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Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Art museums and galleries in ManhattanColumbia University LibrariesLibraries in ManhattanLiterary archives in the United StatesRare book libraries in the United States
Special collections libraries in the United States
Butler Library Columbia University
Butler Library Columbia University

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is principal repository for special collections of Columbia University. Located in New York City on the university's Morningside Heights campus, its collections span more than 4,000 years, from early Mesopotamia to the present day, and span a variety of formats: cuneiform tablets, papyri, and ostraca, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, early printed books, works of art, posters, photographs, realia (such as mathematical instruments and theater models), sound and moving image recordings, and born-digital archives. Areas of collecting emphasis include American history, Russian and East European émigré history and culture, Columbia University history, comics and cartoons, philanthropy and social reform, the history of mathematics, human rights advocacy, Hebraica and Judaica, Latino arts and activism, literature and publishing, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, oral history, performing arts, and printing history and the book arts.

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Rare Book & Manuscript Library
West 114th Street, New York Manhattan

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N 40.8064 ° E -73.9631 °
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Butler Library

West 114th Street 535
10027 New York, Manhattan
New York, United States
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Butler Library Columbia University
Butler Library Columbia University
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Philosophy Hall
Philosophy Hall

Philosophy Hall is a building on the campus of Columbia University in New York City. It houses the English, Philosophy, and French departments, along with the university's writing center, part of its registrar's office, and the student lounge of its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. It is one of the original buildings designed for the university's Morningside Heights campus by McKim, Mead, and White, built in the Italian Renaissance Revival style and completed in 1910. Philosophy Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been designated a National Historic Landmark as the site of the invention of FM radio by Edwin Armstrong in the early 1930s. The space now occupied by the registrar formerly housed electrical engineering laboratories in which Michael I. Pupin and Edwin Howard Armstrong made several major technological breakthroughs. The building has been home to such notable faculty members as philosophers John Dewey, Frederick J. E. Woodbridge and Ernest Nagel, Guadeloupean novelist Maryse Condé, French literary scholar Michael Riffaterre, poet Kenneth Koch and English literary scholars Lionel Trilling, Edward Said, Carolyn Heilbrun, Quentin Anderson, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Mark Van Doren. Philosophy Hall was not occupied by protesters during the 1968 protests. It served instead as a refuge for faculty and a site of contentious debates among them concerning student conduct. The lawn in front of Philosophy Hall is the site of an original cast of The Thinker (Le Penseur), one of the most famous pieces by French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The hall was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003.It is one of only a handful of buildings on the Columbia campus named for an academic discipline, and not an individual. The others include Mathematics and International Affairs.

Alfred Lerner Hall
Alfred Lerner Hall

Alfred Lerner Hall 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 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 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 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.

Colored Music Settlement School

The Music School Settlement for Colored People was a New York City school established and operated to provide music education for African-American children, who were generally excluded from other music schools. The school was founded in the memory of violinist and composer John Thomas Douglass.The term “settlement school” is to be understood within the context of the settlement movement started in 1884 in London. Growing concern in Victorian England concerning poverty gave rise to a movement whereby those connected to universities settled students in slum areas to live and work alongside local people. Through their efforts, “settlement houses” were established for education, savings, sports, and arts. “Settlement schools” are adjuncts of organizations founded to provide education in various disciplines to the needy. In the United States, the two largest and most influential settlement houses were Chicago's Hull House (founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889) and the Henry Street Settlement in New York (founded by Lillian Wald in 1893). During the 1911-12 season, David Mannes, a European-American violinist, and other supporters founded "The Music School Settlement for Colored People". It was to enable "for the first time in the history of the nation the opportunity for talented black youngsters to obtain excellent musical training at nominal fees."In keeping with institutionalized segregation of the times, the school was founded to be an African American version of the Music School Settlement, which did not accept Black students. The Music School Settlement for Colored People is a small chapter in the much larger history of African-American education in the early 20th century.

Wallach Hall
Wallach Hall

Wallach Hall is the second oldest residence hall (or dormitory) on the campus of Columbia University, and currently houses undergraduate students from Columbia College as well as the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. It opened in 1905 as "Livingston Hall" after Robert Livingston, a Founding Father of the United States and alumnus of King's College, Columbia's predecessor, but its name was changed after Ira D. Wallach donated approximately $2 million towards its renovation. This gave rise to the joke, "Livingston signed the Declaration of Independence, Wallach signed a check." (Although a member of the committee of the Continental Congress that drafted the Declaration, Livingston did not actually sign the historic document.) The building was home, among others, to Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, an Indian jurist, political leader, philosopher, anthropologist, historian, orator, prolific writer, economist, scholar, editor, a revolutionary and one of the founding fathers of independent India. Ambedkar received a Baroda State Scholarship of 11.50 British pounds per month for three years in 1913 to join the Politics Department of Columbia University as a postgraduate student.Wallach Hall was also home to Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. In his autobiography Vanity of Duluoz he expressed his satisfaction with the move from neighboring Hartley Hall: One great move I made was to switch my dormitory room from Hartley Hall to Livingston Hall where there were no cockroaches and where b'God I had a room all to myself, on the second floor, overlooking the beautiful trees and walkways of the campus and overlooking, to my greatest delight, besides the Van Am Quadrangle, the library itself, the new one, with its stone frieze running around entire with the names engraved in stone forever: "Goethe ... Voltaire ... Shakespeare ... Molière ... Dante." That was more like it. Lighting my fragrant pipe at 8 P.M., I'd open the pages of my homework, turn on station WQXR for the continual classical music, and sit there, in the golden glow of my lamp, in a sweater, sight and say, "Well, now I'm a real collegian at last." Overhauled during the early 1980s, Wallach is currently, with Hartley, part of the Living and Learning Center (LLC), home to suite-style housing that intermingles all class levels and features interactive events designed to draw them together. An application process is required to obtain housing in either of the LLC dormitories.