★★★★★ 5.0
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Queens College, City University of New York
The year is 1840, and a young Walt Whitman is teaching children in a tiny one-room schoolhouse right where you're standing on Kissena Boulevard! But here's where it gets WILD - this same spot later became a reform school for troubled boys with dormitories and everything, until rumors of mean treatment shut it down in 1934. Just three years later, Queens College opened its doors with 400 brave students and became something absolutely amazing. Today, kids here speak 96 different languages from home - that's like having the whole world in one school! And see that clock tower over there? It's named for Andrew Goodman, a Queens College student who became a hero fighting for civil rights but was tragically killed in Mississippi in 1964. Paul Simon even wrote a song about him called "He Was My Brother." From Walt Whitman's tiny classroom to a college where students from 133 countries learn together - this place has been changing lives for almost 200 years! Can you imagine all the dreams that started right here?
Did You Know?
- Queens College was established in 1937 on the site of the former New York Parental School, a home for troubled boys, and its founding was championed by County Judge Charles S. Colden and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who famously told the college to 'keep your buildings low and your ideals high, and keep away from politicians'—a motto that still resonates today.
- The campus’s original Jamaica Academy building, where poet Walt Whitman once taught in the 19th century, is a hidden historical gem, linking the college to one of America’s most celebrated literary figures.
- Queens College’s school colors—blue and silver—were chosen by a student 'Color Committee' from the first entering class and announced at the school’s inaugural dance in November 1937, making student involvement a tradition from the very beginning.