Columbia Library columns (v.44(1995))

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  v.44,no.2(1995:Autumn): Page 22  



Barry Bercdoi.i.
 

traditions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937),
and is brilliantiy analyzed in both Francesco Passanu,
"The Design of Columbia in the 1890s: McKim and His
Client," foumal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34
(1977): 69-84, and Leland Roth, McKim, Mead Of White:
Architects (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 184-95.

' Haight indeed represented Columbia's "Episcopal
connection"; later he designed the General Theological
Seminary in Chelsea. As Francesco Passanti first noticed
(Passanti, "The Design of Columbia," 71 n. 8), Haight's
plan drew not a litde on the recendy adopted double-
cloister plan of the new University of Chicago.

8 McKim lo Low, 18 April 1893, quoted in Passanu, "The
Design of Columbia," 72.

= Repent of the Committee on Buildings and Grounds in
Relation to the New Site, printed report bound with the
Trustees' Minutes. Columbia University. University
Archives. Office of the Secretary of the University.
Minutes of the Trustees of Columbia College. November
11, 1893, vol. 14 (1893-94).

10 Ibid, 10-11.

'^ Low wrote about it enthusiastically: see Seth Low,
"The World's Columbian Exposition," The Columbia
Literary Magazineil (1893): 1-5.

^2 These are discussed in C. B. Moore, The Life and Times
of Charles Follen McKim (Boston: Houghton Mim\n,\929),
128, and by Steven Bedford in The Making of an Architect,
i88i-ipSi, ed. Richard Oliver (New York: Rizzoli,
1981), 34. On tensions between Ware and Low's vision
of the School of Architecture, see Richard Plunz,
"Reflections on Ware, Hamlin, McKim, and the Politics
of History on the Cusp of Historicism," in The History of
History in American Schools of Architecture, i86^-i^yy,
Gwendolyn Wright and Janet Parks (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1990), 53-72.
 

'•^ McKim to Low, 5 June 1893. Columbia University.
Office of the President. Central Files.

'■• "University Hall," which straddled the great retaining
wall separating the heart of the campus from the lower,
northern end (or "green") was never finished, despite
elaborate negotiations for its design which preoccupied
McKim for much of the late 1890s. Its lower level—the
gym and boiler house—^are today the foundations of
Uris Hall.

'^ Columbia University, University Archives. Office of
the Secretary of the University. Minutes of the Trustees
of (:olumbia<:ol!ege.October4, 1894, vol. 15 (1894-95).

"^ McKim to Mead, date unknown, McKim, Mead 8c
White Papers, Library of Congress, quoted in Passanti,
"The Design of Columbia," 76 n. 18; McKim to White, 24
July 1894, Stanford White Papers, Avery Library, vol.
10:17 (M), Dr. 35.

'" Indeed McKim was opening a dialogue with White.
For during those same months White was at work on the
new campus for New York University at University
Heights in the Bronx, where the centerpiece was to be a
centrally planned library flanked by academic pavilions.
The difference in the sensibility between the two men
was apparent from the first sketches.

'" This line of thinking is made abundandy clear by
McKim's friend and Columbia architecture instructor
A.D.F. Hamlin, "The Modern Dome," School of Mines
Quarterly 18 (1897): 109-119.

'•' McKim to Olmsted, date unknown, McKim collection.
Library of Congress, quoted in Moore, The Life and Times

of Charles Follen McKim, 264.

^" McKim to Low, 8 September 1894. Columbia
University. Office of the President. Central Files.

2' Low to McKim, 13 October 1894. Columbia
University. Office of the President. Central Files.
 

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  v.44,no.2(1995:Autumn): Page 22