Bronx Community College Gets a Library, and Building, Truly Its Own

September 2, 2012, 10:00 am

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

The new North Hall and Library at Bronx Community College had scarcely been open a day when Dorian Whyte, 21, and Jang Sung Soo, 22, sat down last week to study physics on the light-filled balcony wrapping around an enormous central reading room. Neither had any books in front of him. But they were evidently enjoying the place.

“Having this come into the Bronx is such a great idea, especially at a community college,” Mr. Whyte said. “It gives you a great initiation into what a real school is.”

North Hall is the first big, new building on the 43-acre University Heights campus since 1970, when it was the uptown division of New York University. It is also the first academic building that th e college, a unit of the City University of New York, has had constructed for its own, instead of inheriting as a hand-me-down.

There is a generosity to the building's features and finishes that communicates a message: the Bronx matters. North Hall was designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects, known for its interpretations of Classical design. The main reading room was modeled on the double-barreled Bibliothèque Ste.-Geneviève in Paris, by Henri Labrouste.

The North Hall project benefited from having been put to bid as the economic crisis scuttled a lot of private development, thereby depressing prices for labor and materials. Many amenities were possible within the original $104 million budget, with enough money left over, almost $30 million, to improve old campus infrastructure like heating, electrical and water systems, which no one ever notices until ruptured pipes erupt like geysers.

“Contractors were hungry,” said Iris Weinshall, the CUNY vice chancellor for facilities planning, construction and management. “We were able to keep elements that, under ordinary circumstances, we probably would have had to value-engineer out of the building.”

The list of extras includes marble and slate floors, Guastavino tile vaults, pendant light fixtures and custom-designed study carrels. The ceiling vaults are bordered in a Greek key pattern that was hand-stenciled by a painter named Cid Mendez - “a modern-day Michelangelo,” Ms. Weinshall said, evoking an image of Charlton Heston in the Sistine Chapel.

Actually, at 40 feet, the ceiling of the main reading room is only three-fifths the height of the Sistine ceiling. But the library's other dimensions are no less notable. The third floor, where the stacks are situated, is 209 feet long by 100 feet wide. The opening in the third-floor slab that creates the balcony around the reading room is 91 feet long by 47 feet wide (a bit wider than the chapel, if you're still keeping score at home).

On the first floor are 15 much-needed large classrooms, each for 35 to 45 students, said Anton Wolfshorndl, the assistant director of design, construction and management at CUNY. There are about 11,450 students at Bronx Community College, which grants associate degrees. It opened in 1959 in the former Bronx High School of Science at Creston Avenue and East 184th Street.

In those days, New York University had an uptown campus at University Avenue and West 180th Street. The original buildings, constructed from 1894 to 1912, were designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White. They included the Gould Memorial Library and the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, architectural treasures and official city landmarks.

During a period of tremendous unrest nationwide, the Gould library was firebombed in April 1969. A month later, protesting students at Bronx Community College briefly occupied their building.

Though the books there were spared harm, New York University soon moved the stacks to the basement of a new building known as Technology II, designed by Marcel Breuer. It is now called Meister Hall.

As New York University's deficits grew in the early 1970s, it faced increasing pressure to close its uptown division. That happened in 1973, after which the campus was transferred to the Bronx Community College.

The Gould building remains largely empty to this day, in a state of minimal repair though far from complete abandonment. Daunting structural and logistical issues face any attempt to rehabilitate the building. Now, the library at Meister is empty, too. College officials hope to reuse it as a one-stop student service center, including the bursar and registrar, said David A. Taylor, the dean of administration and finance. But that is probably at least three years off.

A visitor on Wednesday who kept his ears open could hear grumbling about all the space on campus that wasn't being us ed while CUNY spent tens of millions of dollars building new structures with marble finishes. But the overall mood seemed celebratory.

“I'm enjoying the great beauty of this building,” Prof. Teresa L. McManus, the chief librarian, told the college president, Carole Berotte Joseph, as Dr. Joseph paid a visit. “It puts forward that Bronx Community College is about academics.”

“Students need a place to be, to study, to learn,” Professor McManus said. “And guess what? They love the books.”