fund he created in 1991 after working at Goldman
Sachs, where he eventually became a general partner. He
holds an M.B.A. from Columbia University; in 1997, he received an
honorary Doctorate of Finance from Roger Williams University in
Rhode Island, and last year, an honorary Doctorate of Humane
Letters from Hunter College.
The couple split their time between homes in Short Hills, N.J.,
and Boca Raton, Fla.
Back in the fall of 1960, when they entered Hunter-in-the-Bronx,
both lived with their families—he was born in the rough-and-tumble
South Bronx, she lived near Yankee Stadium. By that time, though,
Mr. Cooperman’s family had moved to the Fordham section of the
borough. “On good weather days, I could walk to school,” he remembers.
“I’m a guy who walked to high school and college.”
24 Lehman Today/Spring 2011