The main entrance to Manhattan
College
Manhattan College is a
Roman Catholic liberal arts
college in the
Lasallian tradition in
New York
City
.
Despite the college's name, it is no longer
located in Manhattan
but in the Riverdale section of the Bronx
, roughly 10 miles north of Midtown. Manhattan College offers
undergraduate programs in the
arts,
business,
education,
engineering, and
science. Graduate programs are offered for
education and
engineering.
It also houses a public middle school,
Jonas Bronck Academy, on the bottom floor
of Hayden Hall, the primary residence of the Biochemistry,
Chemistry and Physics departments, named after the noted
philanthropist
Charles
Hayden.
History
Manhattan College was founded as the Academy of the Holy Infancy in
1853 by five French
Lasallian
Brothers in a small building on
Canal Street.
When the need to
expand forced them from Lower
Manhattan, the College moved to 131st Street and Broadway, in
the Manhattanville section of Harlem
.
Passengers on the uptown
1 line of the
New York City Subway will find that
there is a short section of above-ground track located near the
college's original location.
The school's name was changed to Manhattan
College 1863, and moved to its present location in the Riverdale
section of The
Bronx in 1922 as it outgrew its facilities in
Manhattanville. This is often the cause of some confusion as
the college is located outside of Manhattan but still within the city limits of New York City.
Originally
exclusive to men, Manhattan College established a cooperative
program with the College of Mount Saint Vincent
after the pair became coeducational in 1973 and 1974,
respectively. This partnership lasted until 2008. Since
then, Manhattan College and the College of Mount Saint Vincent have
been completely separate.
Manhattan Prep
For 118 years, there existed on the Manhattan College campus a
boys' secondary school, Manhattan College High School, familiarly
known to students, parents, and rivals as
Manhattan
Prep. Founded in 1854, the school educated its young men
in a Catholic college preparatory curriculum geared toward eventual
university matriculation. It was, indeed, a "prep" school in the
classic sense: coats and ties were mandatory for class attendance;
strict standards of behavior were enforced; and daily newspaper
reading was required. The curriculum included 3 years of Latin
(with an optional 4th year); foreign language study, including
Greek, French, and Spanish; 4 years of laboratory science, and 4
years each of mathematics, English rhetoric and literary forms, and
theology.
Throughout its existence, Manhattan Prep was very much the "kid
brother" of its host institution. Students shared the college
cafeteria, auditorium, and athletic facilities, and its sports
teams bore the nickname, "the Jaspers" in homage to the Manhattan
College Jaspers. The school newspaper, published monthly, was
called
The Prepster.
Manhattan Prep closed its doors in 1972 due to rising costs and a
decline in Lasallian Brothers' vocations.
Academics
Manhattan College offers degrees in five undergraduate schools:
Arts, Business, Education, Engineering and Science. The School for
Arts is the largest school overall at the college, but the School
of Engineering is the college's most well-known program.
Communication is the largest major in the School for Arts.
Students are required to take college-wide general education
requirements (such as math, college writing, religion and foreign
language) as well as core requirements in their respective school,
which varies by school. For example, the School of Arts maintains a
core curriculum called The Roots of Modern Learning which includes
courses such as "Classical Origins of Western Culture."
Classes operate on a semester schedule. The first semester begins
in late-August and runs to December. The second semester begins in
mid- to late-January and runs to May. Some courses may run in
summer and January, but most students do not take classes during
these times.
The College also offers graduate programs in Education and
Engineering. The graduate School of Engineering allows students
studying engineering as an undergraduate the opportunity to
continue on to get their Master's degree without having to switch
colleges, as is the case at colleges with a 3 + 2 Engineering
program. Formerly, the Manhattan College MBA program held classes
primarily on Saturday's. Designed for working adults, Manhattan
College closed its MBA program due to the level of expense required
to maintain AACSB accreditation.
The Communication program and several other programs were entirely
housed at the College of Mount Saint Vincent until 2008. At that
time, a new, expanded Communication Department began offering
courses on the Manhattan College campus. In the fall of 2008 this
program was fully operational, with new, state-of-the-art
broadcasting studios and computer labs, adding five new faculty
members to create the present program housed in Leo Hall.
Manhattan College contains chapters of various honor societies as
Phi Beta Kappa,
Sigma Xi, and
Tau Beta
Pi. A newly established chapter of Lambda Pi Eta communication
honorary has also been added. Manhattan participates in the
Consortium of
Liberal Arts Colleges and in the New York Cluster of seven
colleges and universities supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts
for undergraduate science education.
Athletics
Manhattan College fields 19
Division-I
athletic teams for men and women, including
basketball,
soccer,
baseball and
softball,
tennis,
lacrosse and
volleyball.
The school's men's sports teams are called the
Jaspers; women are known as Lady Jaspers.
Historically
track and field has
been the school's strongest sport. Manhattan is a Member of the
MAAC.
The College annually played the
New
York Giants in the late 1880s and into the 1890s at the Polo
Grounds and Manhattan is credited by the Baseball Hall of Fame with
the practice of the “
seventh
inning stretch" spreading from there into major league
baseball.
It is written in the Baseball Hall of
Fame
that "During one particularly warm and humid day
when Manhattan College was playing a semi-pro baseball team called
the Metropolitans, Brother Jasper noticed the Manhattan students
were becoming restless and edgy as Manhattan came to bat in the
seventh inning of a close game. To relieve the tension,
Brother Jasper called time-out and told the students to stand up
and stretch for a few minutes until the game resumed." On the
college's 150th anniversary in 2003 at a
New York Yankees game, Brother Jasper was
credited with the
Seventh-inning
stretch.
Luis Castro, a Manhattan College
alumnus, was the first ever Major League Baseball player of
Hispanic origin.
Manhattan College had a
football
program from 1924 until 1942. The college team posted an all-time
record of 194 wins, 198 losses, and 22 ties. The final coach for
the school's football team was
Herbert
M. Kopf. After the 1942 season,
the school suspended intercollegiate football competition for
World War II and then did not
reactivate the program after completion of the war. The team was
invited to the first ever Orange Bowl, then known as the Miami Palm
Festival, a contest they lost 7–0 to the University of Miami.
The team was revived in the 1960s in the form of a club team, and
existed until 1987.
The school
participated in the first intercollegiate lacrosse game in the United States, playing
New York
University
.
Infrastructure
Manhattan College occupies a relatively compact but architecturally
arresting and various campus. The physical plant is divided into a
North and a South campus. The North campus overlooks Van Cortlandt
park, and has as its focal point "the Quad," which sits at the
center of the campus four main buildings. Memorial Hall is the main
entry onto campus and houses the office of the president as well as
most of the other administrative offices on campus. Miguel Hall and
De La Salle Hall are the
main academic halls that border each side of the Quad. The fourth
side of the Quad is bordered by the chapel building, which houses
Smith Auditorium (used for receptions and various speakers and
performances) on the first floor and the Chapel of De La Salle and
His Brothers on the second floor, which features a painting of De
La Salle and Brothers behind the altar, a large performing area
where musical events and concerts take place on the altar, a grand
piano and a pipe organ in the balcony.
Thomas Hall is the College's student life building. It houses the
offices of the Dean of Students, the student government, the radio
station, the newspaper, the TV station, the musical ensembles, and
others. The colleges three dining halls, Locke's Loft,
Plato's Cave and Dante's Den, are also
located in Thomas Hall.
The O'Malley Library is relatively new, six-story structure that
was joined with the previous library, the
Cardinal Hayes Pavilion. Built on a
hill, the new library was built directly next to and above the old
one, essentially combining the two and creating more floors. The
Office of Admissions is on the sixth floor of O'Malley.
Hayden Hall is on the east side of campus and houses the sciences
as well as the department of fine arts.
On the South campus, across 240th street, is Leo Hall and the
Research and Learning Center (RLC). The two are home to all of the
engineering departments: electrical, computer, civil, chemical,
mechanical, and environmental, along with the math and computer
science departments and all communication classrooms, computer labs
and broadcasting studios. Laboratories and classes for these
disciplines take place in both buildings. Both biology and
chemistry laboratories are also located in Leo. This building once
contained a working nuclear reactor, which has since been
decommissioned and stripped of its nuclear fuel and power
generating capabilities in 1999. The Leo cafeteria, located in the
basement, provides an alternative to trekking up to the main campus
for breakfast and lunch.
Leo Hall is the home of the Communications Department's new
television and audio studios and computer labs.
There are currently four on-campus residence halls at Manhattan.
Jasper Hall and
Chrysostom Hall are
both traditional-style dorms, while Horan Hall (at 11 stories) is a
suite-style building. The newest hall, East Hill, was built in the
style of Horan Hall. It opened in the fall of 2008. Chrysostom Hall
is said to be haunted by the ghost of Sisters Meaghan Drugan, Mary
Screen, April Gibilterra, and Angela Gamba and Brother Chrysostom
who died mysterious deaths on campus in the late 1900s. Overlook
Manor, commonly known as "OV" is an off campus residence hall that
offers apartment style living. One of the most famous apartments in
overlook is 5F, which was home to many successful alum including
many captains of industry and politicians.
Draddy
Gymnasium
is the home
of the basketball and volleyball teams, and also features the
largest indoor track in New York City. Commencement
exercises are held in Draddy.
Gaelic Park
, on 240th street, has recently been renovated with
an artificial turf and is where soccer, lacrosse, and softball
teams play. The college also heavily utilizes adjacent
Van
Cortlandt Park
for baseball, outdoor track and field, golf, and
cross country as well as intramural activities. Alumni Hall
is the home of the college's workout facilities.
The Broadway Garage is the newly completed five floor parking
garage located on Broadway. The garage offers parking to students,
faculty and sporting events. The garage is also connected to Hayden
hall via a pedestrian bridge that connects to one of Hayden's top
floors, allowing pedestrians to bypass crossing Manhattan College
Parkway. It is the newest addition to the college
infrastructure.
Transportation
The College is located between two major New York City roads, the
Henry Hudson Parkway and the
Major Deegan Expressway.
The
Van Cortlandt Park-242nd
Street
subway station provides access to Manhattan and the
rest of the city via the 1 train. Travel time
to midtown on the subway is roughly 30–40 minutes.
Notable alumni
Academia
Arts and Literature
Business
Entertainment
Journalism
Law, Government and Public Policy
Math and Science
Religion
Sports
- Vincent dePaul Draddy -
Manhattan College quarterback who developed the Izod and Lacoste
brands. College Football Hall of Famer and Chairman of the National
Football Foundation. The Vincent dePaul Draddy Trophy is a trophy
awarded by the National Football Foundation that is given to the
American college football player with the best combination of
academics, community service, and on-field performance. It is
considered by many to be the "Academic Heisman." Past winners
include Indianapolis Colts QB Peyton Manning.
- George Bruns - former
NBA player
- George Bucci - former NBA
player
- Luis Castro - second Latin-American
to play Major League baseball
- George Chalmers -
former Major League Baseball player
- Neil Cohalan - first professional
basketball coach of the New York
Knicks
- Luis Flores -
former NBA point guard, now plays in Greece
- Joe Gallagher - former
Major League Baseball player
- Buddy Hassett - former Major
League baseball player
- Andy Karl - former Major
League baseball player
Matthew Rizzotti on the Williamsport Crosscutters
- Junius Kellogg - former
basketball player who blew the whistle on point-shaving scheme;
former Harlem Globetrotter
- Kevin Laue - He he received a
scholarship to play Division I basketball for Manhattan
College.
- Larry Lembo - basketball star in
1964 who was drafted by the New York Knicks; NCAA basketball
referee
- Ed O'Connor - Led
nation in field goal percentage in 1955, first Jasper drafted in
NBA
- Mike Parisi - Pitcher for Memphis Redbirds, St.Louis Cardinals
- Xavier Rescigno- former Major
League Baseball player
- Lindy Remigino - Olympic gold
medalist in 100-meter dash and 4x100 relay, Helsinki 1952
- Doc Scanlan - former Major League
Baseball player
- Chuck Schilling - former Major
League Baseball player
- Brewery Jack Taylor - former
Major League Baseball player
- Jake Thielman - former Major
League Baseball player
- Dick Tuckey - former professional
American football running-back
- Tom Waddell - former
Major League Baseball pitcher
- Eddie Zimmerman - former Major
League Baseball player
- Pat Kirwan(football) - Receivers
Coach and Personnel Assistant for the New York Jets under Pete
Carroll. Currently Senior Football Analyst for the National
Football League website.
See also
References
External links
, formerly Dean of the Fisher College of Business and
Interim President of Ohio State
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