As an Ivy League icon, Columbia University has long encouraged faculty and students to think outside the box. Now the New York City school, the state’s oldest institution of higher learning dating back to the mid-1700s, is thinking beyond its own box.
Soon to open are the first two green shoots of the school’s $6.3-billion expansion beyond the current tight upper Manhattan site it has occupied since 1897, part of a growth vision for the next decade and beyond. The effort creates Columbia’s new 17-acre Manhattanville campus, its largest expansion. Design of the campus, by city-based firms Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Skidmore Owings and Merrill, has been under way since 2003. The area includes property on the blocks from West 125th Street to 133rd Street between Broadway and 12th Avenue, in addition to a number of properties on the east side of Broadway from 131st to 134th Street.