Jerome L. Greene Hall

435 West 116th Street | also 1145 Amsterdam Avenue | Morningside Heights | built 1923

Open on the map11 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. 1961

    Columbia Law School moves into a new building designed by Max Abramovitz of Harrison & Abramovitz

    In 1961 the Law School moved into its current home. Max Abramovitz of Harrison & Abramovitz, the firm that also designed Lincoln Center, was the architect. The building was not yet named for Jerome L. Greene, the alumnus and philanthropist whose name it later received. Columbia as a whole had moved to Morningside Heights in 1897.

    Source: law.columbia.edu

  2. 1972

    Ruth Bader Ginsburg becomes the first woman with tenure on the Columbia Law faculty

    Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Columbia Law graduate of 1959, joined its faculty in 1972 as the first woman to hold a tenured post there. She later sat on the U.S. Supreme Court, only the second woman to do so. The school's first female students had arrived in 1927, and it counts Constance Baker Motley (class of 1946) and Barbara Black (class of 1955) among its trailblazers.

    Source: law.columbia.edu

  3. 1977

    Jacques Lipchitz's 23-ton Bellerophon Taming Pegasus is installed over the western entrance

    The school ordered Jacques Lipchitz's Bellerophon Taming Pegasus in 1964, but it was not put in place above the western entrance until 1977. The metal figure group weighs 23 tons, and Columbia's own history page ranks it behind only the Statue of Liberty among the city's metal statues.

    Source: law.columbia.edu

  4. 1979

    Kees Verkade's Tightrope Walker is dedicated on Revson Plaza as a memorial to General Donovan

    In 1979 Kees Verkade's bronze Tightrope Walker was dedicated as a memorial to General William J. Donovan, a member of the law school's Class of 1907. Donovan's friends and colleagues gave the work, which shows one figure balancing on the shoulders of another as he crosses a tightrope. It stands at the north end of Revson Plaza, the bridge that links the law school's main building to the Morningside Heights campus.

    Source: law.columbia.edu

  5. 1988

    September

    Columbia Law School founds the nation's first AIDS Law Clinic

    In September 1988 Columbia Law School opened the first AIDS Law Clinic in the country. Professor Deborah Greenberg and Mark Barnes taught it. The school's clinical program has since added a sexuality and gender law clinic, announced in April 2006, and a technology-based clinic called Lawyering in the Digital Age.

    “In September 1988, Columbia Law School founded the first AIDS Law Clinic in the country…”

    Source: Wikipedia

  6. 1990

    The main building is renamed Jerome Greene Hall for the alumnus who played a part in its renovation

    In 1990 the Law School's main building took the name Jerome Greene Hall, honoring Jerome L. Greene for the part he played in its renovation. Greene was a 1928 Law School graduate, a founding partner of a Manhattan law firm, a real estate investor and a Lincoln Center board member. In 2017 the Jerome L. Greene Foundation gave $15 million, the biggest single donation the Law School had ever received.

    Source: law.columbia.edu

  7. 1992

    Life Force goes up on Revson Plaza across from Henry Moore's Three-Way Piece: Points

    In 1992 David Bakalar's bronze Life Force was installed at the south end of Revson Plaza, an anonymous gift honoring Ruth Goldman Schapiro of the Class of 1950. It joined Henry Moore's Three-Way Piece: Points at the north end, which the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation gave; Ira Wallach was a Class of 1931 graduate. Bakalar hoped students would gather beside his sculpture and look through its eye-like opening.

    Source: law.columbia.edu

  8. 1996

    Polshek Partnership adds a new entrance facade and a three-story skylit lobby

    The building was substantially renovated and enlarged in 1996 by the Polshek Partnership, today called Ennead Architects. The work brought a new entrance facade, a skylit lobby three stories tall, a students' commons on an upper level, lounges and a cafe. A further project in 2008 added a new floor containing 38 faculty offices.

    Source: Wikipedia

  9. 2008

    Summer

    A new floor on Greene Hall adds 38 faculty offices

    Work on a new floor in Jerome Greene Hall finished in the summer of 2008, creating 38 faculty offices. The hall stands at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 116th Street and is the law school's main building. Other law school buildings include William and June Warren Hall and the Jerome Greene Annex.

    Source: Wikipedia

  10. 2015

    August

    Studio Joseph plans a new lobby with stadium seating on the Skadden Stairs

    Columbia Law announced in August 2015 that architect Wendy Evans Joseph would transform the lobby and main floor. The plans called for flexible seating, large murals of Manhattan views and text from the U.S. Constitution, and stadium seating on the Skadden Stairs. The school's clinics were also gathered in renovated space in the building, which was originally built in 1961.

    Source: law.columbia.edu

  11. 2025

    October 14

    The law library is renamed for Li Lu after a $15 million pledge, the largest in school history

    On October 14, 2025, Dean Daniel Abebe announced that the school's library would be named the Li Lu Law Library, after a $15 million pledge from Li Lu, Class of 1996, who founded Himalaya Capital. The announcement said no individual had given the school a larger single gift. The renovation, then nearly complete, adds a two-story reading room and more than 600 seats, a 60 percent increase over the old layout.

    Source: law.columbia.edu

Further reading

Nearby

All 49 buildings with stories in Morningside Heights