(Baruch College Archives)
Baruch College gained independence from City College in 1968 and was soon one of the most popular of the CUNY colleges. However, since its inception, the college suffered from inadequate facilities and insufficient space. Very soon after independence, it acquired the former seven story stable and former recording studio for its use as a library, office space and classes. To try and alleviate the crowding, Baruch began to rely on leased properties, which eventually made up almost forty percent of its space, spread out from 18th to 26th Streets, a distance of almost a third of a mile. The gymnasium and pool space was far below the size requirements for college athletics, forcing some events to take place in the 25th Street Armory.
The plan called for the completion of the campus by 1992, but before it could be accomplished funds had to be raised and the rest of the property had to be acquired. Site A required the acquisition of only one building but on site B, Baruch would have to acquire other properties which included three low rise retail units, two garages, a vacant lot and two single room occupancy hotels with a total of 157 units. The plan took fifteen years before it became a reality.
Much of the land was acquired by 1994 but not everyone wanted to leave. The most vocal opponents were the twenty or so remaining residents of two single room occupancy hotels – The Gramercy Hotel on the corner of Lexington and 24th Street and the Amsterdam Hotel.
The Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author Murray Kempton lived in the Gramercy Hotel in the 1970’s when he was down on his luck and forced to seek a cheap shelter for himself calling it “…an artifact of that lost time when the near-indigent New Yorker could take for granted his convenient access to a premise where he could lay down his head in peace.” He related his experiences:
And so I fled eastward across the unknown ways of 24th street until I came at last to the neon sign that proclaims the Hotel Gramercy to a Lexington Avenue indifferent to its treasures. I sank there for the night certain that I should improve my locale the next day and there I remained for three years, from inertia at the outset and then, as the weeks went on, from the recognition that ours is the age we cannot often anticipate a chance to let the noun “gentility” pass our lips unmodified by the adjective “shabby.”…
Bad housing though it inarguably may be, the Gram shines all the same as a refuge for the decent poor, because it has stood firm against all temptation to throw them into discard by selling itself for conversion into one of those warrens the realtors call ‘luxury condominiums’ or to debase them by opening its doors to the mad, the bad, and the dangerous to know. (Kempton, “Splendors and Miseries on Gramercy Park in House and Garden Magazine, pgs. 154, 178, [n.d.]).