Columbia University Walking Tour with Andrew Dolkart: Recent Episodes
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The tour is guided by Andrew Dolkart, a popular New York City architectural historian, a professor of architectural history at Columbia's School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and the author of an award-winning history of Morningside Heights, Morningside Heights: A History of Its Architecture and Development.
The tour begins at the Columbia Visitors Center, on the second floor of Low Library, and includes 21 stops at such architectural highlights as St. Paul's Chapel, Low Library and plaza, and the late-nineteenth-century classroom Havemeyer 309, which has been used as a set in a number of feature films.
The interior of St. Paul's Chapel features furniture carved in Florence and stained glass designed by Maitland Armstrong and John La Farge.
The most recent building on south campus is the student center designed by Bernard Tschumi.
The plaza affords an excellent view of architect Charles McKim's design for the Columbia campus, as well as Daniel Chester French's statue, Alma Mater.
Dating from the 1890's, Mathematics and Havemeyer halls are two of the earliest buildings on campus.
The courtyard links four campus buildings. Campus-level entrances to these and many other Columbia buildings are actually on the third floor since Columbia is built on a platform several stories above street level.
St. Paul's church uses Guastavino structural vaulting, a patented system of tiles, created by Spanish builder Rafael Guastavino, who immigrated to the United States in the late nineteenth century.
Topped by a dome designed to recall the Pantheon in Rome, the Low Library rotunda was originally used as a reading room when the building served as a library.
Walking past Dodge Hall, the former business school, Professor Dolkart points out Lewisohn Hall, designed by architect Arnold Bruner in the style that Charles McKim had established for the campus.
Professor Dolkart describes Earl Hall, one of the most prominent buildings on campus, and also discusses the campus's landscaping.
Buell Hall is the only building that remains from the nineteenth-century asylum that stood on the site of the Columbia campus.
The tour is introduced by Andrew Dolkart, an architectural historian of New York, Columbia professor, and author of a book on Morningside Heights.
Kent Hall, originally the home of the law school, contains a library modeled after the library at Trinity College, Cambridge, with a stained-glass image of Justice designed by J. & R. Lamb studios.
The original design of Columbia did not contain South Campus, but in the early part of the twentieth century when the land was acquired, it became the site of the University's sports fields and dormitories.
St. Paul's Chapel, designed by I. N. Phelps Stokes as a young architect, is a masterpiece of early-twentieth-century American religious architecture.
Room 309, the only intact nineteenth-century lecture hall at Columbia is frequently used as a set for feature films, including Malcolm X, Kinsey, and Spider-Man 2.
Uris Hall, the home of Columbia School of Business, was controversial when built in the early 1960s.
Avery Hall was designed by McKim Mead & White and is home to the world's greatest architecture library.
The architecture of Hamilton Hall, the center of undergraduate life on campus, echoes that of Journalism Hall, the home of the second-oldest professional school of journalism in the United States.
Closing off the south end of the campus, Butler Library was designed in the early 1930s and built so as not to obstruct the view of Low library.
The Low Library vestibule is the grand, high-ceilinged space outside the Visitors Center, decorated with a statue of Athena and other traditional symbols of learning.