Hudson Valley Community College - History

History

Growing out of the Veteran’s Vocational School in downtown Troy, New York, the college was founded in 1953 as the Hudson Valley Technical Institute. Initially, the role of the college was to provide practical hands-on vocational training for veterans returning from World War II. Dwight Marvin, editor of the Troy Record, was one of several community leaders who pressed to create a broader mission for the college, which in 1959 would be officially known as Hudson Valley Community College. Marvin served as the first chairman of the college’s Board of Trustees.

The college initially was housed in the former Earl and Williams shirt collar factory building at Broadway and Seventh Avenue, but by 1955, the board of trustees was already looking for a larger location to site a campus. The trustees surveyed likely sites for a new campus and in 1956 announced that the Williams farm, which straddled the Troy-North Greenbush border, would be the chosen site.

The new campus was initially opposed by a group of Rensselaer County taxpayers, who argued that the county should not have to pay for half the cost of the campus construction if fewer than half the students were county residents. What would became a landmark case for community colleges in New York State eventually was heard by the state’s Court of Appeals. On June 25, 1958, the court upheld the county’s right to fund half of the cost of construction and paved the way for capital construction at community colleges around the state. The new campus, with five Indiana limestone buildings, was completed in 1961 and the former factory building was abandoned and eventually torn down.