Carman Hall is a dormitory located on Columbia University 's Morningside Heights campus and currently houses first-year students from Columbia College as well as the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science .
13-476: The building, originally named New Hall, broke ground in 1957 along with an adjacent student center called Ferris Booth Hall, which was later demolished to make way for Alfred Lerner Hall . The building was designed by Harvey Clarkson of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon , which designed the Empire State Building . The building opened in 1959 to the all-male undergraduates of Columbia College . However,
26-511: A cinema and auditorium named for Roone Arledge , a Columbia alumnus with a distinguished career in sports broadcasting and television news. The building also contains eateries, performance space, student club space, lounges, and administrative offices. The building began receiving harsh criticism even before it was completed. The escalating ramps have never met their purpose as a social meeting place, instead taking up valuable space and slowing movement between floors. The gigantic rectangular hole in
39-471: Is the student center or students' union of Columbia University . It is named for Al Lerner , who financed part of its construction. Situated on the university's historic Morningside Heights campus in New York City , the building, designed by deconstructivist architect Bernard Tschumi , then dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation , opened in 1999, replacing
52-406: The "humorous" category suggesting it to be named after Aaron Burr , as a counterpart to Hamilton Hall , at the opposite end of campus. However, neither name was endorsed by the university. As a placeholder, it was referred to as New Hall until it was finally named Carman Hall in 1965, in honor of Harry Carman , who served as dean of Columbia College from 1943 to 1950. In November 2021, Carman Hall
65-585: The Yale School of Architecture Robert A. M. Stern , who graduated from Columbia a year after the building's completion, wrote in an unpublished piece that "[Carman and Ferris Booth Halls] are unfortunately mediocre in their conception." After the building broke ground, a informal naming contest was organized by the Columbia Daily Spectator , with the "serious" category winner suggesting the building be named after dean Herbert Hawkes and
78-505: The academic year. The most significant include the Varsity Show , an annual satirical musical about university life, and Glass House Rocks, in which Lerner (the "glass house") is transformed into a giant party space (the event takes its name from the former television series School House Rock ) with performances from a Capella groups, bands, and dance groups. McKim, Mead, and White Too Many Requests If you report this error to
91-407: The administrative areas of the building—has been described as labyrinthine. Neighbors protested that the building serves to further wall off Columbia from the community. Architecture critics have lambasted the building for managing to be simultaneously dull and offensive, and failing to conform to the beaux arts style of the surrounding campus. Lerner Hall is home to social events throughout
104-575: The aesthetics of the building along with other buildings constructed during Grayson L. Kirk 's tenure was criticized by students, faculty, and critics alike, including Jacques Barzun , Andrew Dolkart , Barry Bergdoll , and Ada Louise Huxtable . Architecture critic Allan Temko noted that the building's long hallways and pattern of two double rooms with a shared bath resembled a “ Victorian reformatory” and its lounge “a bus station with Muzak .” In 1962, Temko again criticized Carman as "dull and bureaucratic... [with] skimpy and unimaginative detail." Dean of
117-401: The interior of the building caused by the ramps is the main target of criticism, as it could be used for more student and study space. The hole gives Lerner Hall a doughnut shape, as one can see all the way down to the first floor from the fifth floor. Due to space constraints, few student activities have individual offices, the vast majority receiving only locker space. The layout—particularly in
130-620: The older dorms." A section of the Ben Coes novel, First Strike, was also set in the building. The building was also referenced in Christopher John Farley 's young-adult novel, Zero O'Clock. In his memoir, Photographs of My Father , Paul Spike notes that "not a trace of style ruins the ugly face of Carman Hall." 40°48′24″N 73°57′51″W / 40.80667°N 73.96417°W / 40.80667; -73.96417 Alfred Lerner Hall Alfred Lerner Hall
143-603: The previous student center, Ferris Booth Hall, which stood from 1960 to 1996. The cafeteria in Lerner Hall still bears the name of Ferris Booth, and unlike the other large cafeteria on campus in John Jay, Ferris Booth utilizes only plastic silverware and paper plates. The building attempts to both conform to its context of neoclassical McKim, Mead, and White buildings as well as break out of their mold. In so doing, Lerner Hall features redbrick cladding and proportions that hold
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#1732783560983156-484: The street wall of university buildings along Broadway , but reveals a vast glass wall to the campus fabricated by Eiffel Constructions Metalliques , descendant of the firm that built the Eiffel Tower . Behind the wall are a series of escalating ramps that give the building a unified sense of space and are meant to act as a social meeting place much like the steps of Low Memorial Library . Lerner Hall features both
169-476: Was evacuated after bomb threats surfaced on Twitter claiming that improvised explosives have been placed in the building. The building frequently served as the residence of the protagonist in Paul Auster 's works, including 4 3 2 1 and Winter Journal ; in the latter he describes Carman as "an austere environment, ugly and charmless, but nevertheless far better than the dungeonlike rooms to be found in
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