St. John's College Fordham, New York

William Rodrigue

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This picturesque view shows St. John's College several years after it was established in 1841 by John Hughes, Bishop of New York, in an area of Rose Hill (now part of the Bronx in New York City). Across the circular lawn, where some students play cricket, the university church (the building with the steeple) stands prominently in the left background. Its architect William Rodrigue (who drew this image lithographed by Francis Michelin), was the brother-in-law of Bishop Hughes, who commissioned him to design the earliest buildings of St. John's College: St. John's Chapel (now University Church) and the Residence Hall -- both completed in 1846. What began as a small preparatory school and liberal arts college, run by the Jesuits since 1846, was renamed Fordham Univerity in 1907. Today, it is the largest Catholic and Jesuit university in the northeastern United States. .

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art