New York University

Facilities and monuments

Most NYU buildings are scattered across a roughly square area bounded by Houston Street to the south, Broadway to the east, 14th Street to the north, and Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) to the west. The majority of NYU buildings surround Washington Square Park. In the past, there has often been tension between NYU and other neighborhood residents and businesses over real estate issues. In spite of this, NYU is the third largest landowner in the city (the largest being the City itself, the second being the Catholic Church).

Related Topics:
Houston Street - Broadway - 14th Street - Sixth Avenue - Washington Square Park

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Washington Square campus

Since the late 1970s, the center of NYU is its Washington Square campus in the heart of Greenwich Village. One of the city's most creative and energetic communities, the Village is a historic neighborhood that has attracted generations of writers, musicians, artists, and intellectuals. Notable facilities on Washington Square are the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, designed by Philip Johnson and Richard Foster, who also designed several other structures, such as Tisch Hall, Meyer Hall and the Hagop Kevorkian Center. Historic landmark buildings include the Silver Center (formerly known as "Main building"), Brown Building (formerly called the "Asch building", site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), Judson Hall, which houses the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center http://www.nyu.edu/pages/kjc/flash.php, Vanderbilt Hall, the historic townhouse row on Washington Square North, the Kaufman Management Center and the Torch Club, the NYU dining and club facility. Just a block south of Washington Square, NYU Village spreads into Greenwich Village, including faculty and graduate student appartments in the Silver Towers, designed by I.M. Pei, where an enlargement of Picasso's sculpture Bust of Sylvette (1934) is displayed.

Related Topics:
Washington Square - Elmer Holmes Bobst Library - Philip Johnson - Richard Foster - Silver Center - Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire - Washington Square North - I.M. Pei

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Around Washington Square, NYU also hosts several houses dedicated to international cultures, such as the Deutsches Haus, La Maison Française, the Glucksman Ireland House, the Casa Italiana, the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center and the Hagop Kevorkian Center

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In the 1990s, NYU started to build up a second community around Union Square, where Carlyle Court, University Hall, Palladium Residence Hall, Coral Towers, Alumni and Third North Residence Halls can be found.

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NYU theatres and clubs

NYU operates a number of theatres and performance facilites which are frequently used by the university`s music conservatory and Tisch School of the Arts but also external productions. All productions are generally open to the public. The largest performance spaces at NYU are the Skirball Theatre (850 seats) and the Eisner-Lubin Auditorium (560 seats) at the new Kimmel Center. Recently, the Skirball Theatre saw imporant speeches on foreign policy by John Kerry{{ref|kerry}} and Al Gore{{ref|gore}} as well as the recording of the season finale of The Apprentice 3. Of fame is also NYU`s Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal Street, where Eugene O'Neill among many others launched his career and the Frederick Loewe Theatre. Catalyst to many careers in music (Bruce Springsteen started here among many others) was the famous nightclub The Bottom Line on West 4th street in the basement of the Steinhardt School building. Under the protest of the music scene and many fans, the club was evicted by NYU after being unable to meet the increased rent payments for several months.

Related Topics:
Music conservatory - Tisch School of the Arts - John Kerry - Al Gore - The Apprentice - Eugene O'Neill - Bruce Springsteen

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Bobst Library

The Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, built between 1967 and 1972, is the largest library at New York University and one of the largest academic libraries in the United States. Designed by Philip Johnson and Richard Foster, the 12 story, 39 000 m² (425 000 square feet) structure sits on the southern edge of Washington Square Park and is the flagship of a nine-library, 4.5 million volume system that provides students and faculty members with access to the world's scholarship and serves as a center for the University community's intellectual life. Bobst Library houses more than 3.3 million volumes, 20 thousand journals, and over 3.5 million microforms; and provides access to thousands of electronic resources both on-site and to the NYU community around the world via the Internet. The Library is visited by more than 6 500 users per day, and circulates almost one million books annually.

Related Topics:
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library - Philip Johnson - Richard Foster

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In late 2003, Bobst Library was the site of several suicides. Two students jumped from the open air crosswalks inside the library, crashing to the marble floor below. Both later died from their injuries. After the second suicide, NYU installed glass windows on each level to prevent further jumping. These deaths were the first among a rash of jumping deaths at NYU in 2003 and 2004. In 2003, Bobst Library was also in the news for being the home of a homeless student who took permanent residence at the Library since he could not afford student housing.{{ref|homeless}}

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Washington Square Arch

Despite being public property, the Washington Square Arch is the unofficial symbol of NYU, expanding the 5th avenue axis into Washington Square Park. The arch was designed by Stanford White in 1889 to commemorate the centennial of George Washington's inauguration in New York City. Originally of wood and papier mache, it was rebuilt as a massive marble and concrete structure from 1890-1895. Today, thousands of NYU graduates march through the arch into Washington Square park to participate in the annual commencement exercises. The arch was renovated in a $2.7-million restoration project from 2002-2004.{{ref|arch}}

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Recent developments

Over the last few years, NYU has developed a number of new facilities on and around its Washington Square Campus:

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• Kimmel Center for University Life

The Kimmel Center for University Life gives students, faculty, alumni, and staff at NYU the space to come together as a community for major events, ceremonies formal and informal, and artistic performances of all kinds. Named for benefactors Helen and Martin Kimmel, the center also houses the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, the Rosenthal Pavilion, the Eisner & Lubin Auditorium, and the Loeb Student Center.

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• Furman Hall {{ref|furman}}

Furman Hall was named after NYU Law alumnus Jay Furman (JD `71). It includes classroom space, student meeting areas, the Law School clinical program, faculty and administrative offices, and faculty residences. The new building is located on West Third Street between Sullivan and Thompson streets, south of Washington Square Park. It totals 170,000 gross square feet. The building?s architect is Kohn Pederson Fox Associates PC. NYU worked closely with the Greenwich Village community to integrate the new building into surrounding architecture. Reconstructed elements of two historic buildings were incorporated into the new facade, one of which was occupied by poet Edgar Allan Poe.

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• Life Science Facility {{ref|lifescience}}

In 2005, NYU anounced the development of a new life science facility on Waverly Place. The facility will house laboratories and related academic space for the life sciences and will be the first NYU science building developed since the opening of Meyer Hall in 1971. The new facility will be created through the renovation of three existing buildings at 12 - 16 Waverly Place whilst preserving the original, existing facades.

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Medical and other campuses

The main NYU Medical Campus is located at the East River water front at 1st Ave. between 30th and 34th street. The campus hosts the Medical School, Tisch Hospital and the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. Other NYU Centers across the city include the Hospital for Joint Diseases Orthopaedic Institute, the NYU Downtown Hospital and the Bellevue Hospital Center. NYU`s Ehrenkranz School of Social Work operates branch campus programs in Westchester County at Manhattanville College and in Rockland County at St. Thomas Aquinas College. NYU maintains a research facility in Sterling Forest, near Tuxedo, New York, which houses several institutes, notably the Nelson Institute of Environmental Medicine.

Related Topics:
NYU - Ehrenkranz School of Social Work - Manhattanville College - St. Thomas Aquinas College

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International locations

Unlike many other universities, NYU maintains its own international facilities in several countries. Most notable is the 57-acre campus of NYU Florence at Villa LaPietra in Italy, bequeathed by the late Sir Harold Acton to NYU in 1994.{{ref|acton}}

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• NYU in Florence at Villa LaPietra in Florence
• NYU in London
• NYU in Paris
• NYU in Prague
• NYU in Berlin
• NYU in Ghana
• NYU in Madrid

Residence halls

Dormitories at New York University are unique in that many are converted apartment complexes or old hotels. While some are directly in the WSC area, others are as far away as the financial district. Due to NYU's lottery system, where a student receives one point for every semester they live in campus housing, and because freshmen are traditionally placed in the halls closest to the main campus area, most of the students who live in dorms located off-campus are sophomores. The university operates it's own transit system to transport these students, via bus or trolley, to campus. Some students, however, feel that this independently run transit system is inconvenient and opt to utilize the New York Subway system.

Related Topics:
Dormitories at New York University - Apartment - Hotels - Bus - New York Subway

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There are currently twenty-one buildings in the New York University undergraduate housing community. Undergraduate students are guaranteed housing for the duration of their tenure at NYU, and many students choose to stay "on campus." There is, however, a large contingent of students that live off campus . It is difficult for a student to re-enter housing once he or she has left the system as space is limited. One student, allegedly unable to afford the steep housing rates, began to live in Bobst Library. The student attracted a small amount of notoriety, earned the nickname Bobst Boy, and his story was covered in the Washington Square News; New York University's daily student newspaper. The student has since reached a deal with the university and has received housing.

Related Topics:
Bobst Boy - Washington Square News

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Almost all of the residence halls have a laundry room that is open to resident students twenty-four hours a day. The price of using these facilities varies from dorm to dorm, and the administration has been criticized by the student body for inflated rates at Water Street, the only dormitory that is not entirely owned by New York University. All of the dorms are governed by the Inter-Residence Hall Council (IRHC), which is an umbrella student council organization. Each hall elects student representatives to the IRHC, and these representatives meet with one another to form committees and vote on an executive board. The goal of this group is to create programs for university students and to act as a liaison to university administration.

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