Studebaker Building
615 West 131st Street | also 622 West 132nd Street | Manhattanville | built 1924
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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.
- 1923
Studebaker builds a car finishing plant on West 131st Street
In 1923 the Studebaker company built this six-story concrete plant, with a freight elevator and 210,000 square feet of floor space, to put final touches on new cars. Faced in brick with white porcelain trim, it still shows the blue Studebaker logo the company used from 1912 to 1934. It was one of three older buildings Columbia kept when it built its Manhattanville campus.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1937
Borden turns the Studebaker plant into a milk processing plant
Studebaker sold the building to the Borden milk company in 1937, and it became a milk processing plant. Later tenants included warehouses for the American Museum of Natural History, doll makers and a siren manufacturer. Columbia University began renting offices here in the late 1980s, later bought the building, and moved its finance department in in 2007.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1979
A tenant factory supplies sirens for every NYPD patrol car
Long after Studebaker and Borden moved out, the building's industrial floors kept finding manufacturing tenants, including the Madame Alexander doll company. From 1979 until 1989, a company called Scientific Prototypes operated out of the building and built the sirens fitted to every New York Police Department vehicle.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2007
Columbia moves its finance offices into the former Studebaker plant
Columbia University began renting office space in the building in the late 1980s and later purchased it outright. In 2007 the university moved its Finance department, including Student Financial Services, into the building from the historic Kent Hall.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
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