In 1947, Samuel Rezneck (Professor of History at the Institute) replied to a researcher who asked why the Institute had adopted cherry and white as its school colors. We have Rezneck's response to the query which reveals some colorful articles he found in The Rensselaer Polytechnic that I sought out for myself and couldn't resist sharing with our readers.

May 10th of this year was the 150th anniversary of Troy’s Great Fire. The fire destroyed a major portion of the city’s downtown including the Institute’s entire physical plant. It was an important event in Rensselaer’s history because it marks the beginning of the move of the Institute from downtown Troy up the hill to its present location.

With the new academic year approaching I decided to stage an exhibition of signs, seals, & symbols designed and used by the Institute’s offices and students throughout its history. The main point emphasized is that Rensselaer reaches its community through numerous visual methods.

We have a visually unique collection of 40 fraternity party posters from the mid-1960’s, representing twenty two different RPI fraternities.

"Flossie, the girl at the Boarding House." In our earlier post on the Class of 1912 we described the summer surveys conducted by students between their sophomore and junior years.

Class of 1912 in front of the Troy Music Hall. June 12 is the 100th anniversary of the Class of 1912’s graduation from Rensselaer and we want to mark the occasion by providing some background on what the student experience was like at Renss

Rendering of the proposed gymnasium as it appeared in the 1912 Transit. As we noted in our Commencement 1912 post, the ’87 Gymnasium was dedicated in June 1912.

Rensselaer’s 86th annual commencement exercises were held in the Troy Music Hall on Wednesday June 12, 1912. Institute President Palmer C. Ricketts presented diplomas to 118 graduating seniors. The Class of 1912 was the largest class to date to graduate from the Institute.

During the construction of EMPAC, the Institute Archives and Special Collections had an exhibit in the Folsom Library lobby about performance spaces at RPI.  Now with EMPAC well into its third year as a complete and dedicated space for the performing arts at Rensselaer, I had the opportunity to create an online exhibit from materials in the archives, including items used in

The Rensselaer Pup has some wonderful examples of graphic design and student art from the first half of the 20th century.  As a student-generated humor magazine it possesses some questionable content as well as beautiful covers.  Often the images from the covers play toward other popular magazines or comics of the time.&nbs