iL Cornerstone
 

The building was far from finished when class¬
es began on Morningside Heights on Monday,
October 4, 1897. Summer 1897 had been passed
in a frenetic rhythm of telegrams between Low in
Maine and McKim in New York. On the "sets of
plans ... for your own personal use"'^* ii^^il McKim
had provided. Low and his wife reviewed every
detail from the ventilation and the all-important
lighting to the decorative details, including the
installation of the bronze Zodiac in the vestibule
floor. Work would continue well into 1898 even as
the Library was occupied by an expanding popu¬
lation of administrators, faculty, and students.

But Low took time off from the ceremonies on
October 4, 1897, to dictate a letter of appreciation
to McKim—one of three letters he wrote to his
architect that day:

I avail of this opportunit)' to tell you how more
than delighted both Mrs. Low and I are with this
building. It is finer than we had dreamed it would
be, even when we first returned to the cit\' this
autumn. Mr. Pine [a Trustee] said to me this
morning that he thought it was really one of die
great buildings of the world. Mrs. Low and I share
that feeling most cordially. I congratulate you
upon the outcome with all my heart. I have real¬
ized very fully for many months that your interest
in the building was not simply that of the architect
in his creation, but that there was on your part the
personal interest in it of friend for friend.-''

Low and McKim's visions had come to coincide
to an extraordinary degree. McKim's concept of a
heroic, American classicism, heir both to Rome
and to the Parisian Ecole des Beaux-Arts, fell into
harmony with Low's notion that a grandiose civic
image could craft an international university out
of a local college. Both Low and McKim ricwecl
the entire scheme as a personal triumph.
 

^ Seth Low, "The University and the City," Columbia
University Quarterly 3 (1900): 13. Although the docu¬
mentation for this article is drawn from the rich collec¬
tion of materials concerning Low Library in Central
Files, Columbiana Library, and the archives of Avery
Library, I am indebted to the earlier research of
Francesco Passanli, lo the advice of Andrew Dolkart, to
the assistance of Hollee Haswell and Rhea Pliakis, and to
the work of my Columbia and Barnard College students,
in particular to Zachary Levy, in a seminar on campus
architecture that laid the groundwork for an exhibition
to be held in the Wallach Gallery of the Department of
Art Histon' and Archaeolog;' in autumn 1997 to mark
the centennial of Columbia's move to Morningside
Heights.

- "The Morningside Acropolis" (Editorial), Columbia
University Quarlerly2 (1900): 149.

^ A 1900 survey of the architectural profession noted
that over 70 percent of architects placed Low Library on
a list of the "ten most beautiful buildings in the United
States," cited in "A Beautiful Building," Columbia
University Quarterly 2 (1900): 150.

* On die role of Samuel Ruggles, who had taken a strong
stance against sectarianism and articulated the case of
academic freedom and a commitment to research, see
Richard Hofstadter, Academic Freedom in the Age of the
College (New York: tiolumbia University Press, 1955),
269-74.

■' Thomas Bender, New Ymk Inlelkcl: A Histoiy of Intellectual
Life in New York City from ly^o to the Beginnings of Our
Oion Time (NewYork: Knopf, 1987), esp. 265ff. On Low's
political career and his anti-Tweed politics, see the ser¬
viceable work by Gerald Kurland, Seth Low: The Reformer
in an I'rhan and Industrial Age (^e-wYoT\:Tvi3.yne, 1971).

'' The sU)i7 is of course recounted in the standard histo¬
ries of the University, such as John W. Robson, A Guide to
Columbia University with some account of its history and
 

.» 21 -^