A Guide to Columbia University. With some Account of Its History and Traditions 9780231876988

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A GUIDE TO COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

With Some Account of Its History and Traditions

A GUIDE T O

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY WITH SOME A C C O U N T

OF

ITS H I S T O R Y AND T R A D I T I O N S

EDITED

BY

JOHN WILLIAM ROBSON

NEW

YORK:

MORNINGSIDE

HEIGHTS

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 1937

PRESS

COPYRIGHT COLUMBIA

Foreign agents:

UNIVERSITY

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS,

E.C. 4, England,

AND

PUBLISHING HOUSE,

1937 PRESS,

NEW

YORK

Humphrey Miljord, Amen House, London,

B. I. Building, Nicol Road, Bombay, India;

140 Peking Road, Shanghai, China;

6 Nihonbashi, Tori-Nichome, Tokyo, Japan

Manufactured

in the United States oj by the Cayuga

Press

XWANG HSUEH

MARUZEN COMPANY, L T D . ,

America

I N T R O D U C T I O N

is an earlier Guide to Columbia University, pulblished by Columbia University Press twenty-five years ago, almost to the month. A duodecimo volume of a scant 35,000 words, it w a s edited under the chairmanship of Professor Brander Matthews, '71, and no revised edition was ever issued. In 1921 the 1912 Guide went out of print. In 1935 Mr. Charles G. Prooffitt, '17, Associate Director of the Press, foremost among those whio saw urgent need for a new manual, commissioned me, then a stuident in the School of Journalism, to the task whose fruits are bet w e e n these covers. I began the handbook in June, 1935, carrying it tto completion as a sparetime activity while engaged in the Prod u c t i o n Department of the Press. Within the compass of a volume of mojdest bulk I have undertaken to describe Columbia's quadrangles of today, in addition presenting some account of the University's histtory, traditions, and student life. Many facts have necessarily beeen left out, but it is hoped that high school and college graduates eveerywhere in planning study at Morningside Heights will be able to garner a correct and helpful foreknowledge from the material offfered; and, indeed, that matriculated students, officers and alumni of Columbia as well, besides interested persons who are not Columbians, will find it a useful manual in amplifying their knowledge of i the University. In the publishers' behalf I accord thanks to the many officers of thee University who have helped to improve the substance of the bocok. Chief adviser throughout the process was Professor Hoxie Neeale Fairchild, '16, Professor of English in Barnard, who carefully reaad, criticized, and corrected the entire manuscript and also read thee galley proofs. Mr. Milton Halsey Thomas, '30, Curator of Cojlumbiana, gave innumerable hours to examining and improving thee manuscript and proofs during several stages and contributed T H I E BASIS OF THIS WORK

[vii]

GUIDE T O COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

many useful items, particularly with regard to matters of history. At the Press, Mrs. Dorothy M . Swart of the Editorial Department read the galley proofs, while before the manuscript went to the printer Miss Eugenia Porter of the Production Department gave it a skillful editorial reading. In addition, both rough manuscript and galley proofs were submitted to the offices of the Deans of Barnard, Teachers College, the Medical School, the College of Pharmacy, and Bard, and in each case much valuable assistance was given in checking the material for accuracy. M r . Philip M . Hayden, A . M . 1913, Assistant Secretary of the University, examined both the manuscript and proofs. Though a great many facts were secured from these offices, it must not be inferred that the separate perspective of any of them is reflected in this manual, which is about Columbia's various colleges and affiliates and not by them. T h e work has been edited specifically and with much conscience from a journalistic viewpoint; that it is neither a Baedeker nor in a strict sense official may be attributed to this fact. Credit is given to McLaughlin Aerial Surveys for the view of Morningside Heights; to M r . Walter L. Bogert, '88, for the photographs of Low Memorial Library, Alumni House, Kent Hall, St. Paul's Chapel, Avery Hall, Earl Hall, School of Business, Hamilton and Hartley Halls, Livingston and J o h n J a y Halls, South Hall, Brooks and Hewitt Halls, Barnard, Fiske, Milbank, and Brinckerhoff Halls; to Miss Margaret Bourke-White for the photographs of V a n Amringe Memorial, portico of Hamilton Hall, and portico of Barnard Hall; to Mr. A. Tennyson Beals for the photograph of the College of Pharmacy; and to M r . William Frange for the view of the Medical Center group. It is obvious albeit regrettable that many errors are printed. T h e 1912 edition carried a n u m b e r of them, and the present work, nearly twice the length of the other, surely cannot avoid presenting an embarrassing quantity. T h e Press will be grateful to readers who, upon recognizing inaccuracies, will be so good as to correspond about them. J . W. R. '35J MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS

June 1st, 1937

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

vii

I. UP THE YEARS TO MORNINGSIDE .

.

.

3

The Beginnings.—The Birth and Christening of Columbia.—The Rise of a University.—The Building at Park Place.—Origin of the Upper Estate.—Forty Years at 49th Street.—"Crowned and Set upon a Height"

II. THE PLAN OF THE UNIVERSITY

.

.17

T h e Curriculum.—The Quadrangles.—The Fence, Gates, and Green

III. UPPER QUADRANGLE, SOUTH AND EAST

.

35

South Court.—Low Memorial Library.—Alumni House.—Kent Hall.—Philosophy Hall.—St. Paul's Chapel.—Avery Hall.— Fayerweather Hall

IV. UPPER QUADRANGLE, NORTH

.62

Schermerhorn Hall.—Schermerhorn Extension.—University Hall. —Havemeyer Hall.—Chandler Laboratories.—Pupin Physics Laboratories.—Wilde Observatory

V. UPPER QUADRANGLE, WEST .

.77

School of Engineering.—Earl Hall.—School of Mines.—School of Business.—Old South Hall and Old West Hall

VI. SOUTH QUADRANGLE

86

South Field.—The Memorials.—Hamilton Hall.—Hamilton Hall Annex.—School of Journalism.—South Hall.—Hartley Hall. —Livingston Hall.—Furnald Hall.—John J a y Hall.—Gatekeeper's Lodge

VII. EAST QUADRANGLE President's House.—Faculty House.—Johnson Hall.—Crocker Research Laboratory.—Botany Greenhouse.—Agronomy and Agriculture Greenhouse.—Women's Faculty Club.—Foreign

[ix]

115

X

GUIDE TO COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Centers (Maison Française, Deutsches Haus, Casa de las Espanas, Casa I tali ana)

VIII. BARNARD COLLEGE

125

T h e Founding.—The Quadrangles.—Milbank Hall.—Brinckerhoff Hall.—Fiske Hall.—Barnard Hall.—Brooks Hall —Hewitt Hall.—Riverside Building

IX. TEACHERS COLLEGE

137

History.—Main Hall.—Russell Hall.—Milbank Memorial Hall.— Macy Hall.—Grace Dodge Hall.—Thompson Hall.—Lowell Annex.—Macy Annex.—Whittier Hall.—Bancroft Hall.—Seth Low Hall.—Sarasota Hall.—Grant Hall.—Horace Mann School. —Horace Mann School for Boys.-—Lincoln School.—Lincoln Research Building.—Speyer Hall

X. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY-PRESBYTERIAN MEDICAL CENTER

149

History.—Presbyterian Hospital.—Medical School.—Harkness Private Pavilion.—Vanderbilt Clinic.—Babies Hospital.—Neurological Institute.—Psychiatric Institute.—DeLamar Institute of Public Health.—Institute of Ophthalmology.—Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing.—Anna C. Maxwell Hall.—Sloane Hospital for Women.—Squier Urological Clinic.—Bard Hall.— School of Tropical Medicine

XI. THE COLLEGE OF PHARMACY

.163

XII. NEW YORK POST-GRADUATE MEDICAL SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL

.167

XIII. BARD COLLEGE

169

History.—Bard Chapel.—Bard Hall.—Ludlow-Willink Hall.— Aspinwall Hall.—Preston Hall.—Potter and McVickar Halls.— Hoffman Halls.—Hegeman Science Hall.—Albee Hall.—Memorial Gymnasium.—South Hall.—Fairbairn, Seymour, and Hopson Hall.—Hoffman Memorial Library.—Hegeman Observatory.—The Dean's House.—Hance, Albee, Rives, and Brown Cottages.—Orient Hall

XIV. THE SEAL; OIL PORTRAITS; STATUARY

.

. 175

XV. TRADITIONS AND UNIVERSITY LIFE

.

.187

Columbiana Collection.—The Early Years.—Customs at Morningside Heights.—The Origin of Publications.—Athletics.—Baker Field.—Musical, Dramatic, and Other Organizations.—Student Life at Barnard.—Student Life at Bard.—Alumni Organization

INDEX

203

A GUIDE TO COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

With Some Account of Its History and Traditions

CHAPTER

UP

T H E

YEARS

T O

ONE

M O R N I N G S I D E

IN THE FIRST CENTURY and a half of its life Columbia had five homes. The first was the vestry room of the new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, on lower Broadway. Here, in July, 1754, when King's College did not yet have a charter, Samuel Johnson gathered the eight original students and began instruction. He taught classes in this single room until the college building was completed in 1760. With the advent of the Revolution in April, 1776, the college was forced to give up this building by direction of the Committee of Safety. For a time, however, instruction was continued in a house belonging to Leonard Lispenard on Wall Street. The old building was again occupied after the Revolution, when King's was rechristened Columbia, and it was used until May, 1857, when buildings at Madison Avenue and 49th Street were occupied. In 1897, after forty years at this site, Columbia moved to its present home on Morningside Heights. King's College was the first and only institution of collegiate rank to be founded in the Province of New York, and the reason doubtless is that learning was anything but the forte of Manhattan's early inhabitants. In the 1740s, when a college for New York was first seriously considered, there were, exclusive of the clergy, only fifteen college-trained men in the whole Province. New Amsterdam had been settled in 1642 under the auspices of a trading company, and from the first the city was devoted chiefly to commerce. Furthermore, the population was hardly less diverse in race and language than it is today. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, composed of Englishmen who shared a common social and intellectual tradition, founded Harvard six years after the first settlement. The cosmopolitanism of New Amsterdam, on the other hand, worked against unified efforts toward liberal culture. The city did not develop any [3]

4

G U I D E T O COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y

strong ambitions for higher education until a century and a half after its settlement. The first evidence of a birth of intellectual aims was the offer of Trinity Church in 1703 to deed a portion of its church farm for a college campus. Trinity's holdings consisted of about thirty-two acres, called the King's (or Queen's, under Queen Anne) Farm, which lay north of the present Cortlandt Street between the Hudson River and Broadway, and there was land to spare. The first official step was taken in 1751, when the legislature of the colony vested in a board of trustees more than £3,000, which had been obtained through a lottery in 1746. Two-thirds of these trustees, whose business it was to receive proposals for a college, were communicants of the Church of England, several of them vestrymen of Trinity. The other third were indifferent or opposed to the established church. Despite their minority protest led by William Livingston, a zealous Presbyterian suspicious of Anglican control, on October 31, 1754, George II granted a charter and created a corporation. That date is the legal birthday of Columbia University, begun as King's College, legally styled The College of the Province of New-York in the City of New-York in America. Livingston's fear of Anglican control was soon removed, for the charter established religious freedom for both officers and students. In New York the strength of Dutch, French, Lutheran, and Presbyterian churches prevented the supremacy of the Church of England, and the charter not only designated ministers of these other churches as ex officio members of the Board of Governors but specified that no laws discriminatory in religion should be passed for the new college. Trinity Church conveyed to the Governors on May 13, 1755, land which, to quote a contemporary journal, lay "to the West side of the Broad Way in the West Ward of the City of New-York fronting easterly to Church Street, 440 foot and from thence running westerly between and along the said Barclay Street and Murray Street and up to the North River." As president of the new institution the trustees of the lottery fund had chosen Samuel Johnson, an early graduate of Yale and at the time of his selection an Anglican clergyman at Stratford, Conn. He installed the college and designed the official seal he had already 'For a description of the seal, see page 175.

U P T H E YEARS T O M O R N I N G S I D E

5

begun instruction under a faculty of one (himself). Tuition was twenty-five shillings for each quarter. O n August 23, 1756, the cornerstone for a separate building was laid by Sir Charles H a r d y , Governor of the Province. W i t h the second year of the college, President Johnson augmented his one-man faculty by engaging his son William as tutor. T h e following year Leonard Cutting, a Cambridge graduate, was added, and in 1757 Daniel Treadwell, a Harvard m a n recommended by Professor J o h n Winthrop, was appointed to the first professorship established, that of mathematics and natural philosophy. In 1763 Dr. Johnson fled for a third time to Westchester to escape the smallpox, which had already taken some of the members of his family. H e resigned in that year and retired to Stratford, where he died in 1772. His successor was the Rev. Myles Cooper, a brilliant twenty-six-year-old scholar from Queen's College, Oxford, who did his best to transform the college into a miniature replica of his alma mater. It was during his administration that the Medical School, the second in the country and the first to grant an M.D., was established. Cooper carried on until the advent of the Revolution, when his militant Toryism brought him to grips with a zealously patriotic sophomore named Alexander Hamilton. Political opponent or no, on M a y 10, 1775, Hamilton with a fellow-student detained a hostile m o b of Whigs on the front steps of the college until the Tory president had slipped out the back door in his nightshirt. 1 The next day Cooper was rowed out to the Kingfisher, a British warship in the harbor, sailed for England, and never saw the college again. H e lies buried in the churchyard at Restalrig, near Edinburgh, Scotland. I n April, 1776, the military took over the building for hospital purposes and the students were dispersed. Some instruction was given in a private dwelling until September, but after that the corporation kept alive only by occasional meetings of the Governors. THE BIRTH AND CHRISTENING OF COLUMBIA

Upon the retreat of the British and the establishment of independence by the T r e a t y of 1783, the powers previously vested in 1 Hamilton, whose class was 1777, was then seventeen. The year in which he was to have been graduated found him lieutenant-colonel and aide-de-camp to Washington. He became a Trustee in 1784 and was given the honorary M.A. degree in 1788.

6

GUIDE TO COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

King's College were transferred to the newly created Regents of the University of the State 'of New York, under whose auspices the forsaken King's College was reopened in 1784 as Columbia College. 1 Government by the Regents proved impracticable and was ended on April 13, 1787, when a revised charter created " T h e Trustees of Columbia College in the City of New-York," and made the governing body a self-perpetuating board of twenty-four, which has continued to the present. For the presidency the Trustees selected William Samuel J o h n son, Yale 1744, inaugurating one of the earliest non-clerical college presidents in the English-speaking world. A lawyer, he had spent nearly ten years in England as agent from the colony of Connecticut and had just finished his work as a member of the Constitutional Convention. He currently became the first United States Senator from Connecticut, an office which he held until Congress was transferred from New York to Philadelphia. Under him rehabilitation of the college proceeded apace. Money grants were obtained from the legislature which made possible the appointment of a number of professors, chief among them being Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, in natural sciences, and, in law, J a m e s K e n t , later Chancellor of the State. In May of the year of the reopening, DeWitt Clinton entered the junior class as the first student of Columbia College. T h e commencement exercises of that first class were held on April 11, 1786, at St. Paul's Chapel, and were attended by the members of the Continental Congress and of the State Legislature. In 1789 President Washington and the members of his cabinet attended commencement. 2 1 The name was said to have been used before the Revolution as descriptive of the North American Continent. When the time came for the legislature to deal with the college and its charter, the name Columbia was well known. So far as any record has been found, however, the word appeared for the first time in legislation in the act of the Legislature of the State of New York giving the name of Columbia to King's College, passed on May 1, 1784. Timothy Dwight used the name in the first lines of a poem, probably written during the period when he was chaplain in the Revolutionary Army:

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, The Queen of the World and the child of the Skies. 2 No President of the United States was to pay an official visit again until April 19, 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt as honor guest traveled to Morningside Heights for the inauguration of his friend and former fellowstudent, Nicholas Murray Butler, '82, as Columbia's twelfth president.

U P T H E YEARS T O M O R N I N G S I D E

7

In November, 1787, there were thirty-nine students, five of whom lived in the college building. The annual income was £1,331. Following Dr. Johnson's resignation in 1800, there was no president until May, 1801, when the Rev. Charles Henry Wharton, of Burlington, N. J., was elected. A man of little enterprise, he performed no duties beyond attending commencement, and resigned in December of the same year. The Rt. Rev. Benjamin Moore, of the class of 1768, followed in office at a salary of £100. He held this position for a number of years in addition to being rector of Trinity Church and Bishop of New York. The passing years demonstrated the inadequacy of the charter of 1787, and in 1810 a revised charter was secured which proved to be more enduring. The next year Bishop Moore resigned, to be succeeded by the Rev. William Harris, Harvard 1768, the last clergyman to hold the office of president. 1 His administration was ended by his death in 1829. Judge William Alexander Duer succeeded Harris. His first presidential year was an anxious one to him and to Columbia, for in that year New York University was founded. A number of students were attracted to the new institution and left Columbia. When illness forced Duer to resign in 1842, his successor was Nathaniel Fish Moore, of the class of 1802, who had been Professor of Latin and Greek and Librarian for many years. Under Moore, the first endowed professorship was founded, and several fraternities established chapters. Apart from these incidents, his administration was not a noteworthy one. He retired to scholarly seclusion in 1849 and relinquished his duties to the more worldly and active Charles King, during whose régime in 1857 Columbia abandoned Park Place and moved to 49th Street. King had been the able and enterprising editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer. He was the first business man to occupy the presidency and was not a college graduate, but the beginning of his administration was the beginning of a new life for Columbia. The Law School was established in 1858 2 and the College of Physicians and Surgeons was 'Harvard had a clerical president until 1869, Yale until 1899, Princeton until 1902, and Brown until 1937. ' I n 1773 John Vardill had been appointed Professor of Natural Law, and five years later Regius Professor of Divinity in King's College. He never entered upon his duties in either of these chairs. In 1793, James Kent, for whom the present Law School building is named, was appointed Professor of Law. He resigned in 1798, due to the lack of students, and soon afterward became Chancellor of the State of New York. He was reappointed in 1823, continuing until

8

GUIDE T O COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

united with Columbia in the following year. King's incumbency was a worthy preparation for the coming, in 1864, of Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard, Yale 1828, the man who dreamed that little Columbia College should become one of the great universities of the world. T H E RISE OF A

UNIVERSITY

The outbreak of the Civil War had temporarily interrupted expansion, but in a few years Columbia was to receive a unique and powerful impetus. The force of a creative personality was felt, indeed, when at King's resignation the office was taken over by Barnard, gaunt, bewhiskered, and quite deaf. From a chair in the University of Alabama he had vainly applied in 1853 for the vacant professorship of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Chemistry at Columbia. But the Trustees did not forget him, and in 1864 they called him to the presidency. A distinguished scholar, a gifted educational administrator, a prophet and a dreamer, Barnard revised much that was old and inaugurated much that was new. 1 T o stimulate scholarly efforts, many prizes, scholarships, and fellowships were founded. Under Barnard, too, professional schools and non-professional graduate faculties arose to hasten Columbia's transformation from a college into a university. The founding of the School of Mines and of the School of Political Science were momentous steps. The former, the pioneer mining school of the country, was established in 1864 under Barnard's aegis, although the details were worked out by Professor Thomas Egleston.2 The lectures on his death in 1847. His famous Commentaries were delivered as Columbia lectures. Law instruction was not, however, steadily given until the establishment, in 1858, of the School of Law. For the ensuing thirty-two years the school was conducted by Theodore William Dwight as Professor of Municipal Law. For twenty years Dwight gave all the prescribed courses; later he employed assistants. The school at this time was a proprietary school. 1 See selections from the Annual Reports of President Barnard in The Rise of a University, I. Columbia University Press, 1937. ' Egleston had studied at the École des Mines in Paris and on returning to this country was full of enthusiasm for the establishment of a similar institution of mines in New York. T h e first class was graduated in 1867. In 1877 the comprehensive Chair of Engineering was created, and that year the first summer courses in mining were conducted. There followed rapidly the summer schools of surveying and mining, the courses in ore-dressing and practical mining, mechanical engineering, engineering design, power plant practice, astronomy, geodesy, and geodetic surveying. Other courses were developed in architecture, in analytical, organic, and industrial chemistry, in graduate work in pure and

UP THE YEARS TO MORNINGSIDE

9

political economy begun by Professor John McVickar in 1818, the first ever delivered in an American college, had their fruition in 1880 in the Faculty of Political Science, founded by Professor John William Burgess. Second only to Barnard in influence was Burgess, who came to the college in 1876. After graduating from Amherst he had pursued advanced studies in German universities. He brought to Columbia the European ideal of a university as a free company of scholars engaged in research and in sharing the fruits of their labors with mature and properly qualified students.1 In the early eighties the question of admitting women to Columbia was warmly debated. For decades several of the state universities had been granting degrees to women, and three women's colleges were now in operation. But the Trustees resisted Barnard's repeated efforts to open the gates, and it was not until 1883 that he wrung from the reluctant board the recognition of a Collegiate Course for Women. Opposition was stout, even bitter, and few girls enrolled.* The courageous ones found the course a dry crust. Class attendance was forbidden, and thus they had to study elsewhere in preparation for the examinations. Only one girl ever succeeded in passing all the courses. But it was in direct fulfillment of Barnard's efforts that in 1889 an affiliated women's college, gratefully named after him, was established in a modest Madison Avenue dwelling hard by Columbia. Today women are admitted to all schools of the University except Columbia College, to which Barnard College is an associate, and the School of Engineering. President Barnard died on April 27, 1889, making Columbia the residuary legatee of his estate. With Seth Low, of the class of 1870, his successor in 1890, the process of coordination continued, and within a year the institution, now considerably unified, had assumed the status of a university. This transformation was recognized in 1896 by a resolution authorizing the designation Columbia Univerapplied science. From these in turn arose the School of Architecture under its own teaching staff, the schools of Chemistry and Engineering under the Faculty of Applied Science, and a graduate school under the Faculty of Pure Science. The schools of Chemistry, Engineering, and Architecture were set off from the School of Mines in 1896. 1 See John W. Burgess, Reminiscences of an American Scholar; the Beginnings of Columbia University. Columbia University Press, 1934. 1 Columbia's Professor John Howard Van Amringe argued as follows: "You can't teach a man mathematics if there's a girl in the room—and if you can, he isn't worth teaching."

10

G U I D E T O COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y

sity, though it was not until 1912 that the name was legalized by the State Legislature. Low was the second business man to become president. He had been mayor of Brooklyn and was active in public affairs. When he retired in 1901 to become mayor of New York, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, closely associated with Barnard's planning, became logically the next president, the twelfth. In 1886, as Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Ethics and Psychology, he had proposed a course in the principles of education. Since this would have involved the attendance by women the Trustees refused. Thereupon Dr. Butler founded the New York College for the Training of Teachers, of which he was clcctcd president, and continued to hold both this office and his Columbia professorship. In 1898 Teachers College became a part of Columbia University, and in 1901 its first president became the president of Columbia. Dr. Butler has fulfilled Barnard's dreams and, more, has seen the attainment of his own vision of a great American university as an institution which applies the heritage of the past to the needs of a modern democratic civilization. 1 By the time Dr. Butler took office Columbia was at Morningside Heights. However, nearly a century and a half had passed before it got there. The facts in this phase of Columbia's history must now be set forth. THE BUILDING AT PARK

PLACE

The building for which Sir Charles Hardy laid the cornerstone in 1756 was 150 feet long, four stories high, of brick and stucco. Facing the south, it stood on an elevated plot, studded with sycamores, about 150 yards from the Hudson River. It was nearer to the Hudson than the site is today, for the river bank has been extended westward. This single structure, the first of its own that the college had, was ready for classes in 1760. Students roomed and boarded in it, and it continued as a college hall until the Revolution, when, as has already been told, the college was disbanded and both American and British troops, in turn, utilized it as a barrack and hospital. It narrowly escaped the great fire of 1776 which razed Trinity Church, but it was a ruin when restored to the college in 1784. Books, apparatus, and equipment had been placed in City 1 See selections from the Annual Reports of President Butler in The Rise of a University, II. Columbia University Press, 1937.

H A M I L T O N H A L L , MADISON A V E N U E , B U I L T

1879

12

GUIDE T O COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

Hall for safety, but little was recovered, for the British soldiers found that most of the articles could be bartered for grog in the taverns. 1 The plot on which this building stood divided Robinson Street, where today the morning shadow of the Woolworth spire falls.2 Robinson Street was not cut through until 1857. The University still owns more than half of this area, a section which is today known as the Lower Estate. It consists of the block bounded by Church Street, Park Place, West Broadway, and Barclay Street; the block bounded by West Broadway, Park Place, Greenwich Street, and Barclay Street; the block bounded by West Broadway, Park Place, Greenwich Street, and Murray Street; and part of the north portion of the block bounded by Church Street, Murray Street, West Broadway, and Park Place. There is in addition a small plot lying within the block bounded by Greenwich Street, Barclay Street, Washington Street, and Murray Street. ORIGIN OF T H E U P P E R

ESTATE

In response to the urgent request of the Trustees for financial aid, the Legislature in 1814 granted to the college the botanical garden established by Dr. David Hosack, 3 former Professor of Botany and Materia Medica in the college, and conveyed by him to the state. This tract was granted providing the college moved to it in twelve years, a restriction that was repealed. The land originally included four plots on the city m a p of that day, extending over about twenty acres divided into 256 city lots. It extended from what is now the north side of West 47th Street to the south side of West 51st Street, and from Middle Road (now Fifth Avenue) to a line about one hundred feet east of what is now Sixth Avenue. The whole area, which he named the Elgin Botanic Garden 1 In 1806 six hundred volumes of the library came to light in a room in the steeple of nearby St. Paul's Chapel. 2 In 1900 a bronze tablet commemorative of the founding of the college was fixed to the wall of a building at Murray Street and West Broadway, where the president's vegetable garden had been situated. In 1926 this was removed to the south front of the Dodge Building, at 53 Park Place. The Dodge Building occupies the site of the west wing of Columbia College as it was enlarged in 1818. During that year the cession by the Regents to the college of lands at Lake George, Ticonderoga, and Crown Point had enabled the Trustees to make some additions to the building, when this property, which brought about 912,000, was sold. ' I t was Dr. Hosack who attended Alexander Hamilton after the latter'« fatal duel with Aaron Burr on the heights of Weehawken, N. J., on July 11,1804.

U P T H E YEARS T O M O R N I N G S I D E

13

after the place of his family origin in Scotland, cost Dr. Hosack only about $5,000. He sold it to the state in 1810 for $74,268.75, after he had spent more than $100,000 on its development.The transfer to Columbia, in place of participation in the proceeds of a lottery that had been authorized as a benefit to state schools, was effected in 1814 and confirmed by law in 1819. Columbia's Trustees were then disgruntled at having to accept it and the $10,000 granted with it, in place of the $80,000 cash share which each beneficiary of the lottery received. Today they appreciate it more warmly. In 1823 the property was rented to an individual for $125 a year and taxes. A little more than a century later these holdings were to bring, as they still bring, $3,000,000 yearly. T o Columbians well versed in the history of their alma mater these blocks are known as the Upper Estate: to the general public they are known as Rockefeller Center. The front of one of these blocks, that facing Fifth Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets, was sold in 1857, to meet taxes and current expenses, to the Collegiate Dutch Reformed Church of St. Nicholas. T h e property bounded by Fifth and Sixth Avenues and 47th and 48th Streets was sold by parcels from 1904 to 1909 to pay for and develop the Morningside site. In 1928 the lease to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., which made possible the building of Radio City, became effective. T h e holdings, leased as one parcel for a designated period of twenty-four years with the right of renewal on designated terms for three additional periods of twenty-one years each, had previously been separately leased as 202 individual parcels. Tiny tablets set in the pavement at various places in Rockefeller Plaza bear the inscription P R O P E R T Y L I N E OF T H E TRUSTEES O F COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y , CROSSING IS BY PERMISSION O N L Y , W H I C H PERMISSION IS REVOCABLE AT WILL.1

Though the college was rapidly outgrowing its site at Park Place, Columbia officials decided against removal to the remote Botanic Garden, then three miles from New York City. In 1818, as has already been told, the Trustees added a faculty residence wing about fifty feet square to each end of the old building. In 1829 they put up a building on Barclay Street for the Grammar School, then a part of Columbia, but which since 1864 has had no connection with the University. ' T h i s device circumvents a statute under which any property used as a public thoroughfare will after a period under certain circumstances pass into the possession of the municipality.

14

GUIDE T O COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

F O R T Y YEARS AT 4 9 T H

STREET

T h e plan for the erection of buildings on the Botanic Garden site was dropped in 1856 when the Trustees bought from the New York Deaf and D u m b Institution a part of the block between 49th and 50th Streets, Madison and Fourth Avenues. T h e existing buildings were put in order for temporary occupancy, which as it turned out lasted forty years. Part of the plot was leased to gain money, leaving a fair-sized, sycamore-shaded campus. O n e other site had been considered: a tract of a thousand acres in Westchester County, a hundred to quarter the college, the remaining portion to be developed as a university town. I n the spring of 1857 the old college was abandoned. T h e graduating class of that year marched u p Broadway to occupy for three months the buildings of the new plant. This class was the first to graduate at 49th Street. T h e campus was virtually rural. In the later sixties the walls of the nearby cathedral were just being put up, as were those of the first St. Thomas's Church. Vacant lots abounded and Central Park was a rocky wilderness. Of the buildings vacated by the asylum the largest was a fourstory stucco-covered brick structure in the middle of the block. This was adapted for classes. Students irreverently called it the maison de punk, since its partly-peeled stucco m a d e it look uncouth. A twostory building beside it on the east was remodeled as a chapel and library, the chapel being on the first floor, the library on the second. A smaller building on the Madison Avenue side was revamped as a dwelling for President King. O n the Fourth Avenue side two old buildings, one a deserted window-blind factory, the other a dismantled paper mill, were ultimately torn down. A building for the School of Mines was erected on the site of the latter. In 1862 a brownstone residence for President Barnard was p u t u p on 49th Street. T h e College of Physicians and Surgeons was united with Columbia in 1859. It was located at 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue in a four-story building, the first story of brownstone, occupied by stores, and the upper stories of red brick with brownstone trim. A new college building, the original Hamilton Hall, was erected in 1879. A library building which contained also the Law School was built fronting 49th Street in 1883. 1 T h e L a w School was brought 1 These buildings, of red brick and Potsdam sandstone, were in the English collegiate Gothic style. T h e architect was Charles Coolidge Haight, '61.

UP T H E YEARS T O

MORNINGSIDE

15

up from Great Jones Street. In 1892, a few years before the college was moved, the maison de punk was razed. The college at 49th Street possessed no gymnasium, but the students used John Wood's Gymnasium in East 28th Street, near Fifth Avenue,® where today the Prince George Hotel stands. The social life of those days centered in the fraternity chapter rooms of Psi Upsilon, Delta Phi, Delta Psi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Alpha Delta Phi, and Zeta Psi, maintained in great secrecy on Broadway between 17th and 23rd Streets. Commencements were usually held in the old Academy of Music in 14th Street. 1

"CROWNED

AND SET UPON A

HEIGHT"

In 1897 Columbia departed from 49th Street. The home it vacated, valued at a million dollars, was bought in 1898 by the Berkeley School and most of the buildings were razed. A commemorative plaque is fixed to the Hotel New Weston at 49th Street and Madison Avenue. As early as 1890, indeed, the Trustees, fully realizing that the 49th Street plant was outgrown, had voted for removal. In 1891 they secured an option on the four blocks occupied by the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, owned by the New York Hospital, which lay between 116th and 120th Streets and Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway (then called the Boulevard). This section was not yet known as Morningside Heights. The University bought the area between 114th and 120th Streets, bounded by Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, in two sections. T h e plot between 116th and 120th Streets was bought from the New York Hospital in April, 1892, for $2,000,000. The other portion was acquired in October, 1903, for $1,900,000. The former plot had been deeded by the city in 1701 to J a c o b DeKay, who bought it as a farm. The site for Teachers College was bought in 1893; that for Barnard in 1897, in 1903, and in 1936. A short time after Columbia had purchased this land representatives of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, St. Luke's Hospital, 1 Courses were given the first year in the rooms of the New York Historical Society, 11th Street and Second Avenue; from 1858 to 1873 they were held in the old Colonnade Building, 37 Lafayette Place; and from 1873 to 1883 at Lafayette Place and Great Jones Street in a house once occupied by Peter Schermerhorn. 2 In this gymnasium George Lockhart Rives trained and selected the first Columbia crew, of '73. T h e boathouse was on the Harlem River. See page 193.

16

G U I D E T O COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y

Teachers College, and Columbia officially christened the elevated section on which their properties were located Morningside Heights. A competition was held among the leading architects of the time for a group of buildings that would be both beautiful and practical. The plan of McKim, Mead, and White, of New York City, was accepted. On December 7, 1895, the first cornerstone was laid, that of Low Memorial Library, given by President Seth Low as a memorial to his father. West Hall, East Hall, and South Hall of the asylum buildings remained and were adapted to university use. Fayerweather and Schermerhorn Halls, the School of Engineering, and Low Library were completed in 1896. The new plant was dedicated on May 2, 1896. On October 4, 1897, Columbia occupied her present home.

# CHAPTER TWO

THE

PLAN OF THE

UNIVERSITY

THE GROWTH OF COLUMBIA through the years has remarkably paralleled the growth of New York City, and the factors which have developed a little colonial town into this nation's greatest metropolis have largely been instrumental in transforming a tiny college of arts into a huge center of learning. T h e New York of today, which is itself an astounding amalgam of the country's financial, social, and cultural centers, finds within it a university that is a vast, populous federation of units, adjuncts, and dependencies which represent, individually and collectively, unexcelled centers of teaching and research. T h e sheer bigness of Columbia is important only as a sign of its capacity to serve the city and the nation and of the public's eagerness to accept and use that service. T h e teaching staff numbers more than 2,800. During the academic year 1935-36 there were 30,899 resident students. In 1937 the University conferred 4,501 degrees. In that year its capital aggregated nearly $160,000,000, while the total value of land, buildings, and equipment reached nearly $60,000,000. As large as Columbia is, its many constituents are smoothly unified in the larger organization, which is guided by a University Council headed by the President of the University, who presides over its meetings. With him sit the deans and directors of the several faculties, schools, and dependencies, as well as other delegates chosen from and by those bodies. Although the Council regulates the organization of the University in its manifold branches, its own conduct is under the jurisdiction of the board of twenty-four Trustees in whom is vested the title to all corporate property. A Trustee's term of office is for life. The board perpetuates itself and exercises the power of appointment to all offices of instruction and administration and general oversight of University affairs, and also the [17]

18

GUIDE T O COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

power to revise the Statutes. 1 In 1909 provision was made for the nomination by the alumni of six of the twenty-four Trustees. Barnard, Teachers College, the College of Pharmacy, and Bard, though they are represented on the Council, have their separate boards of trustees. THE CURRICULUM

Colleges of liberal arts include, at Morningside Heights, Columbia College for men and Barnard College for women; and, at Annandale-on-Hudson, Bard College for men. University Undergraduates are men and women students matriculated for the degree of Bachelor of Science whose needs are not fully met by Barnard, Bard, or Columbia College. Chiefly in the interest of mature students, the University adopted the plan in 1920. Seth Low Junior College, a dependency of the University, was established in Brooklyn in 1928; the Trustees voted to end it in 1936 after municipal institutions had arisen to perform the task for which it was created. Graduate and professional schools at Morningside Heights include the faculties of Political Science, Philosophy, and Pure Science, and the schools of Law, Engineering, Architecture, Journalism, Library Service, and Business. What is known as the graduate school in most American universities is at Columbia represented by the distinct but allied schools of Political Science, Philosophy, and Pure Science. The faculties of these schools comprise the Graduate Faculties; in 1936 there was an enrollment of about 2,600. The Faculty of Philosophy, which has charge not only of the work in Philosophy but also that in Psychology, Classical Philology, Ancient Languages and Literatures, and Modern Languages and Literatures, was established in 1890. Philosophy Hall is the home of this faculty. The Faculty of Political Science was begun in 1880 and includes the departments of History, Economics, Public Law, and Social Science. It is housed in Fayerweather Hall. The Faculty of Pure Science, established in 1892, comprises the departments of Geology, Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and the Physical Sciences. These are housed in Havemeyer and Schermerhorn Halls, Chandler Laboratories, and Pupin Physics Laboratories. The School of Law was established in 1858 and became a graduate department of the University in 1903. Its home is Kent Hall. ' T h e government of the University is defined in the Statutes of the University; these are printed in the Annual Catalogue.

THE GREEN, LOOKING NORTHWEST FROM UNIVERSITY HALL Chandler, Brinckerhoff, Riverside Church, Union Seminary, Pupin

T H E PLAN O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y

21

In 1936 there was an enrollment of nearly 600 students; the faculty consisted of 26 members. In that year 176 degrees were awarded. The School of Engineering, which was set off in 1896 from the School of Mines and was placed under the Faculty of Applied Science, today includes the School of Mines, with its own building, as well as the departments of Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Drafting. The home of these divisions is the School of Engineering building, though the Department of Mechanical Engineering is temporarily housed in Pupin Physics Laboratories. The enrollment in 1936 was about 250. The School of Architecture was established by the Trustees in 1880 under the direction of Professor William Robert Ware as a department of the old School of Applied Science. In 1906 it was combined with the Department of Music in the Faculty of Fine Arts. In 1914 it became a separate school. The enrollment in 1936 was 69. Studies of landscape architecture are partly pursued at Nevis, a princely estate at Irvington-on-Hudson. 1 In 1936 its facilities were also placed at the disposal of the Department of Civil Engineering for a course in surveying dealing with landscape design. Certain of the lectures on landscape architecture are open to the public on payment of a fee. The first school of journalism of university rank was founded at Columbia by Joseph Pulitzer, great journalist of the nineteenth century, who died in 1911. In April, 1903, Pulitzer agreed with the Trustees to establish the School. 2 Courses began in 1912, though 1 Worth half a million dollars, Nevis consists of sixty-seven acres, a twentyroom mansion, and about a dozen outbuildings. The University took over the property in July, 1935, as a gift of Mrs. T. Coleman du Pont, with an additional present by the donor of $30,000 for maintenance for two years. Upon her death in 1937 the University inherited other of her property in Westchester County. The large dwelling was built in 1835 by Col. James Alexander Hamilton, son of Alexander Hamilton. In 1844 the original central part was extended by the addition of large wings on the north and south, and the entire building was encased in brick. The east façade has a central portico with four Doric columns, with wooden cornice and pediment. The wings are flat-roofed and the west side of the building, facing the lawns and the Hudson, has a central portico of six fluted Ionic columns. The estate was acquired in 1889 by the Schuyler family and later by the Garden Club of America, and was bought by General and Mrs. du Pont in 1920. They named it for the island of Nevis, that one of the Leeward Islands of the West Indies on which Alexander Hamilton was born. 1 Pulitzer endowed also the famed Pulitzer Prizes in letters, awarded at an annual dinner held shortly before commencement, as follows: $2,000 for the best

22

GUIDE T O COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

until the building was finished in 1913, they were given in Earl and Hamilton Halls. Dr. Talcott Williams, onetime associate editor of the old Philadelphia Press, was the School's first head. T h e present director is Dean Carl William Ackerman, war correspondent, publicist, writer, and graduate in 1913 in the first class. T h r o u g h D e a n Ackerman's efforts, beginning with the 1935-36 session, the institution became solely a graduate school with one-year courses of instruction to the M . S . degree. T h e enrollment in 1936 was 71. T h e School of Library Service was established in 1926. Today, with a registration of nearly 400, it is the largest among the twentyfive or so that are recognized in America. Melvil Dewey, then Librarian of Columbia College, and author of the Decimal System of Classification, started it in 1887 as the Columbia College School of Library Economy, the first of its kind. After two years at the college on 49th Street, it was transferred to Albany where Dr. Dewey, who h a d taken the librarianship of the State Library, kept it under his supervision. In 1926 it was brought back to Columbia to be united with the School of Library Service, newly established. At the same time, the Library School of the New York Public Library, founded in 1911, was likewise incorporated into the Columbia School. T h e American Correspondence School of Librarianship, of Syracuse, N. Y., established in December, 1923, was absorbed by Columbia in March, 1928. T h e School of Business became an integral part of the University in September, 1916. Begun as a group of evening courses first taught in 1911 under the administration of University Extension, it soon developed an enterprise too vigorous and wide for its environs, whereat the Trustees established a separate school in February, 1916, with Professor J a m e s Chidester Egbert as director. T o d a y it is book of American history, and $1,000 each for the best novel by an American, the best original American drama played in New York, the best American biography, and the best American volume of verse. He founded at the same time five Pulitzer Traveling Scholarships, three of which are granted annually to graduates of the School of Journalism for a year's study in Europe, one of the others being awarded to a talented student of music in America, and one to a deserving art student. In addition Pulitzer's will provided for five yearly prizes in journalism, as follows: a $500 gold medal for the most meritorious service by an American newspaper; $500 to a foreign or Washington correspondent for noteworthy reporting; $500 for distinguished news editorial writing; $1,000 for a reporter for distinguished reporting of some public matter; $500 for a noteworthy cartoon.

T H E PLAN O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y

23

housed in the School of Business building with its parent, University Extension. The enrollment in 1936 was nearly 400. The University took charge of University Extension, then known as Extension Teaching, in 1910, when it was transferred from Teachers College where it had originated as a unit designed for older students unable to attend college in the regular and established courses. University Extension is Columbia's contribution to adult education. The courses given under Extension, known as University Classes, as such do not lead to a degree, but much of the work may be so credited when taken under an established faculty. There was in 1936 an enrollment of about 4,000. University Extension cooperates with the Greater New York Federation of Churches through its Department of Religious Education. Quarters of Extension were first in Low Memorial Library but were moved to Philosophy Hall, then to University Hall, and finally to the School of Business. The Institute of Arts and Sciences forms the non-academic division of University Extension. The scope of the Institute includes single lectures and short series of not over six lectures each on history, literature, art, music, geography, science, and current economic and social problems. It comprises also illustrated travel lectures, recitals, dramatic readings, and vocal, instrumental, and chamber music concerts. The program of approximately two hundred meetings, subscribed for as a whole, at $15 for one ticket, $25 for two, continues from October to April. There are no entrance requirements and no credit is given. The Institute was established by the Trustees in 1913 to provide evening education for adults wishing to keep abreast of current thought among the arts. The Home Study branch of University Extension was established in 1919, the courses being given without academic credit. In recent years Home Study has had offices at 15 Amsterdam Avenue in the old Vanderbilt Clinic. In 1936 the Trustees abolished this branch of Extension. The Professional Courses in Optometry, conducted in Pupin Physics Laboratories, cover a period of four years consisting of two collegiate years and two professional years leading to the B. S. degree. Teachers College, with its divisions of Education and Practical Arts, includes the following units: Horace Mann School, Lincoln School, New College, the Advanced School of Education, the In-

24

GUIDE T O COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

stitute of Educational Research, the International Institute of Education, the Child Development Institute, the Institute of School Experimentation, the Institute of Practical Arts Research, and the Bureau of Publications. The registration approximated 6,000 in 1936. Some distance south of Morningside, at West 68th Street, just east of Broadway, is situated the College of Pharmacy. The registration in 1936 was more than 400. At Medical Center, about two miles north of Morningside on Broadway at 168th Street, are located the graduate and professional schools of Medicine and Dentistry, together with the Vanderbilt Clinic, the Presbyterian Hospital (including the Institute of Ophthalmology and the School of Nursing), the Sloane Hospital for Women, the Squier Urological Clinic, the Babies Hospital, the Neurological Institute, the New York Psychiatric Hospital and Research Institute, and the DeLamar Institute of Public Health. The New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital is on Second Avenue. 1 The Institute of Cancer Research is temporarily installed at Morningside Heights. In 1936 approximately 700 students were matriculants in the Medical and Dental schools in the four-year courses leading to the M.D. and D.D.S. degrees, respectively, entrance being based on at least three years of college work. A three-year basic professional course was planned for 1937-38, of undergraduate rank, leading to a diploma in nursing from the Presbyterian Hospital. The affairs of the Medical Center are governed by a joint administrative board. The University meets the cost of all scientific and educational work connected with Presbyterian Hospital and makes all nominations to the hospital staff. The Summer Session, which includes both undergraduate and graduate courses and which has charge of Camp Columbia at Lakeside, Conn., was begun in 1900 with an enrollment of 417. Dr. Butler was the first director. Headquarters are in Low Memorial Library. Of six weeks' duration, a total of 1,057 courses were given in 1936 and nearly 12,000 students were enrolled. The Summer Session directs courses in surveying and field practice at Camp Columbia, which is expressly equipped for such work. 2 Field sur1

See page 167. The camp is situated at Bantam Lake, in the Berkshire hills, about seven miles from Litchfield. The elevation is one thousand feet. The site is reached by the New Haven Railroad, the station being Bantam, on the Litchfield branch, 2

T H E PLAN O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y

25

veys were first conducted from 1877 to 1882 in Central and Morningside Parks. In 1883 the course was carried on at a private house and farm on the east shore of Bantam Lake, and the use of other properties on the north shore was given. In 1890 a farm of 125 acres near the south shore was leased, with such continued success that the University in 1903 purchased this property as well as four adjoining farms. In that year the Summer School of Surveying was established permanently at Camp Columbia, and in 1908 the Summer School of Geodesy, located on Cape Cod at Osterville, was moved there. The following institutions afford educational work in relation to the University which is partly or entirely subject to the jurisdiction of the University Council: Union Theological Seminary; School of Tropical Medicine at San Juan, Puerto Rico; National Institute of Public Administration; and Greenwich House, a center of research in social work. The association of Union Theological Seminary with Columbia originated unofficially when Seminary students began attending lectures at Columbia when the former institution was at 700 Park Avenue and the latter in nearby East 50th Street. This association was formally recognized and regulated in 1928. The faculty of the Seminary now has the status of a University faculty in the Columbia system through representation on the University Council and is empowered to recommend candidates for the M.A. degree. The Seminary in turn opens its courses and its library to qualified Columbia students. Though originally Presbyterian, Union has long been interdenominational, admitting Catholics and Jews as well as Protestants. The buildings are situated across from Horace Mann School in the block bounded by Broadway and Claremont Avenue, ninety-nine miles from the Grand Central Station in New York. Bantam is a three-mile drive from the camp. The postoffice is at Morris, Conn. Bantam Lake, only half a mile from the camp, is three miles long, two-thirds of a mile wide, twenty-five feet deep; black bass abound in it. The potable water is supplied by a spring less than half a mile from the site. The tract of the camp contains 585 acres, having an administration building, instrument house, astronomical observatory, kitchen and dining hall, Y.M.C.A. building, dormitories, boathouse, a building containing lavatories and baths, barns, and other farm buildings. Ten or twelve instructors and 180 students can be accommodated. The Y.M.C.A. building was erected in 1905, the gift of Marcellus Hartley Dodge, '03. East Hall, a three-story frame dormitory, built in 1909, was blown down by a gale in 1925 and replaced. In 1934 a new dining hall was constructed. A sundial, the gift of Hewitt Crosby, '33, M.S. Civil Engineering, was placed in front of the recreation building in 1933. A ski-jump was erected during the winter of 193536 by the alumni of Columbia College.

26

GUIDE T O COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

120th and 122nd Streets, and are Gothic, in Magdalen style. T h e cornerstone of the principal building was laid in 1908. Columbia is affiliated with the University of Puerto Rico through the School of Tropical Medicine of that institution, which since 1926 has been under the auspices of Columbia University. This unit is discussed more fully in a later chapter. T h e Institute of Public Administration, originally the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, is permanently affiliated with Columbia under an administrative board constituted jointly by the Trustees of the University and the Trustees of the Institute. T h e Institute is primarily a research agency in government and public administration. Greenwich House, a social settlement situated at 44 Barrow Street, serves as a clinical auxiliary to university courses in the social sciences. It has workshops at 16 Jones Street, conducts a health center, including baby and pre-school clinics, and a music school. Shops are maintained for woodcarving, stonecutting, drawing, and modeling, and there are also a pottery department, a recreation center for clubs, athletics, plays, and dances, and facilities for domestic science instruction for girls. Some living quarters are available. An agreement was made in 1929 to affiliate the house with Columbia, allowing the community center to retain its independence financially and in management. Four appointees of the University sit on the Greenwich House board of managers. In most of the schools and faculties described above a great many scholarships, fellowships, and prizes are awarded to deserving students, while loan funds are also provided in limited amount. There are eight specialized educational agencies which operate at Morningside: Columbia University Press, Columbia University Statistical Bureau, Deutsches Haus, Maison Française, Casa Italiana, Casa de las Españas, Japanese Culture Center. These are discussed elsewhere in this manual. Columbia enjoys relations with other educational and research institutions. T h e Metropolitan Museum of Art admits students of Columbia and provides special facilities for their studies. T h e New York Botanical Garden makes available to Columbia its laboratories and floral properties and allows the University to conduct courses in botany there. T h e director is a member of the Faculty of Pure Science. The New York School of Social Work, 122 East 22nd

THE PLAN OF THE UNIVERSITY

27

Street, conducted by the Charity Organization Society, is at the disposal of students who wish to pursue courses. In addition to the Vanderbilt Clinic and the Sloane Hospital for Women, the general and special hospitals of the city afford clinical fields. The College of Physicians and Surgeons, which is allied with Presbyterian Hospital, is also represented on the staff of many other institutions. There are close official relations between Columbia and the Training Schools for Public Service, the Hispanic Society of America, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the New York Zoological Garden, the New York Aquarium, and the laboratories at Woods Hole, Mass., and Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. The office of the Treasurer of the University is situated at 76 William Street. THE

QUADRANGLES

Morningside Heights is one of the most elevated spots on Manhattan Island. Though Columbia is its biggest and best known tenant, the Heights is also the home of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, St. Luke's Hospital, the Riverside Church, Union Theological Seminary, the Juilliard School of Music, International House,1 the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Grant's Tomb. 1 This is a large brick residence hall for foreign and American students, men and women, situated at 500 Riverside Drive, a stone's throw from Grant's T o m b . Opened in 1924, it was the first of the International Houses on university campuses to be built by J o h n D. Rockefeller, J r . T h e idea had been presented by H a r r y E. E d m o n d s and his wife Florence Q u a y Edmonds. There are accommodations for 525. Most of the residents are, though they do not have to be, students at Columbia. T h e building, of classic exterior, has a high portico on whose pediment is inscribed T H A T B R O T H E R H O O D MAY P R E V A I L . T h e Great Hall is the m a i n entrance; its walls are embellished with paintings by Arthur B. Davies, given by Mrs. J o h n D. Rockefeller, J r . Notable are the reception room, furnished in the D u n c a n Phyfe period; the Home Room, in the southwest corner overlooking the Drive and the Hudson, furnished in early American period with paneled walls, recessed windows; the Women's Social Room, furnished in the period of Q u e e n A n n e ; the Men's Social Room, in early American period; the Refectory, in Georgian; off the Refectory the Waffle Wing, decorated in green trellises; the Bazaar, gay in color with interesting gifts that students bring from m a n y countries to sell. T h e Assembly Hall occupies the second floor rear of the central court. Replica of a New England meeting house, having over-hanging galleries, palladian windows, crystal chandelier, and paneled ceiling, it seats a thousand a n d is used for Sunday suppers, dances, and musicals. There is a separate entrance on the Drive. T h e gymnasium on the main floor is equipped with handball courts, lockers, and showers. There is a library for recreational reading. An ample one-story garage for accommodating student automobiles was erected in the rear of the house in 1936. T h e roof space is devoted to two clay tennis courts for resident use.

28

GUIDE T O COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

T h e University buildings fall naturally into three groups, the principal one being situated on the north side of 116th Street, extending to 120th Street. This includes the U p p e r Q u a d r a n g l e and the Green. 1 A second group, South Quadrangle, is situated on the south side of 116th Street, extending to 114th Street, bounded on the east by Amsterdam Avenue and on the west by Broadway. T h e third group, East Quadrangle, is bounded by A m s t e r d a m Avenue, Morningside Drive, 116th a n d 117th Streets. T h e r e are sixty-nine buildings in all on Morningside: twenty-four in the group between 114th and 120th Streets, four on the East Quadrangle, ten on West 117th Street, four on Claremont Avenue, twenty in the Teachers College section, and seven on the Barnard quadrangles. Architecturally, Columbia is notable among the older group of universities of this country, for, like the University of Virginia, it planned its buildings a n d quadrangles for indefinite years. A vital architecture must be beautiful, creative, and practical, a n d Columbia fortunately chose such an architecture when construction at Morningside Heights was first begun in 1895, employing the flexible style of the Italian Renaissance. T o d a y the University finds that this style can without discord be adapted to the modern instrumental trends. For example, the more recent of Columbia's academic halls at Morningside, such as Schermerhorn Extension and Pupin Physics Laboratories, are more utilitarian in pattern than the earlier halls a n d yet are architecturally compatible with them. T h e buildings are nearly all of red, overburned H a r v a r d brick, with I n d i a n a limestone trimmings a n d copper roofs. T h e y range in height from nine to fourteen stories, the n u m b e r of stories being governed somewhat by the difference in elevation of the quadrangles. Charles Follen M c K i m planned the majority of the group a n d his architectural genius is commemorated in the pavement in South Court, where a tablet 2 was placed in front of the statue Alma Mater in 1910. Inscription: CHARLES FOLLEN MCKIM ARCHITECT MDCCCXLVII-MDCCCCIX DESVPER ARTIFICIS SPECTANT MONVMENTA PER ANNOS 'At Harvard the name for the college enclosure is Yard, derived from the place where in the early days the cattle, taken in payment of tuition, were kept. T h e word Campus probably came into use at Princeton. At Columbia the name, from the beginning, has been Green, though since Columbia moved to Morningside, Green has been used in reference only to the northern plateau beyond University Hall. Other sections are referred to as Quadrangles. 1 "The monuments [of an artist] look down upon us throughout the ages." T h e author of this inscription was the Rev. Marvin Richardson Vincent, '54,

T H E PLAN O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y

29

Low Memorial Library, completed in 1897, is the central feature of the buildings which form the Upper Quadrangle. This group includes, on the east, Alumni House, Kent Hall, Philosophy Hall, St. Paul's Chapel, Avery Hall, and Fayerweather Hall; on the north, Schermerhorn Hall, Schermerhorn Extension, University Hall, Havemeyer Hall, Chandler Laboratories, and Pupin Physics Laboratories 1 ; on the west, School of Engineering, Earl Hall, School of Mines, School of Business. The South Quadrangle contains, on the east, Hamilton Hall, Hartley Hall, Livingston Hall, and John Jay Hall; on the south, South Hall; on the west, School of Journalism and Furnald Hall. O n the East Quadrangle are the President's House, Faculty House, Crocker Research Laboratory, Johnson Hall, and several greenhouses. Four foreign houses face this quadrangle on West 117th Street: Maison Française (411), Deutsches Haus (423), Casa de las Espanas (435), and Casa Italiana, which is at the northeast corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 117th Street. The College Entrance Examination Board has quarters next to the Casa de las Espanas at 431 and 433 West 117th Street. Immediately to the east at 429 is a house similar in character to the other buildings; this is devoted to the International Institute of Social Research. The other buildings are the following: T h e Institute of International Affairs (421), the Geological Society of America (419), the residences of Dean Joseph Warren Barker, Dean Herbert Edwin Hawkes, Chaplain Raymond Collyer Knox, and Dean William Fletcher Russell (417, 415, 413, 409), and the offices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (407 and 405). Columbia has largely solved its faculty residence problem by purchasing a number of apartment houses on the Heights. Four of these houses, ten and eleven stories high, are situated on the west side of Claremont Avenue, facing Barnard College. They contain 128 apartments, 825 rooms in all. They were secured in 1920 for the use of university officers and their families, but before the erection of Johnson Hall and Hewitt Hall they served as dormitories for Trustee 1889-1913. McKim received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in 1904 from Columbia. From 1905 until his death in 1909 he was director of the M c K i m Atelier in the School of Architecture. (In the following pages buildings will be specified whose design is attributable to architects other than McK i m , Mead, and White.) 1 Schermerhorn Extension, Chandler Laboratories, and Pupin Physics Laboratories are situated on the Green.

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G U I D E T O COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y

women graduate students and students of Barnard. They are now used for the purpose intended. Tompkins Hall, at 21 Claremont Avenue, is 85 feet square and ten stories high. It was named for Daniel D. Tompkins, of the class of 1795, onetime Vice-President of the United States and Governor of New York. In 1921 a men's infirmary was established in this building, and an infirmary for women residents of the Claremont Avenue halls was established in Brooks Hall the same year. The men's infirmary was transferred to John J a y and the women's to Johnson Hall upon the completion of those buildings. Charles King Hall, at 29 Claremont Avenue, and Gouverneur Morris Hall, at 35, are twin structures, each 87 by 57 feet, eleven stories high. The former, first called John Jay Hall, was rechristened Charles King in 1926 after the Trustees had voted to give the name of John J a y to the new dormitory on South Quadrangle. Charles King was president of Columbia College from 1849 to 1864. Gouverneur Morris was named for the renowned American statesman, a member of the class of 1768. Like Tompkins, in the 1920s these two houses went through a transitional period of service to women graduate students. They now provide faculty families with apartments of seven and eight rooms. DeWitt Clinton Hall, at 39 Claremont Avenue, is 100 by 83 feet. The apartments are mainly of five and six rooms. Shordy after Columbia acquired the four buildings on Claremont Avenue, two additional apartment houses were bought, situated on Riverside Drive between 116th and 119th Streets. These are twelve stories high and have a combined frontage of 125 feet. The Aqua Vista is at 460, while the Monte Vista adjoins it at 464. Both are occupied to a considerable extent by members of the faculty. King's Crown Hotel, at 420 West 116th Street, facing East Quadrangle, is also owned by Columbia and provides some residence facilities for officers and guests of the University. Barnard College is situated on Broadway immediately west of Upper Quadrangle and occupies the land extending from 116th to 120th Streets. The buildings are: Milbank Hall, Brinckerhoff Hall, Fiske Hall, Barnard Hall, Brooks Hall, and Hewitt Hall. An additional plot on Riverside Drive, lying between 119th and 120th Streets, was acquired in 1936. At present it is partly occupied by an

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old structure called Riverside Building, which will later give place to a new academic hall. The main group of Teachers College buildings occupies the block between 120th and 121st Streets, direcdy north of the Green. The buildings are: Main Hall, Russell Hall, Milbank Memorial Hall, Macy Hall, Grace Dodge Hall, Thompson Hall, Lowell Annex, Macy Annex, Horace Mann School, Whittier, Emerson, and Lowell halls, and Bancroft Hall. Others are: Seth Low Hall, Grant Hall, Sarasota Hall, Speyer Hall, Horace Mann School for Boys, Lincoln School, and the Lincoln Research Building. 1 The Medical School of the University (the College of Physicians and Surgeons) and the School of Dental and Oral Surgery are a part of the Medical Center which was incepted jointly by the University and by Presbyterian Hospital. Situated on a plot given by Anna Richardson Harkness, bounded by West 165th Street, Broadway, West 168th Street, and Riverside Drive, the main buildings were opened in 1928. Bard Hall, situated at Haven Avenue and West 169th Street, the gift of Edward Stephen Harkness, is a residence hall for medical students and officers. The College of Pharmacy is situated on West 68th Street between Broadway and Columbus Avenue. Baker Field comprises twenty-eight acres bounded by West 218th Street, Broadway, and the Harlem Ship Canal. It provides the varsity football stadium and is the University's athletic center. On the Harlem River are located the Edwin Gould Boathouse and the Class of '97 Boathouse. Exclusive of the Medical Center, the plant of Columbia stands on about seventy-eight acres of land in New York City. In addition, Camp Columbia, at Lakeside, Conn., covers about 585 acres. A stone-walled tunnel, a story under ground, links most of the structures on the Morningside quadrangles. The official purpose of the system is to permit access to the pipes and conduits leading to the various buildings from the central heating and power plant in University Hall. Unofficially, it proves a boon to students and officers in bad weather. There is a model of buildings and grounds of King's College in the Columbiana Room in Low Library, a present of McKim, Mead, and White for the 175th anniversary. No model exists for the 1 See pages 144-147.

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GUIDE T O COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

49th Street site, though there are plans for one. The Morningside campus model, located in the sub-basement of Kent Hall, was made for the St. Louis Exposition in 1904 and was given to the University in 1905 by Frederick Augustus Schermerhorn. It is of plaster-ofParis and measures 20 by 35 feet. O n a scale of one-quarter inch to the foot, it includes the buildings of Columbia, Barnard, and Teachers College. Not the least of the responsibilities of a university is the operation and maintenance of its buildings and plant. In the case of Columbia, these duties are the business of the Department of Buildings and Grounds, which was first organized in July, 1886, when the buildings were all located at 49th Street. T h e department operates in much the same way today as it did then, though its duties are many times greater. It is headed by a director who is responsible to the President of the University, and who sees to the operation and maintenance of the Morningside plant as well as of Baker Field. An assistant director in residence at Medical Center is in charge of the Medical and Dental Schools and of the Vanderbilt Clinic. Teachers College has its own maintenance staff and heating plant. At Barnard functions similar to those of the Director of Buildings and Grounds are performed by an official called the Comptroller. T H E F E N C E , GATES, A N D

GREEN

The fence and the various gates of the Upper Quadrangle and of the Green were contributed at different times. The ornamental iron fence, with its granite posts and base, which encloses the northern end of the Morningside site, touches on Broadway, on 120th Street, and on Amsterdam Avenue. It was built in 1896 at a cost of $65,000. During the following summer the Mapes Memorial Gate was placed at the campus entrance at 119th Street and Broadway, as a memorial to Herbert Mapes, '90 Arts, '92 Mines, the gift of friends and classmates. Lienau and Nash were the architects. There is an entrance for vehicles in the center through double gates, and on either side a single gate with sidewalk. The total width is forty feet, the height about twenty-four feet. The iron cornice crosses the entire width and supports ornamental pediments. The seals of the Province and of the City of New York appear above the side entrances, and in the central portion is placed the seal of New York State supported by eagles, and the date of erection, the whole

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being surmounted by an unauthentic adaptation of the University seal.1 The left granite post bears the inscription IN MEMORIAM, H E R B E R T MAPES '90 ARTS '92 MINES OBIIT 1891. T h e right bears a wreath of laurel and a palm. The gate at the north entrance to the Green was presented by the class of 1882 on Commencement Day, 1898. Of wrought-iron, it bears the inscription, in raised Roman capital letters, CLASS OF 1882. In 1913 fifteen lampposts, designed by Henry Bacon, were placed on the campus, the gift of William Fellowes Morgan, '80. The following summer, gates for the entrance on Amsterdam Avenue and 119th Street, opposite the Mapes gates, were given by the class of 1888 College and Mines. Designed by Arthur Alexander Stoughton, '88, they resemble the Mapes gates, being composed of wrought-iron pilasters bearing palm branches, with open-work lettering in wrought scrollwork. T h e central gate, at the level of the eye, bears on a bronze tablet, the motto IN LUMINE T U O VIDEBIMUS LUMEN (In Thy light we shall see light). This is surmounted by a crown intended to symbolize the University. The north gate bears the motto IPSA SCIENTIA POTESTAS (Science itself is power). The compass and other instruments symbolize the School of Mines. The south gate bears the motto EX L I T T E R I S L I B E R T A S (From letters springs liberty). The open book and mirror symbolize the School of Arts. Inscription on lower tablets: T H E G I F T O F T H E CLASS O F 1888 SCHOOLS O F ARTS AND MINES

A T O K E N O F L O Y A L T Y T O ALMA M A T E R T W E N T Y

This gateway is forty-six feet wide and the peak of the middle gate is twenty-three feet high. The gates were designed by a member of the School of Mines and were forged like medieval ironwork. An ornamental fence, including a gate and steps, connecting the School of Mines and the School of Engineering on Broadway, was given at the 1916 commencement by the class of 1891 Arts and Mines. It matches the other fences and gates. T h e steps are inscribed in bronze letters GATES F E N C E A N D STEPS O F THIS CLOSE P R E S E N T E D YEARS A F T E R G R A D U A T I O N

BY CLASS O F 1 8 9 1

What at Columbia is known as the Green comprises an area of about three acres to the north of the central group of buildings, where the land falls twenty-five feet. The semicircular apses of Schermerhorn, University, and Havemeyer project northward into ' I t is unauthentic in the respect that the buxom lady who is usually sitting now stands and her tots have grown to sturdy lads.

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this tract. In addition it contains Chandler Laboratories on the west, Schermerhorn Extension on the east, and Pupin Physics Laboratories on its northwest corner. The Wilde Observatory and Transit House, no longer in use, are situated near the juncture of the west and north fences. Originally the Green was beautified by chestnut trees, but the excavations for the swimming pool in the basement of University Hall underdrained and killed them. Today a younger growth of oaks, maples, and a few evergreens affords shade and verdure. The Great God Pan, a colossal bronze statue by George Grey Barnard, stands in the northeast corner of the Green. Presented by Edward Severin Clark in 1907, it was originally sketched in Paris, where in 1900 it received a gold medal at the Paris Exposition. It was executed in this country in 1895 and cast in 1898 by the HenryBonnard Bronze Company. With its base it weighs more than three tons and at the time was the largest bronze figure ever cast, being more than eleven feet long and more than five feet wide. The pagan god lies on a knoll, playing a reed pipe. The base is a polished green granite plinth, from the face of which water is designed to flow from three bronze lions' heads into a granite basin and then into a circular pool. These are surrounded by a tiled pavement, with an exedra of pink granite in a semicircle at the back.