John Jay College New Building
860 11th Avenue | also 524 West 59th Street | Lincoln Square | built 2011
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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.
- 1964
The Board of Higher Education approves a four-year police college that becomes John Jay
On June 15, 1964, the Board of Higher Education approved a new CUNY college for police officers, after Police Commissioner Michael Murphy and others pressed Mayor Wagner to create one. Donald Riddle was chosen as dean of the College of Police Science, which opened in 1965 with about a thousand students and one major. It was renamed John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 1967 and later built this tower on Eleventh Avenue.
Source: dc.lib.jjay.cuny.edu
- 1998
John Jay receives $350 million for the expansion that leads to its New Building
In 1998 the college was granted $350 million for a major building expansion, which its own exhibit says would end with the New Building opening in 2011. It came a decade after the college dedicated Haaren Hall, the former Haaren High School on Tenth Avenue, following a $155 million renovation. The exhibit also notes that the growth of the open-admissions years left the college renting space in two downtown office buildings.
Source: dc.lib.jjay.cuny.edu
- 2001
John Jay loses 67 of its alumni in the attack on the World Trade Center
The college's own history records that 67 of its alumni died in the attacks of September 11, 2001. Many were police officers or firefighters, the uniformed careers the college was created to serve in 1964. The loss is recorded in the college's 50th-anniversary timeline, alongside the building plans funded three years earlier.
Source: dc.lib.jjay.cuny.edu
- 2011
John Jay opens its 13-story New Building, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
The New Building opened on November 2, 2011, at a reported cost of $600 million. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed the 240-foot, 13-story tower, with structural engineering by Leslie E. Robertson Associates, and it connects to Haaren Hall on its west side. It holds classrooms, a black box theater, a mock courtroom, a 9/11 memorial and a rooftop quad called the Jay Walk.
“The New Building was opened on November 2, 2011, at a cost of $600 million.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2011
A solemn ceremony is the first event held in the new atrium
Before any celebration, the new building's first public event was an hour-long ceremony in its central atrium on September 8, 2011. Students took turns reading out the names of 68 alumni and other members of the college community who died on September 11, 2001, many of them firefighters, while the Ossia Chamber Players performed Barber's Adagio for Strings. President Jeremy Travis called it the first community event in that majestic space.
Source: archive.nytimes.com
- 2012
The college moves into its new building floor by floor and has to own a lawn mower
By June 2012 John Jay was moving into its new 13-story building one stretch at a time. That summer the forensic, chemical and biological sciences department was due to leave North Hall for three floors with 21 laboratories, more than doubling the college's lab count. The college also awaited a temporary certificate of occupancy for Jay Walk, the landscaped rooftop plaza, and at 48 years old it suddenly needed a lawn mower.
Source: archive.nytimes.com
- 2013
John Jay unveils a World Trade Center beam as its 9/11 memorial sculpture
On September 11, 2013, students, professors and neighbors packed the college's memorial hall for the unveiling of a sculpture made from a beam salvaged from one of the World Trade Center towers. The space is dedicated to the 67 members of the John Jay community who were lost in 2001, and the student newspaper described it as a sacred room for remembrance.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2013
The Anya and Andrew Shiva Art Gallery opens on the ground floor
The Anya and Andrew Shiva Art Gallery opened in 2013 on the ground floor of John Jay's new building at 11th Avenue and 59th Street. At 4,050 square feet, it became the college's primary fine-art gallery, with shows in a variety of media focused on social issues and the humanities. Its 2013 exhibits showed works on women in social justice.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- John Jay College of Criminal JusticeWikipedia
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