King’s College Room Hosts CU History

Tucked away deep in a corner of Low Library, out of sight of most Columbians, the King’s College Room is a treasure trove of some of this University’s most prized documents, portraits, and valued objects from its earliest history.

Once used as a venue for trustee meetings and the occasional dissertation, it was cleared of all its contents when the University Archives and Columbiana Library—which formerly used the room—moved out of Low Library on Oct. 31, 2007.

The King’s College Room was created in 1961 with money donated by an alumnus of the then-School of Mines, Edmund Astley Prentiss. The architecture and layout were designed to replicate an 18th-century drawing room, evoking the colonial period during which King’s College was founded.

In his foreword to the booklet published for the inauguration of the room, University President Grayson Kirk said the room was created in order to remind the institution of its past as it looked toward the future, thereby granting to “each generation through pride in a greater tradition a better perspective by which to judge the present.”

Objects that hold places of honor in King’s College Room include the psalter—a volume containing the Book of Psalms—used in the first graduation at Columbia on June 21, 1758. King’s College Room also houses copies of a philosophy textbook entitled Noetica, authored by Samuel Johnson, the first president of King’s College in 1754—including one which was used by John Jay during his time as a King’s College student. Around 200 books from the King’s College library that survived the Revolutionary War and a fire in 1776 that destroyed much of Lower Manhattan are also preserved in the room.

Other documents in the room include the weekly bill of fare for early Columbia College students. At the time, parents paid five pounds sterling [New York was still a British colony] for a year’s tuition, four pounds sterling per year for a room, and thirteen shillings a week for food. There is also a black book of misdemeanors—in the University president’s own handwriting—which recorded student infractions including “[coming in] through a hole in the college fence at twelve o’clock at night,” “insulting ... the college cook,” and “stealing a very large quantity of wine out of ye President’s garret.”

In the fall of 2000, the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, paid a visit to Columbia and stopped by the King’s College Room where he viewed the 1754 Royal Charter establishing King’s College granted by his ancestor King George II.

Most of the King’s College Room’s artifacts are in storage for safekeeping and will be displayed for public viewing in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library on the sixth floor of Butler starting Jan. 2, 2008.