Uris Hall
Uris Hall housed, until 2022, Columbia Business School. It has also housed Uris Deli and a loud library, the Business and Economics Library. It is named for donors Harold Uris and Percy Uris.
There are also top secret meeting rooms there, but they're secret, so I can't write about them here. Perhaps the kind of places where one might find Bain Lehman, the bastard love-child of Merrill Stanley and JPSachs.
Contents
History
Uris Hall was built on the foundation for the never-completed University Hall. Its design, by the firm Moore & Hutchins, was intended to continue (or at least reflect) the campus north-south axis of monumental stone-faced buildings; its strong vertical element attempted to echo the columns of Butler and Low Libraries. Despite this, the building was considered so ugly that architecture students picketed its dedication in 1964, holding signs reading "No More Mudds". Despite an attempted to rein in its ugliness with a 1984 addition, it remains among the ugliest campus buildings to this day.
The space between Uris and Low Library is the Frank Whittemore Abrams Court, in honor of the former chairman of the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey (and honorary degree recipient (L.L.D.) in 1955), as part of larger gift from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.[1] The Court featured a pair of fountains that shot jets of water 8 feet into the air.[2] They are long gone.
In 1978, the building was occupied by protesters demanding divestment from apartheid South Africa. In the 80s, a slightly nicer facade was stuck on the front, in an obvious attempt to soften the building's appearance.
In an attempt to give its students their own exclusive space, the Business School set about in recent years to deter undergraduates from using the building, revoking the ability to use Dining Dollars at the deli, removing Flex capacity from the copiers, and placing the building's computers on a separate network.
Not content with these moves, the Business School has announced its intention to move to a new facility within the planned Manhattanville campus. It was unclear what would really occupy Uris following the school's relocation. Demolition and replacement may be one option that would satisfy the building's architectural detractors, though it is more likely the building will be employed for some expedient use, such as academic office space. The somewhat scattered and occasionally itinerant Economics Department is a natural choice to occupy at least part of the space. Yet even this move is not so simple, as there were rumors that the engineering school wants to claim the first four floors for classroom space.
The staff the university put in charge of this question did not really answer it, voting to make Uris a "swing space" for many uses.[3] Undoubtedly, many departments will try to claim space there, and a great many bureaucratic battles will be fought to determine who gets Uris into the future.
Photos
Uris with Curl
Protests at Uris Hall's dedication, 1961
Uris Hall on completion in 1961, without the recently added extension on the entrance
Rendering of the new addition to Uris's facade
External links
- Uris, A Monumental Offense - Spec op-ed by Chris Szabla, demanding Uris' immediate demolition
