This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there.
According to Columbia University's Zoning Resolution, the vast majority of space in their most recent Manhattanville Expansion will be devoted to the University’s private purposes: “The above-grade development would be primarily for community facility uses serving the University, but would also include approximately 162,000 sf of street-level retail and other active uses at the ground floor. Below grade space would comprise approximately 2 million sf, with 296,000 sf devoted to academic research support. The Academic Mixed-Use Development would also include approximately 1.6 acres of publicly accessible open space.” One thing I find interesting is the manner in which the University presents the amount of space for the University in square feet and the amount of publicly accessible open space in acres. When 1.6 acres is converted to square feet, it’s a total of close to 70,000 square feet. About 24% of the total space for the Expansion is open to the public. What makes this particularly interesting in my opinion is the fact that the Expansion has largely been advertised as a university open to people and ideas, and that embraces West Harlem. There is thus an immense contrast between what Columbia University propagates on its website and via interviews with journalists, and the actual plans that they shared with the city. In addition, spatialization in West Harlem has become increasingly toxic: whereas Columbia goes to great lengths to ensure that its spaces are free of hazards such as asbestos, residents and businesses in the surrounding area are increasingly exposed to toxic surroundings. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University? How do these narratives perpetuate social (whiteness, masculine) and physical (geographic, infrastructural) toxicity? How are Columbia's actions emblematic of the text in the image, the likes of which propogates the notion of the university needing space and the "proper" kinds of citizens to surround it?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
THE CREATION OF MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
GENERATING AN EXPANSION
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
REVISING HISTORY
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
MORNINGSIDE PARK GYM
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
KNOCKING OVER MCDONALDS
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
EMINENT DOMAIN
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
THE CREATION OF MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
GENERATING AN EXPANSION
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
REVISING HISTORY
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
MORNINGSIDE PARK GYM
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
KNOCKING OVER MCDONALDS
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
EMINENT DOMAIN
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
THE CREATION OF MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
GENERATING AN EXPANSION
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
REVISING HISTORY
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
MORNINGSIDE PARK GYM
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
KNOCKING OVER MCDONALDS
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
EMINENT DOMAIN
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
THE CREATION OF MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
GENERATING AN EXPANSION
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
REVISING HISTORY
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
MORNINGSIDE PARK GYM
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
KNOCKING OVER MCDONALDS
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
EMINENT DOMAIN
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
THE CREATION OF MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
GENERATING AN EXPANSION
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
REVISING HISTORY
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
MORNINGSIDE PARK GYM
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
KNOCKING OVER MCDONALDS
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
EMINENT DOMAIN
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
THE CREATION OF MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
GENERATING AN EXPANSION
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
REVISING HISTORY
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
MORNINGSIDE PARK GYM
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
KNOCKING OVER MCDONALDS
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
EMINENT DOMAIN
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
THE CREATION OF MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
GENERATING AN EXPANSION
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
REVISING HISTORY
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
MORNINGSIDE PARK GYM
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
KNOCKING OVER MCDONALDS
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
EMINENT DOMAIN
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
THE CREATION OF MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
GENERATING AN EXPANSION
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
REVISING HISTORY
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
MORNINGSIDE PARK GYM
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
KNOCKING OVER MCDONALDS
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
EMINENT DOMAIN
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
THE CREATION OF MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
The present circumstances within Morningside Heights can be traced to the very origins of the Grant and Manhattanville Houses, a case in which public housing was utilized as a distinctive tool to manage the residents in the surrounding community. Grant and Manhattanville Houses were built to house low-income families as part of a plan developed by Morningside Heights, Inc. (MHI, renamed Morningside Area Alliance), a conglomeration of local educational, religious, and residential institutions seeking “to promote the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive residential, educational, and cultural area.” According to Christiane Collins, a resident and unofficial historian of Morningside Heights during the mid 1900s, MHI aspired to an ideal “American suburban-like environment, draped in an academic gown: economically and culturally homogeneous, free of ‘undesirables’ and implying discrimination along both economic and racial lines.” Following preliminary surveys of the location where the Grant and Manhattanville Houses were to eventually be built, the executive committee of the organization decided that “nothing short of substantial rebuilding along the northern and southern borders of Morningside Heights will assure the maintenance of a community in keeping with the interests of local institutions” (Young 1960). Thus, the Houses were constructed to replace the former buildings deemed to be “blighted.”
GENERATING AN EXPANSION
“We are not a profit-making institution looking out for our own advantage. We are trying to do things that help the world more broadly. The community is not everything.” (President of Columbia Bollinger, 2006)
“Yesterday the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office arrested and indicted over 100 suspected gang members in West Harlem in one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history. These indictments make our city and community safer and come as a result of a long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies. Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer.” (Columbia University Vice President for Public Safety, James F. McShane, 2014)
Why is Columbia a toxic institution? Columbia propagates narratives of being of the city of New York, of “transparency” and “accessibility,” even as local residents feel uncomfortable/unwelcome to partake in their resources at various instances. Restricting spaces and policing them in tandem render this place toxic and more dangerous for the groups of people who are perceived not to be welcome. The construction of this image is an idealized representation of what Columbia stands for, yet does not account for who the institution has stood on in order to reach this juncture. "The community" becomes disposable in certain instances and useful in others, depending on the image that the University is attempting to portray.
REVISING HISTORY
The map at the front of the image indicates the remaining SRO's (single resident occupany) in 1961 that were target by Columbia University for "urban renewal," whereas the image behind conveys Manhattanville's history as represented by Columbia on their website. This is informed by imperialist nostalgia that reminisces an industrialist past in Manhattanville while ignoring the histories of “urban renewal,” displacement, and the weaponization of “blight” throughout West Harlem.
By the 1950s, Columbia and other institutions of the neighborhood decided to remove low-income residents from the surrounding neighborhood through a campaign against SRO’s, the displacement of thousands of residents, and the rapid acquisition of buildings. Tenants were forcibly removed by various means: sealing dumbwaiters so that garbage had to be carried out in person, allowing elevators to break down, physically removing “undesirables” from buildings, plugging keyholes with wax hoping residents would be blocked out of their apartments, and at times using police officers to harass tenants and search their apartments for something illegal (Chronopolous 2012: 46). Residents resisted their forced removals, typically only delaying MHI’s plans while at other times derailing them, the great majority of people taken to court being African Americans.
The manners in which these processes have been largely raced, classed, and gendered is not included in general discussion of the history of the neighborhood, and thus supposedly permits Columbia to pursue its aims of the knowledge economy. This in turn justifies privatization of land via the use of eminent domain, the likes of which propagates knowledge as a public good. This in turn elides the racist, classist, and sexist undertones of their plans by perpetuating a liberal narrative of allegedly incorporating the “community” into the academic fold while simultaneously displacing and/or disenfranchising those deemed not to fit within that fold.
MORNINGSIDE PARK GYM
In 1968, Columbia University announced the plan to build a “quasisegregated” gymnasium in Morningside Park under an agreement with the State of New York, perpetuating the ideal of diverse but controlled spaces and the protection of institutional interests. To be built on the hill of Morningside Park, the gymnasium plan consisted of Columbia’s eight-floor space resting on top of a two-story structure to be set aside for community access. The gymnasium was allegedly meant to expand upon the community athletic program conducted by the University among teenage boys of Harlem and Morningside Heights. While part of the same building, the Columbia University entrance was to be at the top of the park while the Harlem entrance would be on the other side of the building, thus resulting in absolute segregation between Columbia affiliates and residents from Harlem. However, the cliff slanted in such a manner that only about 12 percent of the total space would be devoted to Harlem residents (Chronopolous 2012: 50). According to a brochure dispensed by Columbia University entitled “The New Columbia Gymnasium,” the new gymnasium would be open to both the Columbia family and in the University’s neighbors in the same manner as the remainder of the campus. The gym would “be a source of pride and satisfaction to both Columbia and the community.”
As tensions increased between the institutions and the surrounding community, residents of the neighborhood organized in consortium with Columbia University students and professors, politicians, and community organizations to oppose the gymnasium plan in full force. With his 1965 election as mayor, John V. Lindsay encouraged African Americans from Harlem and Columbia University students to oppose the construction of the gymnasium. Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving, Charles Rangel, Basil Patterson, and other politicians also spoke out against this and any other future plans for spatial takeover. Columbia commenced construction regardless of protests, only to face more opposition from students in the spring of 1968 when demonstrations shut down the University. Then-president of Columbia University Grayson Kirk resigned and with his resignation came the resignation of both the plan for the gymnasium as well as (temporarily) the vision for the Manhattanville Expansion, which required the use of eminent domain and thus would potentially arouse greater conflict than the gymnasium plan (Chronopoulos 2012: 51). Part of the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Manhattanville Expansion was intended to be shared with noninstitutional users and residents, with a focus on creating a middle-class commercial, institutional, and recreational space. However, due to lack of funds and fear of opposition, interim President Andrew Cordier chose to cancel the Expansion. Instead, with I.M. Pei as master planner, Columbia proceeded to build above and below ground, within the main campus (Chronopoulos 2012: 51-2).
KNOCKING OVER MCDONALDS
The President, Bollinger, goes to various sites and speaks of the importance of the Manhattanville Expansion for the future of the University and city (similar to when Columbia sought funds for the quasisegregated gym). Bodies have been rearranged in the general area: whereas for example there was once a McDonald’s at a street corner by the Expansion, where people from the neighborhood would gather, those people have been dispersed due to the demolition of the restaurant. Such has happened for many other businesses as well as residents, who were forcefully removed due to eminent domain and/or being paid off.
EMINENT DOMAIN
One of the restaurants removed from the site (Floridita, a West Harlem staple) ended up in a building with the high risk of asbestos exposure. Yet upon reading the documents regarding the Expansion, there was a clear intensive effort to remove the asbestos risk from destroying the old buildings in the Expansion’s own footprint. When the owner attempted to push Columbia to pay for asbestos removal in his new building, their response was much the same as always: “For Columbia, the issue is not whether the asbestos is present or not but whose legal responsibility it is to abate it. Fountain said that handling the asbestos falls under Diaz's obligations as a tenant based on his lease with the University, which specified that Diaz was leasing the property ‘as is.’ ‘The lease, which the university signed with Mr. Diaz after extensive input and further negotiation by his own legal counsel, provides that Mr. Diaz accepted the property in its 'as is' condition, including the tenant's responsibility for ensuring compliance with all code requirements,’ Fountain said in a statement. ‘Consistent with the obligations of Mr. Diaz's lease, as well as any lease, the tenant has obligations.’"
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.
This project aims to build from previous research on Columbia University’s attempts to implement urban renewal and order maintenance. Columbia’s method of urban renewal was the physical reordering of the city to combat “blight,” carried out under the principle of “controlled interracialism,” whereby the University sought to “maintain racial harmony” within housing developments while removing people deemed to cause disorder. From the early 20th century onward, Columbia sought to establish a site of social formation catered to the white upper-class in West Harlem. These mechanisms of gentrification spoke more broadly to colonial reenactments on a city-wide level, whereby spaces deemed “blighted” were seen as empty and open for the taking, dismissing the livelihoods of the people already residing there.
According to Columbia University's Zoning Resolution, the vast majority of space in their most recent Manhattanville Expansion will be devoted to the University’s private purposes: “The above-grade development would be primarily for community facility uses serving the University, but would also include approximately 162,000 sf of street-level retail and other active uses at the ground floor. Below grade space would comprise approximately 2 million sf, with 296,000 sf devoted to academic research support. The Academic Mixed-Use Development would also include approximately 1.6 acres of publicly accessible open space.” One thing I find interesting is the manner in which the University presents the amount of space for the University in square feet and the amount of publicly accessible open space in acres. When 1.6 acres is converted to square feet, it’s a total of close to 70,000 square feet. About 24% of the total space for the Expansion is open to the public. What makes this particularly interesting in my opinion is the fact that the Expansion has largely been advertised as a university open to people and ideas, and that embraces West Harlem. There is thus an immense contrast between what Columbia University propagates on its website and via interviews with journalists, and the actual plans that they shared with the city. In addition, spatialization in West Harlem has become increasingly toxic: whereas Columbia goes to great lengths to ensure that its spaces are free of hazards such as asbestos, residents and businesses in the surrounding area are increasingly exposed to toxic surroundings. How might comprehending more in-depth the social, political, and economic forces at play in the case of Columbia University’s Expansion and impact on West Harlemites feed into broader discussions of race (particularly whiteness) as it is constructed in and surrounding (physically/socially) the University? How do these narratives perpetuate social (whiteness, masculine) and physical (geographic, infrastructural) toxicity? How are Columbia's actions emblematic of the text in the image, the likes of which propogates the notion of the university needing space and the "proper" kinds of citizens to surround it?
Background image taken from a book by the American Council on Education in 1964 entitled "The University, The City, and Urban Renewal." This particular excerpt is from a section written by Julian H. Levi, assistant to the president, University of Chicago, entitled "Ground Space for the University." Book was found in Columbia University's archive. Image at the front from the Morningside Area Alliances' "All Are Welcome Here" campaign.