Philosophy Hall

1150 Amsterdam Avenue | also 530 West 120th Street | Morningside Heights | built 1901

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.

1933
December 26
Edwin Armstrong patents FM radio, invented in his Philosophy Hall lab
Working secretly in the basement laboratory of Philosophy Hall in the early 1930s, Columbia engineering professor Edwin Armstrong developed wide-band frequency modulation to eliminate the static that plagued AM radio. He was granted five U.S. patents covering the basic FM system on December 26, 1933.
Source: Wikipedia
2003
July 31
Philosophy Hall becomes a National Historic Landmark for the invention of FM radio
In the early 1930s Edwin Armstrong worked in room 102 of this 1910 McKim, Mead & White building, developing frequency-modulation (FM) radio. On July 31, 2003, the building was designated a National Historic Landmark as the site of that invention. It has also been the academic home of philosophers John Dewey and Ernest Nagel and literary scholars Lionel Trilling and Edward Said, and an original cast of Rodin's The Thinker stands on its lawn.
Source: Wikipedia

Nearby