Columbia of Yesterday BY ROBERT ARROWSMITH . OLD 5UILD1NG C CHAPEL D. SCHOOL OF MINES E LIBRARY F PRESIDENT'S HOUSE THE FORTY-NINTH STREET SETTING From this outline it may be seen that, whatever else may have been wanting, the undergraduates of Forty-ninth Street lacked none of the elements of college life except perhaps the dormitory feature; and that would at the time have been an impossibility. They initiated and enjoyed to the full the College activities of the present day, and they still enjoy them keenly in retrospect. With these memories is linked indissolubly that of the setting of the old College life. Although confined to the nar- row limits of a city block, the old College managed to retain an effect of spacious- ness and remoteness not warranted by its actual dimensions. As originally pur- chased, the site was open to the West to Fifth Avenue, while the southern outlook was unimpeded to Forty-second Street except by the Bull's Head cattle yards on Fifth Avenue near 45th Street. On the East were the tracks of the Harlem Rail- road at street level. Trains then stopped at 42nd Street, whence the cars were drawn by horses to the station at 27th Street. The trains usually slowed up op- posite the College preparatory to stopping at 42nd Street, and out-of-town students w r ere accustomed to jump from the cars to save the return walk. The main building with its two wings fronted Forty-ninth Street from a slight elevation. It had a long portico with massive columns shaded by fine old trees, beneath which stood a few wooden benches for the use of the weary student. At one end stood a small circular building, the Observatory, commonly known as the Cow- house, and on Forty-ninth Street near the tracks was the President's house. The first story of the east wing contained the Chapel, the second housed the Library. The only access to either was a narrow iron stair- case clinging to the outer wall. Adjoining the Chapel there remained a decrepit building which had been occupied as a door and blind factory, later the first home of the School of Mines. This gave rise to the jest that Columbia was the home of the deaf, the dumb, and the blind; to which disabilities a fourth was added when the University occupied the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum at Morningside. In 1879 the west wing gave place to the new College building covering the Madison Avenue block; new buildings were soon erected for the School of Mines a^ng 50th Street and Fourth Avenue; and the fine Library fronting Forty- ninth Street eventually filled nearly all of the old Campus, until shortly before the College was moved away the original stucco building, the "Maison de Punk," was torn down. The old Library of a few thousand volumes, housed in its musty little room over the Chapel, was jealously guarded by a gaunt clerical cus- todian, who looked with small favor on any student having the temerity to ask for the use of a volume. Three hours constituted a Library day. All the catalogues and records were painstakingly written out by his own Thirty-one Columbia of Yesterday hand, and show that his chief clients were the professors, not the students. "With the opening of the new Library these archaic conditions immedi- ately gave place to a spirit of modernity. New systems of classification went into effect, the card catalogue made its appearance, and a noble reading room with every facility attracted instead of repelling the stu- dents. The last few years at Forty-ninth Street were a period of rapid change, and looking toward the future. Many of the landmarks and picturesque figures of a simpler era had passed, and with them the centres of interest which long years of familiarity had invested with tradition and legend shared in common by many student generations. So it is that the most vivid and the most intimate mem- ories of the old College are those that cluster about the early and the middle per- iod, and that those who re- call most clearly the great figures that peopled the Campus are today the most devoted and loyal supporters of the College. If the alumni of Morningside in their later years can share with their older brothers of Forty-ninth Street the same affectionate memory of their Alma Mater and the same keen interest in her life, the future of Columbia College is safe. THE FIRST HAMILTON HALL Thirty -two Engraved, Printed, and Bound by THE READ-TAYLOR PRESS Baltimore