The original Troy Female Seminary was leased from the City of Troy for 50 years, during which time it had grown from the original three-story “coffee house” building to “a substantial brick pile, four stories high, and some two hundred feet long.” But the lease was to run out in 1872, when “many new and enterprising schools for women were springing up all over the land,” including the new Vassar College and the planned Smith and Wellesley Colleges. Mr. and Mrs. John Hart Willard retired, leaving the fate of the school to its trustees.
“The President of the Board at that time was Mr. William Gurley, a man of broad and liberal views, and devotedly attached to the school in which so many of his family had been educated.” Gurley, an RPI grad who with his brother, Lewis (a lowly Union graduate), built the business now known as Gurley Precision Instruments, raised $50,000 to pay off the city and assure the continuation of the school. The Board then selected Miss Emily Wilcox, grand-niece of Emma Willard, as Principal, and rather than focusing on boarding students, “a vigorous and well-equipped day-school was now established.” Miss Wilcox served for 23 years, and toward the end of her term there was renewed interest in the Seminary that led to a building spurt.
The first of the new buildings was Gurley Memorial Hall, given by Lewis Gurley in memory of his brother William and sister Clara, dedicated in 1892. It was built just south of the original Seminary. This was quickly followed by the Anna M. Plum Memorial, a gift of Mrs. G.V.S. Quackenbush “to commemorate the life and early death of her daughter by transmitting to those who should come after her some of the opportunities she had not lived to enjoy.” And with this rebirth came the notion of restoring a boarding department, for which Russell Sage provided the dormitory, Russell Sage Hall.
In 1895, the Seminary would be renamed the Emma Willard School. These buildings, of course, still stand as part of Russell Sage College.
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