Hunter College

Established in 1870 as Normal College, a teachers' school for women, Hunter College of the City of New York first awarded fully accredited bachelor's degrees in 1908. Providing experiential learning opportunities from the very start, the college has successfully fostered many generations of students with its challenging and cutting-edge curriculum. Hunter has always been a school willing to work outside of traditional boundaries. Founder Dr. Thomas Hunter insisted that the school admit people of all races despite segregation laws in the early years. In the 1920s, Hunter College began opening branch campuses in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. During World War II, the Bronx campus was used by the U.S. Navy as a training center. In 1946, it was the first site for the United Nations sessions. Over the years, alumni of Hunter have gone on to careers in politics, education, social work, medicine, media, and many other fields. Graduates have included Fulbright and Mellon Fellows and Nobel prizewinners. Here we can see for the first time hundreds of striking and nostalgic photographs that tell the story of the school's development over the years.