This self-guided tour should give you a sense of our campus and inform you of the basics provided in a student-guided tour we offer at Admissions.
Gordon Commons
Gordon Commons is the main dining center on campus, open seven days a week until 11 p.m. or later and has seating for 1,000 people across three floors. All students are on the meal plan, and meals are kept affordable for college employees, so everyone eats here: first-year students, seniors, faculty, and administrators.
Noyes House
Designed by the renowned architect Eero Saarinen, this residence hall’s rounded shape and triangular windows give it a modernist and distinctive flair. Noyes houses nearly 180 students and typically remains open during breaks so that students who need to stay on campus can do so when the other houses are closed.
Main Building
At the center of campus is Main Building, a national historic landmark from 1865 that originally housed almost the entire college. Today it houses administrative offices and residences for around 350 students, and is attached to the College Center, which every student passes through regularly.
The Retreat
The Retreat part of this video begins at 2:35 minutes.
Optional Tour Stop: Athletics & Fitness Center/Walker Field House
Please note: this stop, 6 (Sunset Lake), and 7 (Shakespeare Garden) add an additional 20 minutes to the duration of the tour. The pathways to those locations may include steep and/or uneven ground.
The Athletics and Fitness Center contains a basketball gym that seats 1,200 people, an elevated jogging track, a gym that is open to the whole Vassar community, locker rooms, an equipment room, and offices. Next door is Walker Field House, which includes five tennis courts and spaces for volleyball, basketball, fencing, and badminton, plus a sports medicine facility and seating for 4,000 people. There is also a six-lane pool, which the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams use and that is also open to all students.
Optional Tour Stop: Sunset Lake
Sunset Lake is one of the most Instagrammable spots on campus and a great place to study or take a break from schoolwork.
Optional Tour Stop: Shakespeare Garden
Vassar’s newly refurbished Shakespeare Garden dates to 1916, when students planted flowers to honor the 300thanniversary of William Shakespeare’s death. It is the second-oldest Shakespeare garden in the United States and the only one at a liberal arts college.
Vogelstein Center for Drama & Film
The Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film houses the Drama and Film departments. The 54,000-square-foot building includes the Streep Studio, named for donor and alumna Meryl Streep, plus costume shops and a scene shop. There is also the 330-seat Martel Theater, with an orchestra pit and balcony seating. The Film department has a 110-seat Rosenwald Film Theater, which offers Hollywood-grade film screening, an 840-square-foot soundstage and editing rooms with equipment for both film and digital media. Department alumni such as Jason Blum, producer of Get Out and BlacKkKlansman, return to speak with students.
New England Building
Part of the new Integrated Science Commons, New England Building houses the Psychological Science and Cognitive Science departments. Psychology is one of Vassar’s most popular majors, and the college was the first anywhere to offer an undergraduate degree in cognitive science. It includes state-of-the-art laboratories where students conduct research in physiology, neurochemistry, and experimental learning. Above the entrance is an authentic fragment of Plymouth Rock.
Bridge for Laboratory Sciences
The Bridge for Laboratory Sciences, which opened in 2016, the newest academic building on campus, is literally a bridge over a creek and wetlands. The state-of-the-art 82,000-square-foot building houses the Chemistry department, but it’s also where students from across scientific disciplines can collaborate. The building was the first in the United States to use a special, innovative type of bird-friendly glass, with a coating visible to birds but almost invisible to humans. It has additional ethical and sustainable practices, like collecting rainwater and snowmelt for use in a nearby greenhouse.
President’s House
Built in 1895 and sitting in the center of campus, the President’s House is a Medieval Revival style building with arches, chimneys, gables, bay windows, and elaborate brickwork. Every Vassar president has lived here since it was built, including current president Elizabeth H. Bradley, who came to Vassar in 2017 from Yale.
Chapel
The Vassar Chapel, built in 1904, was designed by the architects behind the Art Institute of Chicago and serves as both an assembly and religious space. Convocation takes place here at the start of each academic year. Musical acts including Thundercat, Billy Joel, Nina Simone, and Earth, Wind & Fire have performed here.
Loeb Art Center
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center houses Vassar’s art collection, which dates to 1864. Vassar was the first college or university in the United States to open with a plan for an art museum. Named for a member of the class of 1928, the Art Center today consists of a 36,000-square-foot facility designed by Cesar Pelli, the renowned architect behind the World Financial Center in New York City and the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia, which once were the tallest buildings in the world.
Main Gate
Vassar’s Main Gate is a Gothic revival tower from 1915 and serves as the main entryway to campus, providing a dramatic and scenic entrance. Through a passageway in the tower, it’s possible to walk from the Main Library to Taylor Hall, home to the Art Department, and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center without ever stepping outside.
Thompson Library
The Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library dates to 1905 and is the main library on campus. Vassar’s libraries have more than 1 million volumes in print, including over 50,000 rare books. The 150,000-square-foot building is consistently ranked one of America’s most beautiful college libraries. Its Gothic-style tower is perhaps the main symbol of the Vassar skyline.
Rockefeller Hall
The first purely academic building on campus, Rockefeller Hall, or Rocky as it’s known, opened in 1897 and was named after John D. Rockefeller. It is home to the Political Science, Mathematics and Statistics, and Philosophy departments.
Strong House
Strong House, the first purely residential building built on campus, features a spacious multipurpose room and an inviting parlor with a fireplace, cozy armchairs, and a Steinway grand piano. Traditionally, Strong has been the all-women’s housing option, and now it also welcomes any trans, nonbinary, questioning, agender, and other gender-nonconforming people who wish to live there.
Lathrop House
Lathrop House is one of five houses on the residential quad and another first-year students dorm. Weekly study breaks like CommuniTea, which features tea and cookies, is the perfect opportunity to meet housemates and the quad right outside is great for relaxing with picnic blankets, guitars, frisbees, and even pets.
Davison House
Davison House is home to almost 200 students and features communal study spaces on each level, wood-paneled floors, and bathrooms with marble sinks. The multipurpose room, with balcony and chandeliers, is a great place for housemates to hang out.
Raymond House
Raymond, which is on the residential quad and houses around 200 students, features a kitchen, a parlor with a Steinway piano and a large multipurpose room. Outside on the quad, students can be found playing frisbee and relaxing on picnic blankets when the weather’s nice. Three pioneering black students lived here in the 1940s: Dr. Beatrix McCleary Hamburg, Dr. June Jackson Christmas, and Camille Cottrell Espeut.