Trouble in the Neighborhood

One hundred and thirteenth St. is a typical street for Morningside Heights, a quiet block with little traffic, lined with both residential and institutional buildings. From Broadway, it heads down a hill, past apartment buildings, brownstones, and the home of Columbia's School of Social Work. It's a handsome, peaceful street.

Except for the vacant lot. Full of cracked pavement and surrounded by a ten-foot high fence topped with barbed wire, the vacant lot is ugly and arresting, a black hole of property value better suited to downtown Detroit than Morningside Heights.

The vacant lot was to be the site for the new home of Columbia's School of Social Work, which has been operating for the last 30 years out of a temporary building converted from an apartment building. But Columbia stepped back from its construction plans 10 weeks ago, failing a school that it has too often failed in the past.

The school's current home is an embarrassment. Classes are held in small L-shaped rooms that frequently have columns squarely in the middle. The officially stated occupancy limit of the building is lower than the school's population, and classes and research are frequently conducted in hallways. If you're an undergraduate, imagine that Lion's Court were your student center. Now imagine that Lion's Court has been your student center for three decades.

So what happened? Columbia bowed to pressure from a few community groups who were worried that the Social Work building would block the view of neighboring buildings, that the building was too tall, and that it would threaten, in the words of one local resident, "the historic preservation of this beautiful community." The truth is that any construction on the site will block the view of windows opening onto the vacant lot, that the 12-story building would not be out of place on a block with 12- and 13-story buildings on each corner, and that Columbia hired the traditionalist architectural firm Cooper, Robertson, and Partners, in order to make sure the building would architecturally compliment the other buildings in the community.

The passionate but ill-thought-out objections to the building speak to a disturbing trend in the Morningside Heights community: a knee-jerk response to any and all Columbia development. The president of the block association's demand for a "contextual" building--that is, a residential building--is both typical and misguided. Community members need to realize that Morningside Heights is both a residential and academic community. When the University came in 1898, academic and residential buildings already coexisted in the neighborhood and on 113th St. itself.

In fact, relations between the University and the community have come a long way in recent years, due largely to the efforts of Executive Vice President for Administration Emily Lloyd. The sort of arrogant expansion that characterized Columbia's policy toward the community in the 1960s has been replaced with extensive consultation on projects like the Broadway Dorm and the new 110th St. private school and faculty housing complex. The consultation is not always fruitful. Columbia frequently runs into community members who adamantly take issue with any construction at all, but at least the community has a voice.

Yet Columbia should not be let off the hook. The University's actions have been hurtful and disingenuous not only to the community, but also to the students and faculty of the School of Social Work. For 30 years the University ignored its promise to give the School of Social Work a real home. Last year it looked like Columbia would finally come through on its promise. There was even a public announcement and a groundbreaking ceremony attended by President Rupp. Now everything is in limbo again.

To put this in perspective, since 1960 Columbia has built Jerome Greene Hall for the Law School (and its wealthy alumni), renovated Greene Hall and added a sleek new student lounge, and built Warren Hall for the Law School to expand into. The fact that in that time Columbia has not even given the School of Social Work a permanent home unearths an unfortunate truth: nobody ever got rich from doing social work.

The Social Work School has always been a low priority for Columbia, and it is this disregard that leads to today's crisis, in which the 113th St. building has been offered to community activists as a sort of sacrificial lamb in exchange for the construction of the much higher priority faculty residence and private school on 110th St. As always, Social Work students will have to make do, perhaps at a site at 121st and Amsterdam which they would have to share with several retail stores and (surprise) the Law School.

They deserve better. If the community continues to challenge every new project and the University continues to ignore its promises, then the 113th St. building will become an innocent casualty of their ongoing squabbles. And the students of the School of Social Work will simply have to wait until Columbia condescends to give them a real home.