St. Luke's Hospital, 1904. In 1896, St. Luke's Hospital (founded in 1858 on Fifth Avenue at 54th Street) moved uptown. Ernest Flagg designed the grand hospital at the start of his career. The French Renaissance style complex was to have nine five-story, mansard-roofed pavilions connected to a central building topped by an impressive dome. Construction began in 1896 and continued for more than two decades. Only seven of the nine planned pavilions were built, and four remain today. The dome was removed in the 1960s and over time architectural details have been lost, while the complex has been crowded in by the modern Stuyvesant Pavilion on its west side. In the early 1990s, the deteriorating marble cornice was removed and replaced with a concrete/fiberglass replica. The four remaining pavilions were either empty or administrative and doctors’ offices before the buildings were sold in 2016. They are currently undergoing construction as part of a luxury residential conversion with the preservation of both the exterior and some historical elements of the interior structure included. The work is planned to be completed by the end of 2019.

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.

The Board of Water Supply used models for design and celebration, from critically serious to comical and extravagant. Models were communication tools, explaining and promoting the City’s infrastructure projects, and sometimes helped determine the locations of structures or best way to build them. This story starts with some technical models, then looks at those that celebrated NYC’s water supply system and world-class engineering.

From April 23 to April 30, 1968, Hundreds of Columbia University students occupied and barricaded five buildings on the Morningside Heights campus. They were protesting Columbia’s plan to build a private gym in Morningside Park—an “apartheid gym,” as they saw it, which would exclude the local black community, as well as disciplinary measures taken against student anti-war demonstrators. Afraid a confrontation might spark riots in nearby Harlem, Columbia President Grayson Kirk held back from calling in the police. On April 30, Columbia called in the NYPD to clear the buildings. Police arrested 705 students, at least 150 of whom they beat; more violence erupted on May 1 in skirmishes between police and demonstrators. policemen were also injured, one seriously. Lindsay publicly praised the “restraint” of most police, while admitting that some “used excessive force.”

The Vietnam War was a bloody conflict which lasted nearly 20 years. The United States entered the conflict because of the policy of Containment. Americans believed they needed to contain the spread of Communism in order to prevent the Domino Theory from playing out. This theory held that if one nation fell to Communism then surrounding nations would follow, much like if a person was to knock one domino tile down the others would fall in a chain reaction. As a result, the policy of Containment pursued a goal of containing or limiting Communism's spread by becoming involved in the affairs of nations at risk of turning "Red." With this in mind, US troops first arrived in Vietnam in 1955, and did not leave until 1973. Throughout those 18 years, American soldiers fought and died in the jungles of Vietnam. As time went on, many Americans grew frustrated with their nation's involvement in the conflict and began protesting to demand peace. This protest movement grew quickly and, at times, was marred by violence. However, the pressure put on the US government eventually helped to bring the troops home. Unfortunately, the 18 years, thousands of lives lost, and the millions of dollars spent ultimately proved ineffective at stopping Ho Chi Minh's communist regime from taking over Vietnam in 1975. To this day, the Vietnam War is considered one of America's darkest chapters. Its legacy continues to effect our nation and its veterans of the conflict in particular. As you read, consider how the Vietnam War shaped domestic feelings and movements and how people have come to remember the conflict today. NYS Social Studies Scope and Sequence Standards: 8.7, 8.9 & 11.9 For Teachers: Vietnam War @ Home Lesson Plan

Often thought of as a "concrete jungle," New York City also has a rich history of environmental activism--from the creation of green spaces to confronting climate change. In the decades following the first Earth Day in 1970 and the birth of the environmental movement, New Yorkers sought to make their city greener with recycling centers, community gardens, and bike lanes. Activist groups also called for improved environmental conditions and air quality that disproportionately affected people of color. Though the city is less polluted today, climate change has posed large challenges that have ignited a new generation of environmental activists. Explore key sites of eco-advocacy in the city from the 1960s to today.

Pulitzer Hall (formerly Journalism Hall), home to the Columbia University Graduate school of Journalism, undated photo. The Columbia Journalism School is the only journalism school in the Ivy League and one of the oldest in the world. Established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the school and the related Pulitzer Prizes were funded via a gift of $2 million in 1903. It took nearly a decade to iron out the details from the time of the gift until the official founding and matriculation of the first class in 1912. The classical building that has housed the school since its inception (and was funded through the original gift) was known for its first century as Journalism Hall. Alas a closer reading (in 2003) of the 1903 gift agreement uncovered the specification that "the building shall bear the name of the donor." In 2012 during the celebration of the school's centennial, the building was renamed Pulitzer Hall.

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."

To learn more about the Columbia University Protests of '68, visit: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/remembering-the-columbia-protest-of-68-students AND https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/remembering-the-columbia-protest-of-68-faculty