The Development and Evolution of the Baruch Campus

1968 is remembered for the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. & Robert Kennedy and the protests on college campuses across the country. However, this year also marked the birth of a new independent college in the city of New York which, in a short amount of time, would garner praise and earn an excellent reputation – Baruch College.

 

2018 marked the 50th anniversary of Baruch College becoming an independent senior College of the City University of New York. In these fifty years, Baruch College has become a highly selective CUNY College. The latest addition to the college, the William & Anita Newman Vertical Campus, opened on August 27, 2001. This exhibit will examine the evolution of the campus from its first building on 23rd Street to the state of the art Newman Vertical Campus which takes up almost an entire square city block today.

 

By 1926 the conditions of the old college building had completely deteriorated and city funds were acquired for the construction of a new building. In the meantime the school moved to rented space at Grand Central Palace, an office building at 42nd Street, where it was to remain for four years.

On December 4, 1928, James Walker, the mayor of New York, used a silver trowel, the handle of which was made from a balustrade of the old Free Academy, at the cornerstone laying ceremony. A copper box which was placed in the cornerstone of 17 Lexington Avenue contained copies of the addresses made at the ceremony, a copy of the rag paper edition of The New York Times from the previous day, the 1928 Year Book of the students of the Business School, two copies of the City College Alumnus, and a number of silver coins of the United States. (The New York Times, December 5, 1928, pg 8).

Initially only enough money was allocated for an eight story building but eventually, with persistent lobbying, more money was appropriated for an additional eight floors which were completed two years later. The new structure, built of a warm tan brick in the Northern Italian style of architecture and having a capacity for 10,000 students finally opened in its current form in 1930.