Allan Rosenfield Building (Mailman School of Public Health)
722 West 168th Street | also 1050 Riverside Drive | Washington Heights | built 1930
Open on the map6 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.
- 1929
The New York State Psychiatric Institute opens in its new building on the medical campus
Columbia's construction chronology records that the cornerstone of the New York State Psychiatric Institute was laid on September 17, 1927. The institute opened in December 1929 as part of the Columbia medical center complex on the Washington Heights campus. This building, on West 168th Street, was its home until 1998.
- 1952
Harold Blauer dies after an Army-linked drug injection at the Psychiatric Institute
Harold Blauer entered the New York State Psychiatric Institute in late 1952 seeking help for depression after a divorce. The institute had a classified agreement with the Army Chemical Corps to test possible chemical warfare compounds on patients, and on December 30, 1952 he was given a 450 mg dose of the mescaline analogue MDA, fell into a coma and died. The cause stayed hidden for 22 years; in 1987 a federal judge awarded his estate over $700,000 and found that records were altered.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1998
The Psychiatric Institute dedicates a new Riverside Drive building and leaves this one
On May 8, 1998, the New York State Psychiatric Institute dedicated its new building on Riverside Drive. Columbia's construction chronology records that the institute's former building then became the home of the Mailman School of Public Health, which is this building.
- 1998
A $33 million gift renames the school for Joseph L. Mailman
In 1998 the Mailman Foundation gave the school $33 million, then the biggest donation any school of public health had received. The school then took the name of Joseph L. Mailman, an investor, philanthropist and businessman. The school began in 1922 as the DeLamar Institute of Public Health.
“In 1998, the Mailman Foundation endowed the school with $33 million, at the time the largest gift ever given to a school of public health.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2006
Columbia trustees name the public health building for Dean Allan Rosenfield
In 2006 the Columbia University trustees named the School of Public Health building on the Washington Heights campus for Dean Allan Rosenfield. The building had formerly been occupied by the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Rosenfield retired in 2008 and died that October after battling ALS.
- 2013
The main stairwell becomes a climb through New York public health history
The school remodeled the main stairway of the Rosenfield building over the summer of 2013 and finished the work in September. The stairs now carry 71 historical vignettes with maps, telling New York's public health story from the founding of Bellevue Hospital in 1736 (seventh floor) to the Hudson River Greenway (fifteenth floor). The school's own history is on the fourteenth floor, and the project also aimed to encourage physical activity.
Source: publichealth.columbia.edu
Further reading
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