Elmira College

Elmira College
Entrance at College and Washington Avenues
TypePrivate college
Established1855
Endowment$26.492 million (2023)
PresidentCharles Lindsay
Undergraduates609
Location, ,
United States

42°05′48″N 76°48′58″W / 42.0966°N 76.8160°W / 42.0966; -76.8160
CampusSuburban, 42 acres
ColorsPurple and gold    
MascotSoaring Eagle
Websiteelmira.edu

Elmira College is a private college in Elmira, New York.[1] Founded as a college for women in 1855, it is the oldest existing college granting degrees to women that were the equivalent of those given to men. Elmira College became coeducational in all of its programs in 1969. As of 2023, the college has an enrollment of approximately 657 students.

The school's colors, purple and gold, are seen throughout the traditional campus, consisting mainly of buildings of the Victorian and Collegiate Gothic architectural styles. The colors purple and gold come from both the banners of the women's suffrage movement and the iris, the college flower.

The octagonal study in which Mark Twain wrote many of his most widely read novels, including A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is located on campus, and the center maintains Quarry Farm, where the Clemens family spent more than twenty summers, as a research facility for Twain scholars. Every four years the college hosts the International Conference On The State of Mark Twain Studies.

  1. ^ "Elmira College Bulletin" (PDF). www.elmira.edu. 2005. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 2, 2006.