Mount Saint Mary College

Mount Saint Mary College is a private, independent, coeducational, four-year liberal arts college, located in Newburgh, New York.

Founded in 1960 by the Sisters of Saint Dominic, the college is committed to providing students of all faiths an education rich in the liberal arts and grounded in the strong Judeo-Christian traditions upon which it was founded.

Located in Newburgh, New York the campus is situated in a suburban environment along the Hudson River halfway between New York City and Albany. Current enrollment is made up of more than 2,600 men and women enrolled in 19 majors and over 47 undergraduate programs, M.S. in Nursing, M.B.A., and M.S. in Education. The Blue Knights compete in NCAA Division III athletics in the Skyline Conference.

In the past decade the college has undergone tremendous growth. There have been a number of expansion projects to keep up with enrollment. This includes the building of the Kaplan Center and Sakac Hall as well as the acquisition and renovation of Hudson Hall and Guzman Hall. Aquinas Hall; the main campus building, is currently being expanded. The College Courts complex of 30 townhouses are also being updated.

History

The Sisters of Saint Dominic of Newburgh founded Mount Saint Mary College in 1930. Initially, the college was a Normal and Teacher Training School for the members of the religious community. In 1959, the college charter was amended by the Board of Regents of the State of New York to accept lay students.

Four German-speaking sisters of St. Dominic first arrived in New York City in 1853. They left the security of their convent of the Holy Cross in Regensburg, Germany to start a school in Pennsylvania. Plans went awry (but that's another story altogether), so instead, the sisters opened a school on Second Street in lower Manhattan. Thirty years later, in 1883 at the request of the pastor of St. Mary's Church in Newburgh, a small group of sisters from the Second Street Convent opened Mount Saint Mary Academy off Gidney Avenue on property that had once belonged to the prosperous Harvey Weed family. S. R. Van Duzer, a wealthy wholesale drug company owner, moved into A. Gerald Hull's Villa on the southeast side of the Thomas Powell estate in 1853. Hull, a friend of James, the Powell's late son, was one of America's first homeopathic practitioners, had lived on the property for a short time before returning to New York City to continue his practice. VanDuzer changed the name from Hull's Villa to Rozenhof and began the arduous task of enlarging the house and transforming the property into a magnificent garden. VanDuzer died in 1903; his wife six-months later. The property remained in the VanDuzer family until the death, in 1913, of the VanDuzer's daughter, Katherine VanDuzer Burton. Although the family was offered a grand sum for the property by the proprietors of a tuberculosis sanatorium, the VanDuzers instead turned to their neighbors, the Dominican sisters on Gidney Avenue, and asked what price they might be able to pay for the property. Even though their offer of $65,000 was less than half of what the VanDuzers had been offered by the eager sanitarium bidders, Rozenhof, the carriage house, the ice house and a hothouse were sold to the sisters. This new acquisition proved a blessing to the sisters and allowed them to build upon their dream. The Dominican Sisters' reputation for academic excellence became legendary. They had outgrown the existing facilities on their property. The new Academy, called Greater Mount Saint Mary, opened in 1927 and served as a high school. A storehouse was rebuilt as the Casa San Jose and it served as the elementary school.

Mount Saint Mary College is a private, independent, coeducational, four-year liberal arts college, located in Newburgh, New York.

Founded in 1960 by the Sisters of Saint Dominic, the college is committed to providing students of all faiths an education rich in the liberal arts and grounded in the strong Judeo-Christian traditions upon which it was founded.