Midtown campus

Aerial view of the Midtown campus

Columbia's campus from the 1850s to the 1890s was located between Madison Ave and Park Ave (when it was just uncovered tracks for the New York Central Railroad) from 49th to 51st streets. It has also been referred to as the Madison Avenue campus and the 49th Street campus.

The architectural style of the campus was neo-gothic, and it included both the first iteration of Hamilton Hall and the first law school building.

Once the land became too valuable and space too cramped, Seth Low moved the school to the Morningside Heights campus, where it became, for the first time, Columbia University.

A common misconception is that this campus once encompassed Rockefeller Center, but it did not, although Columbia did own the land under Rockefeller Center into the 1980s. However, the townhouse that first housed Barnard College may have been located in a corner of Rockefeller Center.

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  Scenes of the Midtown campus from Harper's Magazine

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  First law school building

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  College library on the Midtown campus

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  Colour-tinted photo of the School of Mines building, 1878

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  1887 Harper's Weekly montage of famous Columbia professors and Midtown campus scenes, including one of the college's short-lived Zoological Museum