Rutger’s Female College

Rutgers University — the main campus located in New Jersey — opened a college for women on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in 1867.  The college moved to  a new building at 54-58 West  55th Street in 1882 and closed in 1895.

At this time there  were four women’s colleges in the northeast.^[1]Women were also allowed to enroll in either of Manhattan’s two normal schools, the term used for colleges that trained teachers. Of these four (Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Rutgers) , all but Rutgers Female College still exist.

 

The college was located directly across the street from the Croton Reservoir. The first photo below is taken looking south on Fifth Avenue from the intersection at 42nd Street. Both the reservoir and the college are clearly visible.

Compare the two photos below. The upper photo was taken at the intersection of 41st Street and Fifth, and probably from the walkway along the top of the reservoir and facing northeast. The lower photo was taken looking due north from the intersection at 42nd Street at ground level.  The red dot on the building at the northeast corner of 42nd and Fifth should make the different in perspective clear.  The two photos provide a very different sense of what Fifth Avenue was like in the mid 1880s.

Curriculum

The curriculum was an odd mixture of organic chemistry and advanced math (on one extreme) and Bible studies and decorative botany (on the other). Greek and German were taught (but not required); French and Latin seem to have been unavoidable.

 

Author	Rutgers Female Institute (New York, N.Y.)
Publisher	Agathyrian Press, 1867
Original from	the University of California