Columbia University

Columbia University is a private university in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as King's College and is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in the United States. It is widely regarded as one of the world's most prestigious institutions of higher learning.

Student life

Columbia has formal educational ties to the Juilliard School of Music, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and to Oxford and Cambridge universities in England. It operates Nevis Laboratories in Irvington, New York, the Arden House Conference Center in Harriman, New York, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, and Reid Hall, an academic facility in Paris. The university's library system is among the world's largest.

Related Topics:
Juilliard School of Music - American Museum of Natural History - Oxford - Cambridge - Irvington, New York - Harriman, New York - Palisades, New York - Reid Hall - Paris

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In addition to its academic ties, the school also maintains relationships with The Metropolitan Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, The Museum of Natural History and other major museums throughout New York City, allowing students free or discounted access.

Related Topics:
Metropolitan Museum - Museum of Modern Art - Whitney Museum - Museum of Natural History - Museum

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As Morningside Heights is bordered by Harlem and the Upper West Side, students have access to a variety of historic institutions in the immediate area, including Grant's Tomb, The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, and several famous jazz clubs and soul food restaurants in the area.

Related Topics:
Morningside Heights - Harlem - Upper West Side - Grant's Tomb - Cathedral of Saint John the Divine - Jazz club - Soul food

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Campus

Due to former university president Seth Low's late-19th century vision of a university campus where all disciplines could be taught in one location, most of Columbia's graduate and undergraduate studies are conducted in Morningside Heights. This campus was designed by acclaimed architects McKim, Mead, and White and is considered one of their greater successes.

Related Topics:
Seth Low - McKim, Mead, and White

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Columbia's main campus occupies six blocks, 32 acres (132,000 m²), in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Health-related schools are located at the Columbia University Medical Center, about fifty blocks uptown. Columbia also owns the 26 acre Baker Field, which has the facilities for field sports, outdoor track, tennis, and rowing. This makes Columbia, by some accounts, the city's third-largest landowner after the Catholic Church and the City itself, with holdings that include the fifty-story former General Electric Building at 570 Lexington Avenue (not to be confused with the current GE Building in Rockefeller Center). There is a third campus on the west bank of the Hudson River, the 157 acre Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York.

Related Topics:
Campus - Block - Morningside Heights - Manhattan - Columbia University Medical Center - Catholic Church - General Electric Building - GE Building - Rockefeller Center - Hudson River - Palisades, New York

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Organizations and athletics

Major publications include the Columbia Daily Spectator, the nation's second oldest student newspaper; CTV, the nation's second oldest student television station; The Fed, an alternative humor paper; the Jester, a now-dormant campus humor magazine established in 1899 and edited at one point by Allen Ginsberg; the Columbia Review, the nation's oldest college literary magazine; the Blue & White, a literary magazine established in 1892; the Collection, an undergraduate literary magazine; and the Journal of Politics & Society, the nation's leading journal of advanced undergraduate research in the social sciences, published by the Helvidius Group. The annual Varsity Show, once led by Rodgers and Hammerstein, is a student produced musical that lampoons Columbia traditions and students, as well as rival colleges. Most recently, Columbia students established an online arts and literary magazine entitled The Mobius Strip.

Related Topics:
Allen Ginsberg - Rodgers and Hammerstein

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While Columbia is no longer an athletics powerhouse, sports at Columbia have a long tradition. Crew was Columbia's first sport. The Columbia football team is one of the nation's oldest and won the Rose Bowl in 1934. Its wrestling team is the nation's oldest. Due to space constraints, most of Columbia's outdoor athletic teams practice and compete uptown at Baker Field in Inwood, Manhattan. Some of the rowing teams use the Orchard Beach Lagoon as their home course. Home meets for cross country running are held at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.

Related Topics:
Rose Bowl - Wrestling - Inwood, Manhattan - Orchard Beach Lagoon - Cross country running - Van Cortlandt Park - Bronx

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Columbia has been home to some famous athletes - Lou Gehrig played baseball while he was a student at Columbia and Sid Luckman played football. Columbia's fencing team in the late 20th century was one of the nation's most successful, with NCAA team championships in 1987, 1988, 1989, 1992 and 1993. In recent years, the women's cross country team has held the Heptagonal Championship title. In 2004, both the men's and women's teams won the race.

Related Topics:
Lou Gehrig - Sid Luckman - Fencing - Cross country

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The university's recent notoriety in sports, however, lies with its football team which set an NCAA record of most consecutive football games without a win. After a losing 44 games, it broke the streak by beating Princeton at Columbia's homecoming game in 1988.

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Yet, Columbia is among the top 20 universities in terms of its number of NCAA Division I varsity sports offerings.

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For a listing of organizations, see the article Clubs and Organizations of Columbia University.

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