EVOLUTION OF
OUR CAMPUS
"The narrow, street-bound campus of Barnard College has always sat a row or two behind Columbia's broad, open plaza across the street. Now, decades after the women's college began filling out its four square blocks, Barnard is trying to reclaim some of its original open feeling — with a new building.
According to Andrew Dolkart's Morningside Heights: A History of Its Architecture and Development (Columbia, 1998), in 1888 Columbia grudgingly endorsed the idea of college education for women with a women's 'annex' of mostly separate classes taught by Columbia faculty. Columbia's president at the time, Frederick Barnard, had been promoting the admission of women for a decade. He died in 1889; the new college was named for him."
The article goes on to explore the history of the Barnard campus, from the original brownstone on Madison Avenue at 44th Street (1889), to the 1897 opening of Milbank Hall, the 1906 opening of Brooks Hall, the 1915 construction of Barnard Hall, and on through to the 1969 construction of Atlschul Hall and McIntosh Center. Barnard's original master campus plan, developed in the early 1900s by architecht Charles A. Rich, was re-examined in 2003, and the Nexus project was born.
—“Streetscapes,” by Christopher Gray, The New York Times, December 7, 2003; read the full article here .
Clarence H. White / Barnard College Archives
Meet Me At... From the entryway of Barnard Hall to Lower Level Mac, click here to view a photo essay of the spaces and places where Barnard women have gathered over the years
McIntosh Center and Altschul Hall
The fall 1969 issue of Barnard magazine covered the construction of Altschul and McIntosh, and covered some of the school’s architectural history. View or download the PDF of this article here (requires the free Adobe Reader).