Vassar Celebrates 100 Years of Alumnae House

his coming year marks 100 years since the opening of Alumnae House, when Blanche Ferry Hooker, class of 1894, and Queene Ferry Coonley, class of 1896, made a historic $300,000 gift to the College, establishing a home for AAVC and a place to celebrate “the work of the mind” that is the “principal bond in alumnal relations.” In the century since, Alumnae House has become a hub for maintaining our bond as alums, and it remains a forever home for every alum looking to revisit their Vassar days, celebrate life milestones, and give back to the intellectual life of the college and alum community through their participation. We welcome you back and ask you to reflect on what AH@100 means to you as you peruse this special issue of VQ.

To mark 100 years since its opening, we’re planning several special events. The campus and alum community will come together to re-dedicate Alumnae House and inaugurate its second century on April 4, 2024. Alums also will celebrate the Centennial during Reunion 2024. We’ll look back on its history—as a guest house, an intellectual venue, a wedding venue, a pub, a quarantine zone, and as the home of the AAVC. Most importantly, we’ll come together to discuss and imagine the future we want to create in the spaces where we gather and dwell, as an ever-changing and widely expansive, smart, critical, creative, and compassionate body of alums. 

With this in mind, I also want to take a moment to pause and reflect on the meaning of this historic anniversary. Looking back to 1924 means thinking about the era of women’s suffrage, the exclusionary 1924 Immigration Act, the post-influenza-pandemic decade, a time when gender, civil rights, and what it means to be American were being reshaped. It was at once an era of progress and regression. A 100-year milestone should always be a reminder that there remains work to be done in the world and that we need one another more than ever. 

Celebrating Alumnae House must also mean acknowledging how our community continues to be enriched by the College’s leadership in and commitment to expanding access to the liberal arts and higher education. By celebrating Alumnae House, we also celebrate the vibrance and diversity of the nearly 42,000 living alums who continue to inspire us—we rely on them, learn from them, and form bonds with them. I ask you to imagine what revolutionary leaders in culture, politics, science, and arts we might hold dear as part of our community in this coming century, with its existential challenges, as we face a planet in continued flux. 

Anyone who has set foot in Alumnae House knows it is a place of deep care, a place of welcoming with a tradition of hospitality on Vassar’s campus. Being at Alumnae House and appreciating its character is also a reminder of the important role of gift giving, and the contributions of alums whose donations of fine art, furnishings, china, linens, and decor brought Alumnae House the name “House of a Thousand Treasures.” We see this tradition continue in campaigns like Fearlessly Consequential: A Campaign for Our Collective Future, in major groundbreaking gifts dedicated to mental health and financial aid, and in the millions of dollars of individual contributions made thus far. 

I also see this tradition of giving back to one another come to life every year during Sophomore Career Connections, when the rooms of Alumnae House are filled with alums who come back to talk to students about what they’ve done in the worlds of the arts, the sciences, law, social change, education, business, and other sectors. 

By next summer, Alumnae House will have new neighbors, the Vassar Institute for Liberal Arts and the Heartwood Inn, along with a gorgeous winding landscape that welcomes Vassar, Poughkeepsie, and the world to our beloved Tudor Castle on the hill. I wonder what first-year students might think of Alumnae House when they visit for their first taste of a Vassar Devil on some sweltering August orientation afternoon in 2061. —James Estrada ’13