420 West 116th Street

420 West 116th Street (sometimes referred to as King's Crown) is a law school-only apartment building managed by University Apartment Housing with furnished and unfurnished studios and one bedroom apartments, as well as a single two-bedroom unit on the top (10th) floor. Its ground floor is also home to the Deutsches Haus, which hosts academic, cultural and social events of Columbia's Department of Germanic Languages.

History

Built in 1907 as a hotel, the building hosted the Hotel Westminster and later the Hotel King's Crown. The building was purchased in the 1970s by the Trustees of Columbia University and transformed into residence units for Law School faculty and students.

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages

• Unbeatable proximity to the Law School main building (across the street)
• Easy access to both the 1 train (via Campus) and the B, C trains (via Morningside Park)
• Hardwood floors in most units

Disadvantages

• "D" units only have windows on a tiny shaft that does not let direct sunshine into the apartment. Since the "view" is basically the concrete wall of the "Little Warren" building (410 W 116th Street) literally at your fingertips, these units are very dark, especially on the lower floors.
• The only elevator is extremely slow and often out of order
• Cockroaches in some units
• Poor insulation

Famous residents

Physicist Leó Szilárd and Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi lived in King's Crown Hotel in the late 1930s. Their accidental encounter in the King's Crown Hotel's lobby in January 1939 led to "one of the more colorful - and contentious - partnerships in the history of science" and turned out to be of fundamental importance for the success of the Manhattan Project.

Pictures

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