Collegiate School and College Hill

Text from William Wade

. Besides the court-house and jail, the collegiate school, on College hill, half a mile northeast of the compact part of the village, is worthy of attention. This is a well established and flourishing institution, furnished with an extensive gymnasium, and conducted on philosophical principles. The edifice is one hundred and fifteen feet long and thirty-five feet wide, after the model of the Parthenon at Athens. Besides this, the town contains four seminaries for young ladies, Duchess Academy, three banks, two whaling companies with a total capital of four hundred thousand dollars, two market-houses, a lyceum, fourteen churches, ninety-two stores, and a large variety of manufacturing and mechanic establishments. The village is supplied with water from the vicinity brought into a reservoir, and distributed through the streets at an expense of about thirty thousand dollars. The convention of the State of New York adopted the Constitution of the United States at this place in 1788, and previously the State legislature frequently assembled at this " the queen village of the empire State."

Edgar Bacon says in The Hudson From  Ocean to Source that the Poughkeepsie Collegiate school was chartered in 1836 but was later called Riverview Academy and moved from College Hill to Riverview.

Benson Lossing in The Hudson from the Wilderness to the Sea describes College Hill in 1866:

"The city is partly upon a hill-side, sloping to the river, but chiefly upon an elevated plain, back of which is College Hill, whose summit is five hundred feet above the town. It is crowned with an edifice modelled, externally, after the Temple of Minerva, at Athens, and devoted to the use of a popular institution of learning. The views from this summit are extensive, and very interesting, and embrace a region about twenty-five hundred square miles in extent of the most diversified scenery. The city, appearing like a town in a forest, lies at the foot of the spectator, and between the lofty Katzbergs on the north, and the Highlands on the south, the Hudson is seen at intervals, having the appearance of a chain of little lakes. Around, within an area of twenty to thirty miles in diameter, spreads out a farming country, like a charming picture, beautiful in every feature."