Hamilton Hall
1130 Amsterdam Avenue | also 500 West 116th Street, 1100 Amsterdam Avenue | Morningside Heights | built 1912
Open on the map13 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1907
The current Hamilton Hall opens on the Morningside Heights campus
McKim, Mead & White's neoclassical Hamilton Hall opened in 1907, replacing an 1878 building of the same name from Columbia's old Madison Avenue campus. The following year a statue of Alexander Hamilton by sculptor William Ordway Partridge was installed outside its entrance.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1968
Student protesters occupy Hamilton Hall, starting the Columbia strike
After a rally at the campus sundial and a clash with police at the site of Columbia's planned gymnasium in Morningside Park, students took over Hamilton Hall, which held classrooms and Columbia College offices. Acting dean Henry S. Coleman was kept in his office for about 24 hours. The next morning about 60 Black student activists asked the mostly white SDS members to leave and held the building themselves. Police cleared it peacefully on April 30.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1968
Protesters keep acting dean Henry Coleman in his Hamilton Hall office for 24 hours
Following the April 23, 1968 takeover of Hamilton Hall, Mark Rudd said that acting dean Henry S. Coleman would stay a hostage until the protesters' demands were met. Coleman had made his way past the protesters into his office, and he was held there with College administrators William Kahn and Dan Carlinsky while furniture kept him from leaving. He was given food and was freed about 24 hours later.
“Along with College administrators William Kahn and Dan Carlinsky, Coleman was detained as a hostage in his office…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1968
Eighty-six Black students evict the white protesters from Hamilton Hall and take sole control
Hamilton Hall stayed racially integrated only briefly after the April 23, 1968 occupation. By early on April 24, the eighty-six Black students inside had evicted the white students. Leaders of the Student Afro Society later explained that the looser, spontaneous politics of the white protesters got in the way of their own specific goals, and the occupiers renamed the building Malcolm X Liberation College.
Source: exhibitions.library.columbia.edu
- 1968
H. Rap Brown reads the Hamilton Hall occupiers' statement on April 26
On Friday, April 26, 1968, H. Rap Brown read a statement from the Black students occupying Hamilton Hall. Over that last week of April the occupiers had built an organized, tight-knit and disciplined community, quite unlike the noisier mood in other occupied buildings such as Mathematics. They also rejected the administration's early offers of compromise.
Source: exhibitions.library.columbia.edu
- 1968
The Black students march calmly out of Hamilton Hall as police clear the campus
Police entered the barricaded building in the early hours of April 30, 1968. The administration had waited a week before calling them in, partly out of fear that forcibly removing the Student Afro Society occupiers would set off a violent reaction in nearby Harlem. The students avoided any struggle and walked out the main entrance to police vans waiting on College Walk.
Source: exhibitions.library.columbia.edu
- 1985
Students blockade Hamilton Hall to demand divestment from apartheid South Africa
Seven members of the Coalition for a Free South Africa, who had been fasting since March 25, chained the front doors of Hamilton Hall shut and sat on its steps; within hours the protest had grown to well over a hundred students. The blockade lasted three weeks, until April 25, and the building came to be called Mandela Hall. On October 7, 1985, all 24 Columbia trustees voted to divest the university's remaining investments with South African connections.
Source: zinnedproject.org
- 1985
Jesse Jackson tells some 5,000 students on Hamilton's steps that South African policy is wrong
The 1985 divestment protest began on April 4 with seven students at the entrance of Hamilton Hall and grew into a movement lasting 21 days. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson spoke to about 5,000 students on the building's steps. He argued that it was wrong for a democracy to be South Africa's top trading partner. About a third of Columbia's endowment was then invested in companies doing business there.
Source: aljazeera.com
- 1992
Students blockade Hamilton Hall for six hours to oppose demolishing the Audubon Ballroom
In 1992 students blockaded Hamilton Hall to oppose Columbia's plan to demolish part of the Audubon Theater and Ballroom, the site of Malcolm X's assassination in 1965, and put a biomedical research complex there. The university had reached an agreement with city authorities in 1989 to build a biotech center on the site. The blockade ended after six hours, with three students suspended and disciplinary action against 45 more.
Source: aljazeera.com
- 1996
About 100 protesters hold Hamilton Hall for four days to demand an ethnic studies department
About 100 protesters held Hamilton Hall for roughly four days in 1996, demanding that Columbia create an ethnic studies department. The university agreed to provide physical space for Asian and Hispanic studies programs. Three years later it launched the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.
Source: aljazeera.com
- 2003
Stained-glass windows of Sophocles and Virgil go up in the lobby after decades in storage
After a renovation completed in 2002, two stained-glass windows depicting Sophocles and Virgil were installed in the Hamilton Hall lobby in 2003. They were gifts from the classes of 1885 and 1891 and had sat in storage for nearly 60 years. The hall now holds many Columbia College Core Curriculum classes.
“Two stained glass windows depicting Sophocles and Virgil, gifts from the class of 1885 and 1891 respectively, were installed in the Hamilton Hall lobby in 2003…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2024
A police officer's gun goes off inside Hamilton Hall during the 2024 raid
During the NYPD sweep of Hamilton Hall on the evening of April 30, 2024, an officer fired his gun inside the building. The police department said he was moving through an area barricaded by students with a flashlight-equipped firearm when it went off accidentally, and the bullet hit a wall. No one was hurt, and the Manhattan district attorney's Police Accountability Unit reviewed the shooting.
Source: thecity.nyc
- 2024
Pro-Palestinian protesters occupy Hamilton Hall and rename it Hind's Hall
Early on April 30, 2024, students from the Gaza Solidarity Encampment broke into Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves inside, renaming it "Hind's Hall" after a Palestinian girl killed in Gaza. More than 600 NYPD officers were deployed to campus that evening, clearing the building and arresting over 100 people.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Hamilton Hall (Columbia University)Wikipedia
Nearby
- Hartley Hall1124 Amsterdam Avenue | 7 entries
- Kent Hall1140 Amsterdam Avenue | 6 entries
- Philosophy Hall1150 Amsterdam Avenue | 2 entries
- John Jay Hall1100 Amsterdam Avenue | 4 entries
- Butler Library535 West 114th Street | 12 entries
- St. Luke's Hospital1111 Amsterdam Avenue | 11 entries