On May 19, 2022, during the Celebration for the Classes of 2020 and 2021, the Nicholas Murray Butler Gold Medal was awarded to 21 members of the President’s Advisory Task Force on COVID-19. The group was charged with ensuring the health and safety of our campus community, maintaining financial stability in unprecedented times, and providing […]
Category: Columbia University Archives
Researching Columbia’s Campus and Histories of Racism and Enslavement
A pilot project coordinated by the libraries is foregrounding the ways that campus spaces reflect Columbia’s ongoing legacy of white supremacy and racism […]
Stargazing at the Bloomingdale Observatory
Throughout the year, we have celebrated Columbia’s 125 years in Morningside Heights, since classes started on the new campus in October 1897. But Columbia actually has a slightly longer history on this site: Columbia built its very first structure on the new grounds in 1892 while the Bloomingdale Asylum was still operational. Welcome to the […]
Before Morningside Heights: Columbia’s Second Home
Before moving to Morningside Heights in 1897, Columbia spent 40 years on a one-square block campus: from 49th to 50th Street and from Madison Avenue to Fourth (now Park) Avenue. While there are no traces of the old campus in midtown anymore, you can find a few artifacts from Columbia’s previous home that made the […]
The Benjamin Franklin Chair’s Big Day Out
Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger recently announced that he will be stepping down as Columbia University’s President on June 30, 2023. While most of us took the time after his announcement to look back on the past two decades of Bollinger’s administration, there is one “member” of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library who […]