At the RBML, we recently installed a small exhibition on diplomas awarded by King’s College, as Columbia was known from 1754 to 1784. The exhibition in the Chang Octagon features reproductions of diplomas awarded from 1763 to 1773. It also includes related documents: a handwritten draft for an honorary degree, a program from the 1771 […]
Category: Columbia University Archives
Columbia’s Yew Trees
Senior Class gifts have evolved significantly over the years. In the early days of Columbia on Morningside Heights, the Senior Class ended their Class Day with the presentation of the class gift: the planting of a yew tree and a speech given by a Yew Tree Orator chosen by the class. Why would students give […]
Women at Columbia College in 1786?
A notice in the New-York Journal of November 23, 1786, notes that a number of young women participated in public examinations at Columbia College, vying for prizes for the best reader, best writer, best speller and best proficient in French. Women taking exams at Columbia in 1786? Yes, just months after its first Commencement since […]
Alice Louise Pond
Alice Louise Pond was not the first nor even the second woman to receive a Columbia diploma. Those honors belong to Winifred Edgerton, the first woman to receive a degree from Columbia, a PhD in Mathematics in 1886, and to Mary Parsons Hankey, who completed the Collegiate Course for Women and became the first woman […]
Low Library by Cake Man Raven
All birthday parties need a cake and Columbia’s 250th Anniversary in 2003 was no different. Harlem native Patrick De’Shaun Dennis III, better known as Cake Man Raven, made a 13-foot-tall replica of Low Library in his signature flavor: red velvet. While this massive 3.5-ton cake was impressive, Cake Man Raven’s masterpiece was yet to come. […]