Victor Hammer was born in Vienna on December 9, 1882. Fifteen years later, he began his apprenticeship in architecture, and a year after that he transferred into the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 1922, Hammer moved to Florence where he set up a printing press. In 1939 he fled Europe and the Second World War and came to the United States with his wife, Rosl. They moved to Aurora, NY, where Hammer taught the fine arts at Wells College. Hammer was an artist in many fields but had gained a worldwide reputation as a book craftsman who designed, cut and cast his own type. He brought to the college an antique flatbed press dating from around the turn of the century and while at Wells he printed his own books by hand. With the assistance of his son, Jacob, he established the Wells College Press, which put out some three dozen books, distinctive for beautiful and artistic printing, illustrations, design, and bindings. Upon mandatory retirement from Wells, Hammer moved to Lexington, KY in 1948, at this time Wells College named him Professor of Arts Emeritus. Hammer worked in Kentucky as Artist-in-Residence at Transylvania College until his retirement in 1953. Victor Hammer passed away on July 10, 1967 at the age of eighty-four.

Veterans Vocational School, located in Troy, New York, opened in 1946. The college focused on training and preparing World War II Veterans for the workforce after the war had ended. Eventually, board members believed the college needed to broaden its academic offerings. In 1953, the college became known as the Hudson Valley Technical Institute and changed names again in 1959 to Hudson Valley Community College. This is the name the college still possesses today.

Verne Morton was born October 9, 1868, in Groton, N.Y. He and his brother Neil lived on the family farm in central New York all their lives. Verne taught school and practiced freelance photography, photographing the people and their work in this rural community. The Mortons lived a frugal life, with income from the family farm and an inheritance from a carriage and wagon business. Neil bought his first automobile in 1913 and the two brothers traveled and photographed the northeastern United States. Verne Morton took photos until he died in 1945.

In 1982, former Erie Community College President, James E. Shenton created audio recordings of his memoirs charting the creation of the College in 1946. This presentation allows you to listen to his recordings & read the related transcript documentation.
Presented here is a digital reproduction of the audio and textual content of James E. Shenton's A Verbal History of Erie Community College. Mr. Shenton is remembered as Erie Community College's President from 1963 to 1974, but his commitment to the College ran deeper than this honorable position. Mr. Shenton was instrumental in the College's creation in 1946.
Mr. Shenton was part of the early movement to establish a two-year technical college system in New York State. Once established, these two-year institutions grew into what we know today as The State University of New York's community colleges. Erie Community College (ECC) numbers among those community colleges.
At its inception in 1946, ECC was known as the New York State Institute of Applied Arts and Sciences at Buffalo. In 1947, Mr. Shenton and a staff of eleven others began developing the Institute from the ground up. They designed the initial curricula, secured the equipment, and oversaw the renovation of the Pierce Arrow automobile factory into what would become the Institute's first academic building, located on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, NY.
In 1982, Mr. Shenton transformed his memories of his time at the College into an oral history. With the help of Library Coordinator Sylvia Moran and Principal Library Clerk Margaret Barrey, he created an audio recording of this history. The result was six audio cassettes and a transcript that detail the evolution of ECC from 1946 to Mr. Shenton's retirement in 1974.
Mr. Shenton was a gifted storyteller. His history of ECC is presented in a clear chronological format with anecdotes that are often insightful, humorous, and candid. They are told with an eye for detail and recognition of the events that serve as turning-points for both ECC and higher education in New York State. This history is as much a reflection of the man that told it as it is a look into ECC's past.
--Matthew M. Best, Erie Community College Librarian

Established in 1884 on Henry Livingston farmland along the Hudson River, Vassar Brothers Hospital opened on April 11, 1887 and treated 80 patients in its first year. A training school for nurses was established in 1890, and a stone wall was erected around the perimeter of the 17 acres. Inside those walls and over more than a century of time was a constantly expanding cluster of buildings and additions which served to broaden the scope of treatments, surgeries and services offered to patients in the City of Poughkeepsie and surrounding communities.

Established as a training school for hospital nurses in 1890, the VBH School of Nursing educated, trained and graduated over one thousand nurses in its 82-year existence on the campus of Vassar Brothers Hospital. The School combined rigorous academic classroom lectures with hands-on patient experience, and had a reputation for strictness, caring for each other, and excellent patient care.