Columbia i   LIBRARY    COLUMNS

fiiK Autumn 199,'j Issue     1     MICHAEL Stoller, Editor
 

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rne hundred years ago, on Decem¬
ber 7, 1895, Columbia laid the cornerstone of its first Morningside Heights
building. Low Memorial Library. While no classes were held al the new location
until 1897, this year nonetheless represents the centenary of Columbia's com¬
mitment to the Morningside campus and, in a sense, to all that the University
would become in the century that followed.

Mindful of this anniversary, we devote the second issue of the new Columbia
Library Columns lo "things Columbia." Inevitably that must entail celebration of
the centenary event itself—the design and construction of Low Library. An arti¬
cle by Barry Bergdoll chronicles the building's emergence from the minds of
Charles Follen McKim and Seth Low, a product of their collective vision of the
Morningside campus and of Low's vision for Columbia's future as a research
university. A photo essay by HoUee Haswell chronicles the vision's realization
in stone. And Michael Rosenthal's article on Nicholas Murray Buder describes
the man who more than anyone else was responsible for the institutional real¬
ization of that vision. Finally John Slranges provides an edition of a brief cor¬
respondence between two important Columbians, George Louis Beer and
James T. Shotwell, a snapshot of the Versailles Peace Conference's aftermath,
and a \'iew of the role Columbians played in the world at large.