Morningside Heights is graced with the highest concentration of institutional complexes built in a relatively short period at the turn of the 20th century, both in the city and anywhere in the United States. It is home to monumental places of worship, higher learning and healing, which accentuate its backdrop of rowhouses and apartment buildings, culminating in streetscapes that are both elegant and eye-filling. Topographically, it is situated on a plateau historically known as Harlem Heights, while geographically it is bounded by West 110th Street to the south, West 125th Street to the north, and two Frederick Law Olmsted–designed parks to the east (Morningside Park) and to the west (Riverside Park). The first institution to move into the area was New York Hospital, which began purchasing land in 1816 to establish the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum (on the present-day campus of Columbia University) and the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum (on the present-day campus of St. John the Divine) in 1821 and 1834, respectively. The stigma of an insane asylum, compounded by inadequate transit access to the area, hindered other development until the late 19th century, when the hospital auctioned off its real estate holdings and relocated to White Plains in favor of more space and fresher air. The asylum’s relocation prompted a flurry of development by other institutions intent on expansion, starting with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1887 and followed by St. Luke’s Hospital, Columbia College and Teacher’s College in 1892. The introduction of the subway into Morningside Heights in 1904, coupled with the neighborhood’s magnificent parks and prestigious institutions, led to a frenzy of speculative apartment house construction, attracting middle-class residents who could now commute directly downtown to work. Even before the advent of zoning regulations for land use, developers erected rowhouses and modest apartment buildings on the side streets and grand apartment houses on the avenues, with particularly monumental examples on Riverside Drive, Claremont Avenue and Cathedral Parkway, and mixed-use commercial buildings along Broadway, giving the neighborhood a heterogeneous yet cohesive character. Morningside Heights’ unorthodox yet distinctive sense of place comes from the coexistence of residential and institutional clusters, as exemplified by elegant rowhouses and apartment buildings just steps away from renowned academic institutions and houses of worship. Today the neighborhood still enjoys this singular sense of place. Its institutions are impressive examples of Beaux-Arts planning and design, including the graceful approach to Grant’s Tomb, the entrance façades of St. John the Divine and Riverside Church aligned with the axes of 112th Street and 122nd Street, and especially Charles McKim’s plan for Columbia University, whose symmetry and axial layout emphasize the monumentality and unity of the surrounding architecture. The residential architecture, though sometimes grand, offers a human scale and balance to the whole neighborhood.

Low Memorial Library Interior STATUS Designated Interior Landmark 116th St & Broadway ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; Charles F. McKim DATE: 1894-97 STYLE: Neo-Classical The design of the Low Library Interior is characterized by a restrained but striking combination of classical ornament and richly colored materials. It is an excellent expression of the classical spirit that so strongly influenced American architecture at the turn of the 20th century. Low Library is an excellent expression of the neo-Classical style. The monumental domed building is the focal point of the campus. Its imposing interior, dominated by a vast central hall with rich, classically-inspired ornament, ranks as one of the finest monumental spaces in New York City

Morningside Heights holds a very different ground than the Upper West Side - probably because it is home to Columbia University, Barnard College, the Manhattan School of Music, and other smaller schools. 🏫📚✍️ Explore the area between the Hudson and the Manhattan Schist…

Charles McKim, 1895–97: New York City Individual and Interior Landmark, State and National Registers of Historic Places Charles McKim designed the campus in the Beaux-Arts style popularized at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Its focal point is Low Library, designed in the Roman Classical style, with Italian Renaissance–inspired classroom buildings flanking it in the forecourt and rear. Fashioned after the Baths of Caracalla and the Pantheon, the library’s granite dome is the country’s largest. The university outgrew Low Library in the 1920s, and a new library named for then president Nicholas Murray Butler was built on the campus’ southern end.

Low Memorial Library, c. 1975. President Seth Low founded the Low Memorial Library in honor of his father, Abiel Abbot Low. It was designed in the Neoclassical style by Charles Follen McKim of the renowned architecture firm McKim, Mead, and White, who designed the Beaux-Arts plan that governs Columbia University's campus. The Low Memorial Library was constructed from 1895 until 1897 as the first major building on the new campus. It was meant to be both the visual and the academic focus of the grounds. The building, a Greek cross in plan, was modeled after the Pantheon, with windows inspired by the Baths of Diocletian, and various Classical influences on the outside, including busts of Apollo, Zeus, and Athena. The great hall of the building, octagonal in plan, was designed as the main reading room. The reading room took influence from the Reading Room at the British Museum, which was circular in plan and also covered by a domed ceiling. A circular arrangement of tiered desks surrounded a central reception desk, both of which occupy the space under the rounded ceiling. The ceiling is painted dark blue and adorned with a suspended white sphere meant to represent the moon and night sky. The reading room held 12,000 of the library's books, and at maximum capacity, the library was to hold 1,900,000 volumes in total. Since 1934, the reading room has been repurposed for more ceremonious occasions such as exhibitions, convocations, and as a reception area. The iconic facade of the building is used as the backdrop for Columbia's graduation ceremonies. During the protests at Columbia in 1968, the library, which also housed the president's office, was occupied by a group of students. The students were protesting the university's involvement in the Vietnam War and, among other things, a segregated gymnasium proposed near campus. Of the drama that ensued, one account by a former student describes food being hurled at the building to feed the occupants. Peculiarly, the 1897 Real Estate Record and Guide wrote that the Library's design was a direct copy of a French Church designed by an architect called Rumpf. There is no record of such a building, though the Guide wrote of the building, "Successful architects have too much to do to be pre-eminently artists -- they much be first-rate men of business." The library is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In the spring semester of 1968, over 1,000 protesters occupied five of the campuses' buildings, leading to one of the largest mass arrests in New York. The story of the Columbia Protests offers a glimpse of the country's political climate during that fateful year. A former protestor recalled that students felt "two strands of anger and disgust converge: what the university was doing to aid the war effort, and what the university was doing that was racist to our neighborhood."

Between 1954 and 1957, the Municipal Art Society surveyed historic buildings in all five boroughs to create a database of potential landmarks to preserve. Local residents and MAS staff compiled individual sheets devoted to about 200 buildings. Each sheet outlined the building’s date, location, and style and provided a description and a small photograph. This is the list of Manhattan buildings.

In December 2018, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat down with NPR’s Nina Totenberg for an exclusive interview presented by the Museum of the City of New York. During this sold-out discussion, Justice Ginsburg spoke about her love of opera, her New York City roots, and why, after years in Washington, she still considered herself a Brooklynite. Take a virtual look at RBG's NYC, through places she remembered fondly and those she would have frequented in her youth.

Low Memorial Library, Columbia University, ca. 1975. Seth Low, the president of Columbia College, which in the 1890s was located at Madison Avenue at 50th Street, established a great urban university that would eventually be called Columbia University in the City of New York. He built a new campus for this university in the open spaces of 114th to 120th Streets between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. The first building erected on this new campus was the library and President Low was its benefactor. The University moved to its new campus in 1897