Butler Library

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

John Jay Hall is a 15-story building located on the southeastern extremity of the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University in New York City, on the northwestern corner of 114th St. and Amsterdam Avenue. Named for Founding Father, The Federalist Papers author, diplomat, and first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John Jay (Class of 1764), it was among the last buildings designed by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, which had provided Columbia's original Morningside Heights campus plan, and was finished in 1927. The building includes freshman housing for students of Columbia College and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science; John Jay Dining Hall, the university's primary undergraduate dining facility; JJ's Place, an underground student quick service restaurant; the university's health services center; and an elegant wood-paneled lounge. Among its most prominent residents was the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. Unlike Carman Hall, the other exclusively freshman dormitory at Columbia, in which rooms are double-occupancy and arranged in clusters of two around a common bathroom as a suite, John Jay Hall's accommodations consist primarily of single rooms along narrow corridors, generally with three double-occupancy rooms per floor. Other dormitories housing undergraduate freshmen (but not exclusively so) include Wallach Hall, Hartley Hall, and Furnald Hall.

An outdoor sculpture of Thomas Jefferson by William Ordway Partridge is installed outside the School of Journalism on the Columbia University campus in Manhattan, New York, United States. It was modeled in plaster in 1901 and cast in bronze in 1914 by the New York-based foundry Roman Bronze Works.

The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism schools in the world and the only journalism school in the Ivy League. It offers four graduate degree programs. The school shares facilities with the Pulitzer Prizes. It directly administers several other prizes, including the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, honoring excellence in broadcast and digital journalism in the public service. It co-sponsors the National Magazine Awards, also known as the Ellie Awards, and publishes the Columbia Journalism Review. In addition to offering professional development programs, fellowships and workshops, the school is home to the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.Admission to the school is highly selective and has traditionally drawn a very international student body. A Board of Visitors meets periodically to advise the dean's office and support the school's initiatives.

Broadway Residence Hall is a postmodern dormitory at Columbia University in New York City. The building is commonly referred to by students as "Broadway". The building is nominally located at the corner of Broadway and 113th Street, though it shares its main entrance, which opens onto 114th Street, with Hogan Hall. Designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, it opened in 2000. Originally supposed to blend with the redbrick McKim, Mead & White buildings of the Columbia campus, Broadway Hall's design was changed to placate neighbors who wished to see it blend with local apartment buildings. In addition to housing students, its lower levels are home to a hardware store and a branch of the New York Public Library system.

The Class of 1885 Memorial Sundial is a landmark at Columbia University, located at the center of the College Walk at the other end of Butler Plaza from Butler Library. Designed by astronomy professor Harold Jacoby in conjunction with McKim, Mead & White, it was completed in 1914. The 16-short-ton (15 t) granite sphere that once sat on top of it, at some point considered the largest stone sphere in the world, was removed in 1946 after it began to crack; efforts have been made toward its recovery since it was rediscovered in Michigan in 2001. The sundial's bare platform now serves as a popular meeting area for students, as well as a center for campus politics.

Furnald 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.

Hogan Hall is a dormitory of Columbia University primarily reserved for fourth-year undergraduate students. The dorm is popular for its suite configurations as well as its central location. Built in 1898 as a nursing home, the building was converted to graduate student housing in 1977. It was named after Frank S. Hogan. It was converted into an undergraduate residence in 1994, then renovated in 2000 with the completion of a new entrance connecting it to Broadway Hall, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects. Located at the corner of 114th Street and Broadway in the Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, the building is named for former New York District Attorney Frank Hogan.