The newest titles in the Princeton Architectural Press Campus Guide series take readers on authoritative tours of two prestigious colleges, Vassar and Dartmouth. Beautifully photographed in full color, the guides present architectural walks of these American college campuses distinguished for landmark buildings-Vassar showcasing a developing expression of changes in women's education and Dartmouth revealing the provincial design roots and rural setting of the prominent Ivy League college.

Vassar College was founded in 1861, two miles from the banks of the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie by Matthew Vassar, a self-made businessman. The college grew to confirm its founder's precedent-breaking vision that women would profit from intellectual opportunities in the liberal arts similar to those that Ivy League institutions had long offered the other gender. The college has grown and changed with the times, first countering Victorian prejudices that women were not suited for serious study, always leading the way as opportunities to broaden the spectrum of women's education developed. In the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, Vassar College again broke precedent, turning itself from a single-sex institution into one in which true coeducation exists. After 139 years, Vassar is poised for the changes under way and yet to come in the twenty-first century.