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Tours

1. 360 Tour

   Views of spots on campus

   Stops

   1. 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.

   2. Athletics & Fitness Center/Walker Field House

      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.

   3. Biology Greenhouse

      The Biology Greenhouse, located behind the Olmsted Hall of Biological Sciences, holds the Biology department’s teaching plant collection, consisting of more than 700 specimens from at least 120 plant families, such as orchids, ferns, cacti, and rare plants. And with sustainability in mind, the greenhouse receives rainwater and snowmelt from the new Bridge for Laboratory Sciences.

   4. Blodgett Hall

      Blodgett Hall houses the Anthropology, Economics, Religion, and Sociology departments, and the Jewish Studies program. Opened in 1929, Blodgett is also where Henrietta Smith, the first African American faculty member to become a full professor, taught, starting in the 1950s.

   5. 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.

   6. Casperkill Creek

      The Casperkill Creek gives students and faculty an opportunity to do research, and students from multiple departments have been conducting an ongoing study here for years. In 2019, Vassar led volunteers in planting 200 trees and shrubs along the waterway. Various bridges on campus cross over the creek, offering Instagrammable views.

   7. 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.

   8. Chicago Hall

      Across from Raymond House is Chicago Hall, which was built for foreign language departments and is home to the German Studies, French and Francophone Studies, Italian, Hispanic Studies, and Russian Studies departments. Foreign language proficiency is one of Vassar’s four requirements for graduation.

   9. Cushing House

      Cushing House, another of the nine residences for first-year students, was designed by the same architecture firm that handled the main library on campus. With lots of places to hang out and study, including two parlors, a multipurpose room, and a great hall, it’s easy to meet housemates.

   10. 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.

   11. Food Truck

       A new addition to campus dining is a Vassar-run food truck, Street Eats, which parks at various locations around campus for dinner five days a week. Street Eats, with an ever-changing menu featuring items like rice bowls, Philly cheese steaks, seven styles of chicken wings, and beignets served with hot chocolate, is one of five campus dining locations on the student meal plan.

   12. 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.

   13. Josselyn House

       Josselyn House, or Joss, for short, is one of nine residences on campus where entering first-year students live. It features a multipurpose room with foosball, ping pong, and pool tables and its front lawn, known as Joss beach, is home to Vassar’s Quidditch team, the Butterbeer Broooers.

   14. 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.

   15. 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.

       • Gallery - The Art Center has 21,000 works, including paintings, sculptures, photographs, textiles, and ceramics spanning the history of art from antiquity to the present. A popular destination for students as well as visitors to the Hudson Valley, the Art Center has extended hours once a week for “Late Night at the Loeb,” an event featuring events like student performances.
       • Garden - A sculpture garden displaying sculptures made of bronze, metal, stone, and ceramic, by artists including Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, Gaston Lachaise, and Frank Stella, is an ideal place for events and receptions or simply taking a quiet, momentary break from the rest of campus.

   16. 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.

   17. 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.

   18. 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.

   19. Noyes House Field

       Home of Ultimate Frisbee practice, just one of Vassar’s more than 140 student organizations. Noyes Circle is also the historic site of America’s first ever collegiate field day for women, recognized as an important moment in the history of women in sports.

   20. Outdoor Amphitheater

       The outdoor amphitheater is the beautiful setting for Commencement, an unforgettable backdrop for graduation. Past commencement speakers include Tom Hanks, Arianna Huffington, Samuel L. Jackson, trustee and alumna Lisa Kudrow, and CNN host and commentator Van Jones. The Powerhouse Apprentice Company, a summer theater program, has also used the site for performances, as has Vassar College Entertainment, a student organization that hosts big concerts and other events.

   21. 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.

        

   22. 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.

   23. Residential Quad

       The residential quad between Lathrop, Strong, Raymond, and Davison houses, one of the most picturesque spots on campus, was planned in part by renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.  Students along with student organizations gather here, including the Barefoot Monkeys, Vassar’s circus troupe.

   24. 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.

   25. Sanders Physics Building

       Sanders Laboratory of Physics, part of Vassar’s new Integrated Science Commons, is home to the Computer Science Department and the Physics and Astronomy Department and features the Class of 1951 Observatory, which contains two telescopes, one of which is among the largest in New York State. Also in Sanders Physics, computer science students work on artificial intelligence and 3D modeling.

   26. Shakespeare Garden

       Vassar’s newly refurbished Shakespeare Garden dates to 1916, when students planted flowers to honor the 300^th anniversary 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.

   27. 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.

   28. 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.

   29. Squash Courts

       Located in Kenyon Hall are six squash courts, five of which have bleachers so that spectators can come cheer on classmates. The squash teams use these courts and they are also open to the wider Vassar community. Students might even find themselves in a match with President Elizabeth Bradley, former captain of the Harvard squash team, who is known to play here.

   30. Tennis Court behind Josselyn House

       The 13 tennis courts behind Joss, where the tennis teams practice and where community members are welcome to play, have been a feature of campus for nearly a century. The men’s and women’s tennis teams are among 27 teams that make up the Vassar Varsity Athletics program.

   31. 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.

        

       The Thompson Library, one of four libraries on campus. The Archives and Special Collections Library lets visitors handle fragile materials such as letters by Albert Einstein and a French Book of Hours from the 15^th Century.

   32. Van Ingen Library

       The Van Ingen Art Library, attached to the Main Library and Taylor Hall, supports the art department and has a main reading room, four smaller study rooms, and a museum-quality display case.

   33. Vassar Ecology

       • Preserve - The Vassar Farm sits on 530 acres, with much of the land designated as an ecological preserve, an area that includes streams, wetlands, ponds, forests, and fields. Science classes use the preserve as an outdoor laboratory, and its hiking, running, and biking trails are open to the Vassar community and the public. The farm produces 200,000 pounds of produce each year, some of which is used for campus dining and nearly a fifth of which is donated to nonprofits and food banks. Two greenhouses enable the farmers to grow produce even in winter.
       • Field Lab - The Priscilla Bullitt Collins Field Station aids people in biology, ecology, botany, and other disciplines. It has a library, a classroom, computers, and a weather station. It also has a laboratory where researchers work with soil, water, and biological samples; wells for examining groundwater; and a meteorological station for taking measurements.

   34. 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.