COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: FUTURE CAMPUS

Though it shouldn’t come as a big surprise considering the university’s location in the most densely populated city in the United States, Columbia has fewer square feet per student than any other Ivy League School.

Because of this limited space, Columbia is in the early stages of expanding its campus into the Manhattanville neighborhood of West Harlem, just north of Morningside Heights. Over the past several years, the university has acquired land between Broadway and 12th Avenue, and 125th and 133rd Streets and plans to demolish most of what is currently there in order to construct new university buildings, as well as a new math and engineering secondary school and a public park. This is the first campus Columbia will have constructed in almost 100 years since the Medical Center was built in the 1920s.

Columbia is intent on weaving the new campus into the existing community, keeping all streets open to the public and avoiding the gated feel of its Morningside Campus. The 17-acre extension will add 6.8 million square feet of space to the university, including new buildings for the Business School, School of the Arts, School of International and Public Affairs, and the sciences (due for completion by 2015), and a new School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as well as additional housing for graduate students and faculty (due to be finished by 2030.)

In an effort to improve public transit in the area and to draw more pedestrians to the new campus, the West Harlem Piers was constructed on the Hudson River in Manhattanville to allow for renewed ferry service to other parts of Manhattan. In the early nineteenth until the mid-twentieth century, Manhattanville, then a manufacturing hub, featured ferry service to New Jersey, leaving from 130th Street and Riverside Drive. However, service ended in the 1950s.  The city has yet to find a ferry operator, but hopes the service will increase commuter and tourist traffic to the area once the Manhattanville campus is completed.

Furthering the effort to make the area accessible, the Metropolitan Transit Authority is considering testablishing a Metro-North Commuter Rail-Road stop at West 125th Street, on tracks currently operated by Amtrak. There was a train stop at Riverside Drive and 130th Street, but it was razed in the 1920s. The new station would enable the area’s residents to get out of the city and allow students, faculty and university visitors to arrive at Penn Station in just one stop.