When brewer and merchant Matthew Vassar established Vassar College in 1861as a philanthropic project, nearly all of campus life was centered in one building. This “great lumbering pile of brick and mortar,” as the college’s first president, John Raymond called it, was designed by James Renwick, Jr. in the style of the Tuileries Palace in Paris. Its sheer bulk and majesty embodied the institution’s lofty aim: to provide an education for women that rivaled that of the then-all-male Ivy Leagues. As the school expanded over the decades, going co-ed in 1969, more than 100 buildings have joined the campus assemblage, radiating outwards from the “Main Building” across the college’s thousand-acre property on the outskirts of Poughkeepsie, New York. With contributions from Marcel Breuer, Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, and others, Vassar’s architectural collection represents a rich legacy of institutional design, though one traditionally contained within the stone wall surrounding the campus. The school’s latest addition signals a commitment to the world beyond that enclosure.
