CUNY Lehman College

Lehman College is a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY) in New York, United States. Founded in 1931 as the Bronx campus of Hunter College, the school became an independent college within CUNY in September 1967. The college is named after Herbert H. Lehman, a former New York governor, United States senator, and philanthropist. It is a public, comprehensive, coeducational liberal arts college with more than 90 undergraduate and graduate degree programs and specializations.

Lehman has a 37-acre (15 hectare) campus with a combination of Collegiate Gothic and modern architecture. The school’s architects were Kerr Rainsford, John A. Thompson, and Gerald A. Holmes; they had earlier designed the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on New York’s Upper East Side.

The campus was the main national training ground for women in the military during World War II. For a decade before the entry of the United States in the Second World War, only women students attended, taking their first two years of study at the Bronx campus and then transferring to Hunter’s Manhattan campus to complete their undergraduate work.

It was also the interim headquarters for the newly formed United Nations for six months in 1946. From March to August 1946, the first American meetings of the Security Council were held in the Gymnasium Building where intercollegiate basketball, archery, swimming, and other sports have been played. During festivities marking the 40th anniversary of the United Nations in 1986, the Southern New York State Division of the United Nations Association presented the College with a commemorative plaque, now displayed outside the Gymnasium Building. The College participated in the United Nations’ 50th anniversary activities in 1995–96.

Lehman College houses a state-of-the-art multimedia center in Carman Hall, comprising an acoustically designed recording studio, audio and video production control rooms, editing suites, student newsroom, media conversion room, graphics room, and “technology-enhanced” classrooms. BronxNet public access channel is also headquartered in Carman Hall, where many programs are produced including Bronx Talk and Open.