Kent Hall

1140 Amsterdam Avenue | also 530 West 120th Street | Morningside Heights | built 1901

Open on the map6 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1910

    October 31

    Columbia Law School dedicates Kent Hall, its own building

    Columbia Law School dedicated Kent Hall on October 31, 1910, at the northwest corner where Amsterdam Avenue meets 116th Street. The school had shared Low Memorial Library since its move to Morningside Heights in 1897. Harlan Fiske Stone, a Columbia graduate of 1898, served as dean from 1910 to 1923 and later became chief justice of the United States.

    Source: law.columbia.edu

  2. 1910

    Kent Hall's law library offers 22 reading alcoves and room for 100,000 volumes

    The Law Library took up the main floor of Kent Hall and was well lit by natural light. Its main reading room had 12 alcoves, with 10 more on the mezzanine, and the stacks could hold 100,000 volumes. The library stayed in the building until the Law School moved to a new building across Amsterdam Avenue in 1961.

    Source: law.columbia.edu

  3. 1913

    Anna Wildey gives the Law Library stained glass Justice windows in memory of her husband

    In 1913 Anna Chesebrough Wildey donated stained glass windows depicting Justice to the Law Library in Kent Hall, honoring her late husband, Pierre Westcott Wildey, who had earned a Columbia B.A. in 1860 and an M.A. and LL.B. in 1863 and a Yale master's in 1865. The windows are on the east side of the reading room.

    Source: library.columbia.edu

  4. 1961

    The Law School leaves Kent Hall and the East Asian Library moves into its old library

    In 1961 the Law School completed a new building across Amsterdam Avenue, and the school and its library moved out of Kent Hall. The East Asian Library's collections were then shifted from Low Memorial Library into the former Law Library, now numbered 300 Kent. Staff and patrons welcomed the extra room and the architecture, and the stained glass image of Justice on the reading room's east wall recalls the earlier occupant.

    Source: library.columbia.edu

  5. 1981

    A Starr Foundation endowment rebuilds the East Asian Library's Kent Hall quarters

    In 1981 an endowment from the C.V. Starr Foundation paid for renovations and additions to the East Asian Library in Kent Hall, including a new entrance, extra stack rooms, a skylit room for oversized art volumes, the Kress Seminar Room and a Special Collections Reading Room. Online catalog records for new acquisitions began to include Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts, and books were shelved together regardless of language.

    Source: library.columbia.edu

  6. 2023

    August and September

    Craftsmen salvage and take down Kent Hall's decorative plaster ceiling for later reconstruction

    In August and September 2023, the firm EverGreene worked with SPK Lewis Construction and Columbia to salvage, re-cast and carefully take down Kent Hall's decorative plaster ceiling. The aim was to measure and document the ceiling and keep enough of its elements to support a future reconstruction. The restorers set aside two of the best examples of each element for storage and made molds and casts of typical pieces.

    Source: evergreene.com

Further reading

Nearby

All 49 buildings with stories in Morningside Heights