Exhibition Credits: Written and Produced by James Sanders + Associates the NYU Medical Center

1831

2031 !!!!! NYU in NYC A University of the City Welcome.

A University of the City: NYU in NYC —1831-2031 presents the story of a complex, ever-changing relationship—dating back nearly 200 years and extending well into the future—between America’s greatest city and the university whose name it shares.

It is in many ways a parallel and deeply intertwined story, as both city and university have evolved in startling, often unimaginable ways—both continually pushing back boundaries, and defying traditional categories.

Indeed, it was the growing city’s need for a new kind of academic institution—metropolitan in character, democratic in spirit, and responsive to the demands of a bustling commercial culture—that led to the founding in 1831 of the “University of the City of New-York,” the ﬁrst of its kind in America.

As that city grew to become a supreme engine of upward mobility in the 20th century, it was New York University (as it became known) that again redeﬁned the nature of private higher education—no longer a bastion of privilege, but an avenue of opportunity for vast numbers of New Yorkers, who would contribute immeasurably to their city’s rise.

Today, as New York seeks to navigate an increasingly globalized economy, and maintain and extend its place in the topmost tier of world cities, it is NYU—itself transformed into one of the country’s leading centers of research and teaching—that is yet again overturning tradition, pioneering a new educational model: a “global network university” designed to meet the challenges of the deeply interconnected worldwide culture of the 21st century.

In a sense, this new development is the latest chapter in the extraordinary ongoing story of a “university of the city”—an institution that for nearly two centuries has served as not only a mirror to the metropolis, but a powerful force in its race into the future.

We hope you enjoy the exhibition.

Exhibition Credits: Written and Produced by James Sanders + Associates the NYU Medical Center. Special thanks to Nancy Cricco and Jayne Burke. Courtesy of the Museum of the Cityof New York, The J. Clarence Davies Collection. 2003. Edward Hopper, Roofs, Washington Square, 1926. Watercolor over charcoal on Arch, ca. 1900. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York, Print Archives. Tarbox Beals. New York University, south view with residence hall and lecture hall Panel 1: Aerial view courtesy of Google Earth. New York University from Washington Square. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of paper. Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Bequest of Mr. and Mrs. Washington Square North. Glass negative from photo by Percy Fridenberg. Courtesy buildings, between 1957 and 1961, photographed by Ben Schnall. Courtesy of the Graphic Design by 2x4 New York, Print Archives. Washington Place, ca. 1892. Courtesy of the Museum of the James H. Beal. James Weldon Johnson, 1927. Courtesy of the New York Public Library, of the Museum of the City of New York, Print Archives. View of MacDougal Alley Marcel Breuer papers, 1920-1986, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Panel 2: Otto Boetticher, Seventh Regiment on Review, Washington Square, New City of New York, Print Archives. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture / Photographs and Prints Division. photographed by Jessie Tarbox Beals. Special thanks to Thomas J. Frusciano & Marilyn H. Pettit, Joan Marans Dim & Nancy York, 1851. Oil on canvas. The Edward W. C. Arnold Collection of New York Prints, Labor Day Demonstration in Washington Square,1912. Courtesy of Brown Brothers. Panel 5: Jenny Holzer, For the City, 2005. Photographed by Attilio Maranzano. Murphy Cricco, and Thomas Bender. Maps, and Pictures; Bequest of Edward W. C. Arnold, 1954. Courtesy of The Panel 3: Thomas Hart Benton, The Artist’s Show, Washington Square, New York, 1946. NYU Main Building, ca. 1895. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York, Wurts. Panel 4 : Burt Glinn, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Barney Rosset in Washington Presented by Creative Time. © 2005 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Luther S. Harris, Around Washington Oil and tempera on canvas. Gift of Jerome K. Ohrbach. Courtesy of the Herbert F. Bros. Collection. John French Sloan, Arch Conspirators, 1917. Etching. Edition 100. Square Park, 1957. Courtesy of Magnum Photos. Edward I. Koch Playing Guitar in (ARS), NY. Contemporary views of New York University, Photography © NYU Photo Image Credits: Except as noted, all images courtesy of the New York University Square: An Illustrated History of Greenwich Village. John Hopkins University Press. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University. Luther S. Harris, Around Washington Courtesy of Keith Sheridan Inc. Paul Cornoyer, Washington Square, 1900. Courtesy of Greenwich Village, 1956. © Pat Koch Thaler. Courtesy of theLa Guardia and Wagner Bureau photographed by David S. Allee. View of Abu Dhabi campus photographed Archives, New York University Photo Bureau and Archives and Special Collections of 2003. New York, 1849. Lithograph by C. Bachman. Printed by Sarony & Major. Square: An Illustrated History of Greenwich Village. John Hopkins University Press. the Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Miss Harrow Farrow. Washington Square Archives. View of Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit photographed by Jessie by Carlos Garcia. The Spirit of the Age An Exotic Combination 1831 Founded in 1831 by a farsighted group of merchants and clergymen, the “University of the City of New-York” (as NYU was originally known) Soon after it opened, the University Building—an “exotic was envisioned from the start as something new: an institution combination,” one man later wrote, “of apartment house, scientiﬁc dedicated to the values and needs of the city—intended to gather and laboratory, clubhouse, and [bohemian] haven”—became a cauldron of 1894 focus the intellectual energies of New York, contribute materially to its innovation in technology and the arts, and the birthplace of several growth, and reﬂect its burgeoning scale and complexity. pioneering inventions—including at least one, the electric telegraph, that would help to usher in the modern world. University on the Square

New York, looking south from Union Square, 1848. With their city quickly becoming the commercial and cultural capital of America (“the London of the New World,” as one newspaper said), New York’s leaders—including Another powerful new way of “seeing” was pioneered former Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin— at NYU when physics professor Daniel Webster Hering gathered for three days in January 1830 to conceive an became the first American to employ the magical new educational institution whichthat might might “correspond,” “correspond,” one one technique developed by Wilhelm Röntgen to peer beneath wrote, “with the spirit and wants of the age and country.” the skin. ThisThis X-rayX-ray imageimage ofof aa hand—completehand—complete withwith pinky ring—was taken Februaryon February 5, 1896. 5, 1896.

The charter of the University of the City of New-York, 1831. Founded for both those students “who devote themselves to scientific or literary Developed in 1837 in Samuel Morse’s rooms on pursuits,” and those “intended for onthe the upper upper floors floors of the of the University University Building, Building, the the learned professions, commerce, John W. Draper (left) and a view of theelectric electric telegraph telegraph (shown (shown here here in a in later a later drawing or the mechanical and useful arts,” his University Building study (above). sketchby Morse) by Morse) accelerated accelerated the transmission the transmission of of the new university sought—as Trained as a doctor, Draper served as information from the pace of a man of horseback no American college before it— Course of Instruction, 1836. In professor of chemistry and natural to the speed of light, forever changing the nature View of the original University Building, 1850. The new to encompass the full sphere of October 1832, the first classes history from 1838 until his death in of life and business—especially in New York, university would be “a social investment and a direct intellectual and practical activities began in rented quarters 1882. From his studio in the University which could now receive and transmit financial response to the needs of the rising mercantile classes in in an emerging urban culture. in Clinton Hall—a block Building, he carried out pioneeringseminal news and market prices almost instantaneously. New York,” one founder wrote, training the “merchants, south of City Hall on Nassau research in a wide variety of fields— mechanics, farmers, manufacturers, architects, and civil and Beekman Streets—in including chemistry and physiology— engineers” that the new metropolis would need to expand. contemporary subjects such as and developed one of the first chemical architecture, civil engineering, batteries to power the Morse telegraph. astronomy, chemistry, sculpture, painting, English and modern languages, as well as classical Greek and Latin. No one embodied the breadth of the early university better than Samuel F.B. Morse, a professor of painting and onesculpture of the andgreatest one Americanof the greatest artists American of his era, artists who ofwould his era, New York’s only seat of higher learning in 1830 was Columbia nonethelesswho would nonetheless be best remembered be best remembered as the inventoras the inventor of the electricof the electric telegraph—and telegraph— the College—an Episcopalian day school, founded in 1754 as In 1839, Draper employed his chemical mastery to dramatically University of London, 1830s. Two recently founded universities in King’s College, and still located in its colonial-era building in codeand the it employed code it employed that still that bears still his bears name— his University of Virginia, 1825. In many many ways,ways, improve a new technique from France—Daguerreotype Europe served as inspiration for the proposed university in New lower Manhattan (shown(above). here). Approached Approached by city by leaders city leaders with anname—an invention invention which arguably that arguably did more did than more the founders’ vision vision of of a a metropolitan metropolitan photography—by cutting exposure times from nearly an hour to York—the University of London (1826), which sought to educate withthe idea the ofidea transforming of transforming their theirtiny, exclusivetiny, exclusive college college into a into anythan other any other single single innovation innovation in history in history to university—drawing on the resources of less than a minute. Constructing Constructing a a glass-roofed glass-roofed studio studio atop atop of of the the In 1840, from his rooftop studio in the large numbers of students in practical subjects at modest cost, and auniversity university for for the the metropolis, metropolis, Columbia’s Columbia’s trustees trustees refused, refused, advanceto advance human human communication. communication. a great city, and responsive to its needs— University Building, Draper took some of the earliest photographs University Building on Washington Square, the University of Berlin (1810), whose commitment to advanced setting the stage for an entirely new institution. stood diametrically opposite to that of ever made in America, including the first portrait of a woman’s Draper took what is thought to be the first scientific research helped to propel Germany’s commercial and photographfirst photograph ever madeever made of the of moon. the moon. industrial progress. the University of Virginia, founded six face—that of his sister, Dorothy Catherine Draper. years before by Thomas Jefferson, who This somewhat later image was produced deliberately placed his new institution in a by Draper’s son and collaborator, Henry arural rural setting, setting, far far from from the the distractions—or distractions— Draper, a fellow NYU faculty member and orstimulation—of stimulation—of the the city. city. one of America’s first astrophotographers.

The Learned Professions “A Sorry Place” and Useful Arts University on the Square After the Civil War, as rival institutions—notablyinstitutions—includin Columbia—surgedg Columbia—surged forward in size and ambition, the undergraduate college on Washington If the undergraduate program struggled for decades to fulﬁll the vision Despite its founders’ ideals, the “university” of New York emerged at Square remained a small, traditional-boundtradition-bound institutio institution,n, unable unable to to offer offer of its founders, NYU’s professional and graduate programs—in law ﬁrst as a modest and mostly conventional college—dominated not by the kind of studentamenities amenities that students that students increasingly increas demanded.ingly demanded. In 1881, In (1835), medicine (1841), arts and sciences (1886), and education advanced practical courses but traditional classical studies, and home 1881,the college the college almost almost closed closed its doors, its doors before entirely, a new g beforeeneration a new came along (1890)—were a success from the start, contributing to New York’s not to a large and diverse student group but, mostly, to a circle of generationto remake it came entirely. along to remake it entirely. stunning commercial rise across the 19th century, and improving the Protestantmiddle-class middle-class Protestant New Yorkers. Yet its handsome Gothic building quality of life for thousands of New Yorkers, rich and poor. soon emerged as an important presence on Washington Square, which itself became one of the city’s most gracious neighborhoods.

A Bellevue faculty member lectures in the surgical amphitheatre, aboutaround 1900. 1900. In In 1898, NYU’s Medical Department merged with the city-owned Bellevue Hospital Medical College and soon expanded its By the late 1890s, the NYU Law School was teaching and clinical facilities within the distinguished not only by its sheer size—a total of great medical complex emerging along 500 students in its daytime and evening divisions— the East River in the 20s, where it remains but byalso its by role its asrole an as engine an engine of upward of upward mobility mobility to this day. for native-born and immigrant New Yorkers— Rooftop view of the University Building. In the 19th century, the University College’s students—thestudents—for thesons most of middle-class part the sons New of York In 1870, Washington Square, no longer a parade ground but a including (as this 1905 image attests) some of the Throughout the 19th century, the University families,middle-class for the New most York part—generally families—generally lived livedat home. at home. A handful A handful of free of spirits, free spirits, however, city park, was redesigned to allow a better flow of carriage traffic first African-American and women students ever to The original University Building, designed by the suffered from financial problems and an continuedhowever, continued the tradition the traditionof renting of tower renting rooms tower in therooms University in the University Building. Building. Here the artistHere from Fifth Avenue, whose foot lay at the north end of the square, attend law school in the United States. firm of Town, Davis & Dakin and opened in 1835, was undergraduate enrollment that never Johnthe artist Richards John (atRichards left) and (at friend left) and pose friend on the pose crenellated on the crenellated roof, with roof,the Jefferson with the MarketJefferson to the streets to the south. constructed in the newly fashionable Gothic Revival exceeded 150 students. “Our university is CourthouseMarket Courthouse rising in rising the distance in the distance above the above rooftops the rooftops of Greenwich of Greenwich Village. Village. style and built entirely in white marble—a pioneering seated in a population of half a million,” John example of the “Collegiate Gothic” that would come to W. Draper bemoaned in 1853. “What is the dominate American campus architecture throughout reason that with difficulty we draw [from the 19th century. that only] seventy paying students, and in our pecuniary affairs are always embarrassed?” Law Library, 1920s. Founded in 1835, just four years after the university itself, the Law School—the first such school in New York—became a crucial source for the thousands of legal professionals that the 19th century city needed not only for its growing commercial activity, but also for its civil and governmental affairs.

The University Building (shown here in the 1860s) offered an urbane mix of academic spaces on its lower floors and rental apartments above—rooms whoseand studios extraordinary whose rosterextraordinary of tenants roster included of tenants the artist included Winslow the artist Homer, Winslow the inventors Homer, Samuel the inventors F.B. Morse andSamuel Samuel F.B. ColtMorse (who and perfected Samuel Colt the revolver(who perfected there), theand revolver the architects there), A.J. and Davis the and Richardarchitects Morris A.J. Davis Hunt. and Richard Morris Hunt. Described as “probably the most beautiful room of its kind in America,” the vaulted three-story chapel at the center of the University Building was intended Together, NYU and Bellevue would transform medical care in to evoke the soaring architecture of King’s College New York—from a landmark 1866 Medical School report on Chapel, Cambridge. Its prominence served as a “Hygiene and Public Health” that led to the founding of the New reminder that, despite its founders’ original civic, non- York City Health Department, to the world’s first ambulance Members of the class of ‘94 in front of the University Building, denominational intent, the university remained deeply Laboratory in the University Building, aboutaround 1875. 1875. service, which had begun at Bellevue in 1869 (shown here in a 1891. By the early 1890s, NYU was unable to compete with enmeshed within the city’s Protestant establishment. In the late 1860s NYU became a leader in American view from the 1890s). “collegiate” schools assuch such as Yale and Princeton. “With no scientific studies with a new chemical laboratory, a Studio art classes, early 20th century. In 18731873, the the University University dormitories, no campus, and no athletic teams,” one historian new School of Engineering, and a new graduate-level had established an Artart schoolSchool whosewhose classesclasses werewere mademade later observed, “the University College seemed, to the average School of Practical and Analytic Chemistry—the available (on a non-degree basis) to women—the first female youth of [the time], a sorry place.” In response, NYU would look second program in the country (after Yale) to offer an students to attend NYU. to create a vast new undergraduate campus in the Bronx. academic Ph.D., and the forerunner of the full-fledged Once a burial ground, Washington Square was transformed in 1826 Graduate School of Arts and Science, founded in 1886. Established in 1841, the NYU Medical Department into a military parade ground and public square, as shown in this By the time the University Building opened, the blocks around Washington Square almost instantly had a positive impact on the city; within 1851 painting by Otto BoetticherBoetticher, of Seventh the National Regiment Guard’s on Review Seventh, were lined with elegant Greek Revival row houses—including one at 21 Washington justa dozen a dozen years years the school the school had hadtrained trained more more than than 1,200 Regimentwith the still-new in review, University with the Buildingstill-new inUniversity the background, Building along in the with Place (shown here, adjacent to the University Building) in which the writer Henry 1,200doctors doctors and was and treating was treating two thousand two thousand poor New poor Yorkers New background,the twin-spired along South with Dutch the twin-spired Reformed Church, South Dutch now demolished. Reformed James was born in 1843. Yorkersannually. annually. Two decades Two decades later, in later,1865, in came 1865, the came founding the foundingof the NYU of College the NYU of College Dentistry—the of Dentistry—the oldest and oldest largest and Church,Image copyright © now The Metropolitan demolished. Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY largestdental schooldental in school the country. in the country. Swarming Life 1894 By the 1920s, NYU had taken on a role like no other private university in American history: a vast educational machine, by which tens of thousands of upwardly mobile New Yorkers—most of them Jewish and Second Founding Catholic students, from working and middle-class families—could 1941 receive college-level training and move into the professions or business. In the early 1890s, under the visionary leadership of President Henry With the largest private enrollment in the country—an astonishing MacCracken, the Universityuniversity reinventedreinvented itself,itself, drawidrawingng togethertogether itsits 40,000 students by 1930—NYU had in many ways become the great

A New Era far-ﬂung schools, adding new programs in education and business, urban university its founders imagined—adreamed of —a strikingly strikingly democratic democratic and expanding its scientiﬁc and engineering programs. In what he institution, intended to mirror and sustain the vast metropolis. called a “second founding,” MacCracken built an entirely new campus in the Bronx, on a bluff overlooking Manhattan—a stunning second home for what was now known by a new name: New York University.

The expansion of the Medical School (shown here) was only one of the ways NYU met the needs of the growing city—through adult classes at the new Division of General Education; through the School of Education’s courses for fire and police candidates and school teachers; and through the Graduate Division of Training in Public Service, founded with the encouragement of Mayor La Guardia, himself an NYU alumnus. Main Building, 1930s. In the 1920s and ‘30s, NYU’s downtown branch offered an education to nearly all qualified students, For its new campus, NYU chose the architect Stanford White (of McKim, Mead & regardless of background. With students who were “famished… White)—whose father, Richard Grant White, ‘39, had been among the University’s first for knowledge, any kind of knowledge,” and a young and creative faculty, Washington Square College was, in one View of Washington Square North, late 1930s. graduates. As White began work, his partner Charles F. McKim was drawing up a no By the 1930s, NYU’s community had been less visionary master plan for Columbia University—now one of the nation’s largest professor’s later words, “the most exciting venture in American As enrollments exploded, NYU education that I had ever heard of.” transformed once again by the construction academic institutions—which was planning its own move to a new campus uptown. scrambled to hire part-time of several elegant apartment houses on instructors, including a young Washington Square West and the arrival of a Harvard-educated writer from towering Art Deco apartment hotel at 1 Fifth North Carolina named Thomas Avenue,Avenue (shown shown herehere atat center.center). Wolfe, who, while working on his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, taught English from 1924 Constructed mostly between 1892 and 1899, the fifty-acre to 1930. There is “no other way in Discarding the conventional 19th century “collegiate Gothic” style Heights campus was largely complete by the time these female which a man coming to this terrific of architecture, White employed a classical approach that recalled summer-school students attended in 1917. ancient Rome as well as Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia. city”city,” he he wrote, wrote, “could “could have have had had a a The legendary lawyer, diplomat, White’s elegant plan offered a new vision for the modern university: a more…stimulating introduction and civil-rights activist James coordinated campus layout, arrayed symmetrically around a central to its swarming life, than through Weldon Johnson taught poetry open space, and focused on the domed Gould LibraryLibrary. (at right). the corridors and classrooms of and creative writing at NYU from Washington Square.” 1934 until his death in 1938— Washington Square, early 1940s. To make room for the the first black professor at NYU, university’s vast and growing enrollment, NYU reclaimed and one of the first African almost all the floors of the Main Building, then spread Americans everto be to appointed be appointed to a to outward to acquire several nearby structures, including apredominantly predominantly white white institution institution the former Asch Building, site of the infamous Triangle of higher learning. Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911.

Commencement, University Heights, 1936. Unlike Woman’s varsity swimming team, 1920s. Lacking most the commuter orientation of Washington Square, Commencement at the University Heights campus, with the semi-rural conventional “collegiate” amenities, Washington Square College Chemistry lab class, late 1930s. As early as 1935, NYU’s the Heights campus was conceived as “a dormitory landscape of upper Manhattan in the distance, 1910s. obligated its athletic students to use borrowed facilities, such as enrollment—which had dipped only slightly in the early college of the accepted pattern,” said MacCracken, the pool of the Church of All Nations aton SecondSecond Avenue.Avenue. Depression years—returned to its late-1920s peak. ThanksSustained whose students could “develop a sound body for the toby part-timepart-time jobsjobs (many(many federallyfederally assisted),assisted), whichwhich supportedsupported sake of a sound mind, [and] cultivate the social side nearly a third of all students, enrollment continued climbing till of life more than ever before.” Student Army Corps training during World War I. Encircling Belting the theuntil end the of end the of decade, the decade, peaking peaking at 47,525 at 47,525 in 1939. in 1939. backthe back of Gould of Gould Library Library was was the “Hallthe “Hall of Fame”—the of Fame”—the first first of its kindof its inkind the in world—a the world—an colonnade imposing filled colonnadewith commemorative filled with bustscommemorative of political busts and literary of political figures and who, literary in the figures founders’ who, in words,the founders’ “by wealth words, of thought“by wealth or elseof thought by mighty or else deed, by servedmighty mankinddeed, served in noble mankind character.” in noble character.”

“Free & Independent Republic”

Knowledge Factory Since the University Building opened in the mid-1830s, NYU has been located in the heart of one of America’s most vital and culturally Moving nearly all of its undergraduates to its new Bronx campus, NYU significant neighborhoods. A storied residential community in the turned Washington Square into a bustling center for graduate and 19th century, Washington Square and Greenwich Village emerged professional training—including one of the first university-affiliated around the time of World War I as the nation’s first true bohemia—a business schools (1900)—to serve what had become the undisputed cauldron of progressive ideals, social activism, and artistic creativity. commercial capital of America and the second-largest city in the world. Then, in 1914, NYU made the fateful decision to bring undergraduates back downtown on a permanent basis through the founding of Washington Square College—which soon became the largest private college in America.

The Artists Show, Washington SquareSquare, New New York York (1946), (1946), by by Thomas Thomas Hart Benton. The district’s reputation as America’s artistic center took holdtook holdin the in public the public mind mind with withthe founding the founding of the of Washington the Washington Square OutdoorSquare Outdoor Art Show Art in Show 1932—captured in 1932—captured in this 1946 in this work postwar by the work American Regionalistby the American Thomas Regionalist Hart Benton, Thomas who Hart had Benton, lived in whoGreenwich had lived Village in andGreenwich made the Village city aand setting made for the much city ofa setting his work. for much of his work.

Washington Square Arch from the fountain, about 1900. Completed in 1895 by the architect Stanford White, the elegant marble arch at the In 1894, after rejecting Stanford White’s proposal Women marching in a 1912 Labor Day demonstration in foot of Fifth Avenue soon became the focal point and symbol not only of As late as 1894, when this view was to dismantle the historic but rapidly agingdeteriorating Washington Square. Long a focal point for political activism, Washington Square and NYU, but all of Greenwich Village. taken, the 1830s Greek Revival row University Building, stone by stone, and rebuild it Having shifted its undergraduates to the Heights in the Squaresquare wouldwould bebe thethe scenescene forfor laborlabor ralliesrallies inin thethe 1910s,1910s, On the night of January 23, 1917, the new spirit of cultural 1894, the university decided in 1914 to establish a houses along Washington Square as the centerpiece of the new campus uptown—the Though far larger than its neo- antiwar demonstrations during World War I, Socialist and political emancipation taking shape around Washington new four-year program downtown called Washington North remained some of the most university chose to raze its ancestral Gothic-style Gothic predecessor, the new Main political rallies during the Great Depression, and peace Square was pronounced official, when—as depicted in John Square College, to serve commuter students. It desirable residences in the city. home for a new ten-story loft building by Alfred Building shared a similiar “mixed- demonstrations in the years before World War II. Sloan’s etching Arch Conspirators—Sloan, Marcel Duchamp, soon became the fastest-growing college in America, Known as “The Row,” they had Zucker, a German-born architect who would design use” urban concept, combining and a few friends climbed to the top of the Washington Square exploding from 500 students in 1919 to more than been immortalized in the 1881 nearly a dozen similar buildings nearby, most of commercial offices on its lower Arch, fired off cap guns, and declared the founding of the “Free 7,000than 7,000 by 1929 by 1929(including (including the “Washington members of theSquare novel Washington Square, by which would ultimately be acquired by NYU. seven floors (whose rental income and Independent Republic of Washington Square.” Players,”“Washington shown Square here). Players,” shown here). Henry James—who had been born would fill the school’s coffers) with in a similar house a block away on academic space above. If unsuitable Women’s Ward, Bellevue Hospital, 1890s. NYU and Bellevue would meet the needs of the Washington Place, next door to the for undergraduates, MacCracken growing city through public resources as well as landmark achievements in public health— original University building. believed, Washington Square’s including the first outpatient clinic, the first pathology and bacteriology lab, the first central location in downtown department of forensic medicine, and the training of such scientific pioneers as Walter Reed, Manhattan made it ideal for Albert SabinSabin, and and Jonas Jonas Salk. Salk. graduate and professional training.

Looking north from Washington Square, 1895. As crowded tenements filled the blocks south of Washington Square, tall industrial buildings rose to the north and east, and once-gracious row houses on the square itself were subdivided into multi-family By the start of the 20th century, the picturesque NYU Medical College Building, from dwellings, NYU “found itself no longer the center of blocks north of Washington Square—lined with First Avenue, 1920s. After merging a charming suburb,” one man wrote, “but instead former stables turned into artist’s studios—were with Bellevue Hospital Medical Perhaps the most powerful relationshipcreative relationship between betweenWashington Washington Square and crammed into a commercial metropolis.” gaining a reputation as “New York’s Left Bank,” College in 1898, the NYU College of itsSquare resident and artistsits resident was that artists of Edwardwas that Hopper, of Edward who Hopper, lived and who worked lived andat 3 Washington Square, 1900 by Paul Cornoyer. Still a redoubt of the city’s America’s first true artistic community. This Medicine dramatically expanded its Washingtonworked at 3 WashingtonSquare North Square from 1913 North until from his 1913 death until in his1967. death For in decades, 1967. social elite, the Row would gradually change character within the next 1907 photograph by Jessie Tarbox Beals shows presence in the East 20s, adjacent to inFor paintings decades, suchin paintings as Roofs such of Washington as Roofs, Washington Square (1926), Square he would (1926), he decades, as older families graduallymigrated uptown, migrated and uptown, the blocks and thenorth blocks of the young daughters of the artist Edwin Willard Bellevue Hospital, with a series of new transfigurewould transfigure the neighborhood’s the neighborhood’s distinctive distinctive urban architectureurban architecture into one into of the northWashington of Washington Square became Square homebecame to homea new topopulation a new population of artists, of writers, artists, Deming sketching in MacDougal Alley. teaching and research buildings. greatone of imaginative the great imaginative landscapes landscapes of the 20th of century. the 20th century. writers,and political and political radicals. radicals. Without easy access to the rolling landscape of the Heights campus, Image c. 2006, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Washington Square College students employed urban ingenuity to make use of any space they could find. This view shows the NYU fencing team atop the roof of the Main Building in 1929. At center are the future Olympians, Miguel and José DeCapriles. 1941 A Novel Experiment A Different Scale The coming of World War II transformed NYU. At Washington Square, By the 1950s, NYU had begun to imagine a future beyond the limitations the Heights campus, and the Medical School, civilian education gave of a commuter school at Washington Square. To provide space for 1973 way to the training of soldiers, sailors, and medical corpsmen. Behind student housing, new academic buildings, and collegiate amenities, the the scenes lay even greater changes, as federally funded wartime university—despite community opposition—joined with city and state research presaged the massive postwar expansion in higher education. ofﬁcials, including the all-powerful planning czar Robert Moses, to

Expansion and Controversy redevelop eighteen acres southeast of Washington Square.Square Park.

From 1943 to 1945, women dominated civilian enrollmentsenrollment at NYU, as elsewhere. In 1943, the Guggenheim School of Aeronautical Engineering and Chance-Vought Aircraft began what they called a “novel experiment”: an eight- month aeronautics training program for over ninety women Student registration, 1964. At a time when most private students studying mathematics or physics. universities accepted very few minority students, and many colleges (including most of the Ivy League) remained off-limits to women, NYU’s student population was almostall but uniqueunique (and,(and, In 1960, NYU commissioned I.M Pei & Partners to develop as it turned out, prophetic) in its diversity. But the sheer developedthe remaining the remainingurban renewal urban parcel renewal for faculty parcel forand faculty numbers of students continued to strain the crowded physical andgraduate-student graduate-student housing, housing, as well as wellas middle-income as middle-income plant, leading the university to search for ways to expand. cooperative apartments. Pei’s initial proposal—a slender When completed in 1959, the two slabs of Washington 29-story tower surrounded by a series of lower structures— Square Village, each 17 stories tall and nearly 600 was rejected for excessive ground coverage. feet long, recalled the work of the famed modernist architect Le Corbusier, especially his “Unité d’Habitation” of 1948. The project offered “a different Main Building with service flag, early 1940s. NYU carried NYU had already begun pushing south of Washington Square scale,” the critic Siegfried Giedion argued, “a reflection out over 40 federal wartime research contracts in fields in the late 1940s with a controversial full-block land clearance of what Europe produces best in that domain.” ranging from chemotherapy, neuropsychiatryneuropsychiatry, and and tropical tropical for its Law School (the “H”-shaped structure toward left of diseases, to advanced naval weaponry research by the Applied this 1961 model), but its ambitions leapt in scale in 1954, Mathematics Group under Richard Courant—forerunner of the when it backed a Robert Moses-sponsored urban renewal plan Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Sculptural Essays that called for nine existing city blocks to be cleared for new Officer candidate outside the Main Building, 1943. While overall enrollment dropped more than 30% during academic buildings and housing. Most of the urban renewal site was to be wartime—from 47,000 students in 1939 to 30,000 in 1943— filled with Washington Square Village, a NYU bustled with military trainees, through the Navy’s V-12 The expansive spirit of the postwar decades saw major investment in private housing project designed by Paul program, the Army’s Specialized Training Program, and the Lester Weiner: three immense slabs filled with Medical Administrative Corps. NYU’s far-ﬂung facilities around New York—including distinguished luxury apartments. Rental troubles forced the developer Paul Tishman to forego the third architectural commissions on the Heights campus, the Medical Center, slab, and in 1960 he sold the unbuilt southern property to NYU,NYU —which which ultimately ultimately purchased purchased Millitary students in front of Gould Library, October 1942. and the Institute of Fine Arts on the Upper East Side, which had Washington Square Village itself for factultyfaculty By war’s endend, more more than than 29,000 29,000 men men and and women women had had come come and graduate student housing. As built, Pei’s 1966 design for University Plaza (later through NYU’s military programs. emerged as one of the world’s leading centers of art history scholarship. known as Silver Towers) consisted of three concrete towers placed in a “pinwheel” arrangement around a central lawn and large freestanding sculpture, “Sylvette,” based on a 1934 work by Pablo Picasso.

Founded in 1934 as a refuge for European art historians, the Institute of Fine Arts moved in 1958 into James B. and Doris Duke’s mansion on Fifth Avenue, a 1912 chateauchâteau designed by Horace Trumbauer. TheThe historichistoric structurestructure waswas renovatedrenovated byby a a young, then little-known Philadelphia architect named Robert Venturi—whose provocative writings and buildings would soon revolutionize architectural theory.

Commissioned by NYU in 1956 to prepare a coordinatednew plan for planthe for theHeights Heights campus, campus, the theBauhaus-trained Bauhaus-trained Marcel Marcel Breuer Breuer created created what one man later called “a modern set of sculptural essays,” whose stark reinforced-concrete buildings centered on Begrisch Hall (1964), a dramatically cantilevered lecture hall that seemed to float above the ground.

In 1947, looking to expand theirits historic historic medical medical complex complex along along the the East East River, River, NYU NYU The Vast Throng commissioned the modernist architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to create an ambitious master plan for the future: a coordinated array of white glazed-brick structures, including The Battle of the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine (1951) and University Hospital (1963). In the postwar decades, NYU consolidated its reputation as New York’s Washington Square quintessential “metropolitan” university—an avenue of educational advancement for the city’s middle classes and a training ground for New York’s professional and managerial community. The school’s Washington In the 1950s and ‘60s, Washington Square Park’s long history as a focal Square neighborhood, meanwhile, took hold even more firmly in the cauldronpoint for politicalof political activism activism and and social social change change cont coinuedntinued with with antiwar public imagination as a center of “bohemian” culture and spirit. antiwarprotests, protests, but perhaps but perhaps even more even significantly, more significantl throughy, through a fateful a fatefulstruggle struggle over the over shape the of shape the park of the itself—a park itself— conflica tconflict which, which,pitting Jane Washington Place, late 1940s. Perhaps no other university in America was more affected than NYU pittingJacobs againstJane Jacobs Robert against Moses, Robert marked Moses, a crucial marked turni a crucialng point turning in by the postwar explosion in enrollment, as veterans flooded back to college under the GI Bill. By 1945, the pointattitudes in attitudes about urban about redevelopment. urban redevelopment. student population had matched its prewar peak and then kept growing, until by 1949, an incredible 70,376 students were attending NYU.

Robert Moses proposed a four-lane sunken highway (shown inabove a 1956 in a rendering)1956 rendering) that would that would cut the cut park the park in two, its halves connected only by a pedestrian bridge. In response, Village residents, led by Jane Jacobs and others, proposed a radical alternative: closing the park to traffic altogether. Forced to leave the University of Göttingen in 1934 after the Nazi rise to power, the legendary mathematician Richard Courant brought to NYU his vision of a collaborative group of mathematical scholars, from a By 1973, as New York reeled from years of rising unrest, crime, range of disciplines, working together to The struggle for Washington Square Park began and financial troubles, and as the fortunes of NYUNYU—which itself— address complex scientific problems— with a 1956 plan by Robert Moses to ease the bus whichhad been had running been running annual annual deficits deficits since 1964—lurched since 1964—lurched toward the foundation of the Courant Institute of and automobile traffic which—as it had for most towarddisaster, disaster, the university the university reluctantly reluctantly sold the sold Heights the Heights campus Mathematical Sciences. Washington Square Park, from the Main Building, late 1940s. In AllenAllen GinsbergGinsberg andand GregoryGregory CorsoCorso inin of the century—still passed under the Washington campusto the City to theUniversity City University of New York of New in order York into orderregain to solvency. regain 1945 alone, NYU took in more than 12,000 veterans—far more WashingtonWashington SquareSquare Park,Park, 1957.1957. Though Square Arch and into the park itself. solvency.The historic The uptown historic site uptown was soon site transformedwas soon transformed into Bronx into than any other university in the country—straining the already Althoughthey had originallythey had originally met at Columbia, met at BronxCommunity Community College, College, while NYU while regrouped NYU regrouped once again once aroundagain crowded facilities. “An empty seat in a classroom has become a Among a field of talented postwar Columbia,the “beat generation” the “beat generation” writers Allen writers aroundWashington Washington Square, Square,to face an to uncertainface an uncertain future. future. rarity,” Chancellor Harry W. Chase observed in 1946, “an empty faculty members, two stood out for their AllenGinsberg Ginsberg and Jack and KerouacJack Kerouac soon madesoon Organizing a community group specifically classroom a mirage.” pioneering contributions and the enduring madetheir waytheir down way downto the to Village, the Village, extending devoted to fighting Moses’Moses’s project—one project—one of of the the institutions founded upon their work. Dr. extendinginto a new into era thea new decades-old era the decades-old first ofsuch its groupskind in in the the city’s city’s history—Jacobs history—Jacobs and and Howard A. Rusk’s revolutionary approach reputationreputation ofof thethe area—andarea—and especiallyespecially her colleagues convinced a state assemblyman to to the treatment of disabled patients WashingtonWashington Square—asSquare—as America’sAmerica’s great support their plan on a temporary basis. On June (above)—emphasizing activity in place of centergreat center of free-spirited of free-spirited culture. culture. 25th, 1958, Jacobs’s three-year-old daughter Mary In the mid-1960s, under the leadership of President bed rest—led to the creation in 1951 of the and a friend carried out a “ribbon-tying” ceremony. James Hester, NYU presented a new vision for Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. Within a year, the park had been permanently Washington Square, designed by Philipthe architects Johnson Philip and closed to traffic. RichardJohnson Foster.and Richard At its Foster.heart was At itsan heartenormous was an new centralenormous library, new central NYU’s first,library, faced NYU’s in red first, sandstone faced in (atred center)—asandstone (above,structure at intendedcenter)—a not structure only to consolidate intended not A vast central atrium rose the entire twelve-story height of Elmer Holmes Left: David Sears folksinging in Washington Square Park, previouslyonly to consolidate scattered previously collections scattered but to provide collections a symbol but Bobst Library—intended, the architect Philip Johnson said, to provide a 1959. Right: Edward I. Koch, a 1948 graduate of NYU Law foralso the to entireprovide university. a symbol forTo theextend entire its university.impact, NYU’s To sense of “monumentality.” The festivities for the opening of the library School, in Washington Square Park, 1956. In the late 1950s, Student Protest,protest, Washington Square Park, March 1968. olderextend buildings the library’s on the impact, square NYU’s would older be remodeled buildings withon the building (whose impactarchitectural on Washington impact on Square Washington Park had Square itself Park been had a source Washington Square Art Show, 1950s. “Once“Once uponupon aa timetime itit was was Washington Square Park became a popular destination for During the Vietnam War, NYU students frequently gathered similarsquare wouldstone facades. be remodeled with similar stone facades. ofitself controversy) been a source was ofmuted controversy) by the university’s was muted worsening by the university’s financial worsening crisis and a small show,” Kate Simon observed in 1959, “limited in size to “weekend beatniks”—young people who congregated around in the park to protest American policy—and their own thefinancial city’s growingcrisis and economic the city’s and growing social economic problems. and social problems. the Square itself. It has now achieved the dignity of a catalog the large central fountain, performing folk songs. university’s collaboration with the federal government. and spills over onto the walls of New York University….”