East Campus

74 Morningside Drive | also 410 West 118th Street, 70 Morningside Drive | Morningside Heights | built 1980

Open on the map4 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. 1965

    Harrison and Abramovitz propose twin concrete slab towers for East Campus

    Columbia's 1965 plan for the site called for two concrete slab towers designed by Harrison and Abramovitz. The plan belonged to President Grayson Kirk's wider expansion program, which was scrapped after the 1968 protests, in part over a proposed university gym in Morningside Park. When building finally came in the late 1970s, the university wanted something more humanist, echoing Oxford and Yale residential quads.

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 1981

    East Campus opens with suites and donor-funded townhouses

    The $28.7 million complex by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates welcomed students in 1981 with roomy suites, big views and townhouses. Several townhouses were paid for by Columbia benefactors, most famously Thomas J. Watson Jr., whose gift became Watson House. George Delacorte, for whom the central courtyard is named, joked that the dormitory he had paid for let boys lounge in marble bathtubs, although the bathrooms only imitate marble.

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1981

    October 4

    Ada Louise Huxtable compares designing a student dorm to designing a maximum-security prison

    Writing in the New York Times, the critic Ada Louise Huxtable described the East Campus brief: a building that must resist vandalism and neglect while housing a transient population. The red-and-white tile skin was praised as innovative, and the AIA Guide called the complex elegant and handsome. Overall reception was mixed.

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 1988

    February

    A chunk of tile facade falls into the courtyard and Columbia orders East Campus reclad

    An inspection in 1987 found the building's tile skin peeling, and in February 1988 a large piece crashed into the courtyard. Columbia ordered the tower reclad in red brick and limestone, a $15 million job given to the architects Gruzen Samton Steinglass. The university also sued both Gwathmey Siegel and the project's engineering firm.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 49 buildings with stories in Morningside Heights