Hamilton Hall
Hamilton Hall is the headquarters of Columbia College, and as such holds the office of the College Dean, the Admissions Office and the office of the Core Curriculum. Hamilton is also home to a number of humanities departments, and is where many humanities classes, especially those in the Core Curriculum, are held. The building is named after famed Columbia dropout Alexander Hamilton, whose visage graces a smart statue out front.
Contents
History
Origins and construction
When the University moved to Morningside Heights in 1897, it 'forgot' to dedicate any of the buildings on the campus to the College. When a building was requested, they were basically told to "get your own." The alumni hemmed and hawed and despite lots of talk, couldn't come up with the money (a recurring theme in Columbia history. See: University Hall, Morningside Park Gym.)
Eventually some New York philanthropist who wasn't even connected to Columbia donated the money to erect a building. His name is inscribed on the floor of Hamilton's lobby. By this point there wasn't even any space left on the original campus, which only consisted of the area between 116th and 120th streets. It wasn't until 190? that Columbia bought the next two empty blocks to keep encroaching developement from arriving at their front steps. It was on this new plot of land that, in 1907, the College's building was finally built.
Takeover attempts
As the administrative center of the College, Hamilton, like the university center of Low Library, has been subject to various protests' attempts, some successful, to occupy it in order to fulfill some demand or another. The first and most famous such takeover occurred in 1968. The famous protests of that year began when students took over the building and imprisoned acting College Dean Henry Coleman in his first floor office. The 1968 protests escalated when black protesters declared Hamilton their turf, ejecting whites to Low.
Subsequent takeover attempts have traditionally involved attempts to broaden the College's and the university's curricular offerings in various ethnic studies programs, or to expand administrative support for minority students. This is perhaps why the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race is located in Hamilton today. Recurrent occupations occurred in 1972 (for Latino Studies), 1987 (after a racially-motivated beating shocked campus), and 1996 (when students went on a hunger strike to demand an Ethnic Studies department). In all three cases, the protesting students' demands were met, though often years (and sometimes decades) later.
Renovations
At the turn of the Millenium, Hamilton got a major makeover. Many of its classrooms were gutted and renovated (many of the rooms have sponsors; look for the placques outside each room). The lobby also got a major facelift, though no one read that memo that plain plaster walls and columns aren't really that impressive. However, Dean Quigley did manage to dig up two awesome Tiffany stained glass windows to have installed in the lobby. More than a century old, the pieces represent Lit Hum authors Virgil and Sophocles.[1] Small exhibition cabinets near either stairwell depict artifacts from the history of the Core Curriculum.
Idiosyncracies
Having a class on the upper reaches of the building sentences one to an excruciating stair climb or a long wait for the one tiny elevator. Students have been known to select Lit Hum and CC classes solely on the basis of the least flights of stairs to climb. Incomprehensibly, the most spacious classrooms are at the top of the building, meaning the greater proportion of students using Hamilton have a long vertical journey.
Empty Hamilton rooms are open for studying in the evenings during finals, and are often used as club meeting spaces during the semester.
The basement bathrooms are among the nicest on campus, with the possible exception of the marble lavatories of Low Library.
Department offices
- American Studies
- Ancient Studies
- Asian-American Studies (Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race)
- Classics
- Comparative Ethnic Studies (Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race)
- Germanic Languages and Literatures
- Italian
- Latino Studies (Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race)
- Slavic Languages and Literatures
Other offices
- Center for the Core Curriculum
- Office of the Dean of Columbia College
- Office of Undergraduate Admissions
