Midtown campus
Columbia was located at a Midtown campus from the 1857 to the 1890s, between Madison Ave and Park Ave (when it was just uncovered tracks for the New York Central Railroad) from 49th to 50th streets. It has also been referred to as the Madison Avenue campus and the 49th Street campus. The campus was originally the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb.
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.
Contents
Acquisition
In 1853 the trustees of Columbia College had decided to move out of College Hall on the Park Place campus, whose surrounding neighborhood had transformed into a bustling commercial warehouse district by the 1840s. Deadlock over whether to move the school onto the undeveloped Upper Estate was broken when the trustees managed to score a real estate coup. They found out that the property formerly occupied by the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb was up for sale in June of 1856 for just $100,000. After haggling the price down to $63,000, the trustees bought the land and the 11,000 sq foot building on it on October 6. 4 months later the trustees sold off the land under College Hall for nearly $600,000 and laughed all the way to the bank.
Development
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. The School of Mines was also established for the first time on the midtown campus.
Frederick A. P. Barnard managed to brow-beat the trustees into spending money on the campus and adding buildings in addition to the inherited ones.
Departure
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.
Gallery
Layout of the Midtown campus
Scenes of the Midtown campus from Harper's Magazine
First law school building
College library on the Midtown campus
Colour-tinted photo of the School of Mines building, 1878
1887 Harper's Weekly montage of famous Columbia professors and Midtown campus scenes, including one of the college's short-lived Zoological Museum
An 1891 montage of the Midtown campus law school in celebration of the career of Theodore Dwight
Black and white version of the image at the top of the article
