Columbia University in the City of New York (commonly known as Columbia University, or simply Columbia) is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, and is one of only three United States universities to have been founded under such authority. After the American Revolutionary War, Columbia was briefly chartered as a state entity from 1784–1787. The university now operates under a 1787 charter that places the institution under a private board of trustees.
Columbia annually administers the American literary award, the Pulitzer Prize, and is one of the founding members of the Association of American Universities. More Nobel Prize winners (alumni and faculty combined) have been affiliated with Columbia than with any other institution in the world. Columbia's endowment and annual research expenditures are among the largest of any American university. In 2008, Columbia ranked third among U.S. universities in fundraising, bringing in approximately $495 million in private support. The university currently has four global centers in Amman, Jordan; Beijing, China; Paris, France; and Mumbai, India.
Notable alumni and affiliates include: five Founding Fathers of the United States; four United States Presidents, including the incumbent; nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States; 94 Nobel Prize winners (including faculty), the most of any university; 101 Pulitzer Prize winners, the most of any university; at least 25 Academy Award winners garnering over a combined 30 Oscars, the most of any university; more than 30 alumni and ten affiliate recipients of the National Medal of Science; and at least 50 recipients of the MacArthur Genius Award. Columbia is currently home to nine Nobel Laureates, 30 recipients of the MacArthur Genius Award, four recipients of the National Medal of Science, 143 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 38 members of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 20 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 43 members of the National Academy of Sciences.
History
Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in the state of New York. Founded and chartered as King's College in 1754, Columbia is the sixth-oldest such institution in the United States (by date of founding; fifth by date of chartering). After the American Revolutionary War, King's College was renamed Columbia College in 1784, and in 1896 it was further renamed Columbia University. Columbia has grown over time to encompass twenty schools and affiliated institutions.
Discussions regarding the foundation of a college in the Province of New York began as early as 1704, but serious consideration of such proposals was not entertained until the early 1750s, when local graduates of Yale and members of the congregation of Trinity Church (then Church of England, now Episcopal) in New York City became alarmed by the establishment of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). Concerns arose both because it was founded by "new-light" Presbyterians influenced by the evangelical Great Awakening and, as it was located in the province just across the Hudson River, because it provoked fears of New York developing a cultural and intellectual inferiority. They established their own 'rival' institution, King's College, and elected as its first president Samuel Johnson. Classes began on July 17, 1754 in Trinity Church yard, with Johnson as the sole faculty member. A few months later, on October 31, 1754, Great Britain's King George II officially granted a royal charter for the college. In 1760, King's College moved to its own building at Park Place, near the present City Hall, and in 1767 it established the first American medical school to grant the M.D. degree.
Controversy surrounded the founding of the new college in New York, as it was a thoroughly Church of England institution dominated by the influence of Crown officials in its governing body, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Fears of the establishment of a Church of England episcopacy and of Crown influence in America through King's College were underpinned by its vast wealth, far surpassing all other colonial colleges of the period.
The American Revolution and the subsequent war were catastrophic for King's College. It suspended instruction in 1776, and remained so for eight years, beginning with the arrival of the Continental Army in the spring of that year and continuing with the military occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. The college's library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a military hospital first by American and then British forces. Additionally, many of the college's alumni, primarily Loyalists, fled to Canada or Great Britain in the war's aftermath, leaving its future governance and financial status in question.
Although the college had been considered a bastion of Tory sentiment, it nevertheless produced many key leaders of the Revolutionary generation — individuals later instrumental in the college's revival. Among the earliest students and trustees of King's College were five "founding fathers" of the United States: John Jay, who negotiated the Treaty of Paris between the United States and Great Britain, ending the Revolutionary War, and who later became the first Chief Justice of the United States; Alexander Hamilton, military aide to General George Washington, author of most of the Federalist Papers, and the first Secretary of the Treasury; Gouverneur Morris, the author of the final draft of the United States Constitution; Robert R. Livingston, a member of the Committee of Five, that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and Egbert Benson who represented New York in the Continental Congress and the Annapolis Convention and who was a ratifier of the United States Constitution.
Hamilton's first experience with the military came while a student during the summer of 1775, after the outbreak of fighting at Boston. Along with Nicholas Fish, Robert Troup, and a group of other students from King's he joined a volunteer militia company called the "Hearts of Oak" – Hamilton achieving the rank of Lieutenant. They adopted distinctive uniforms, complete with the words "Liberty or Death" on their hatbands, and drilled under the watchful eye of a former British officer in the graveyard of the nearby St. Paul's Chapel. In August 1775, while under fire from HMS Asia, the Hearts of Oak (a.k.a. the "Corsicans") participated in a successful raid to seize cannon from the Battery, becoming an artillery unit thereafter. Ironically, in 1776 Captain Hamilton would engage in and survive the Battle of Harlem Heights, which took place on and around the site that would become home to his Alma Mater over a century later, only to be — after his dueling death twenty-eight years later — entombed on the site of the first home for King's College in the Trinity Church yard.
Campus
The majority of Columbia's graduate and undergraduate studies are conducted in Morningside Heights on Seth Low's late-19th century vision of a university campus where all disciplines could be taught in one location. The campus was designed along Beaux-Arts principles by acclaimed architects McKim, Mead, and White.
Columbia's main campus occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres (13 ha), in Morningside Heights, New York City, a neighborhood that contains a number of academic institutions. The university owns over 7,800 apartments in Morningside Heights, housing faculty, graduate students, and staff. Almost two dozen undergraduate dormitories (purpose-built or converted) are located on campus or in Morningside Heights. Columbia University has an extensive underground tunnel system more than a century old, with the oldest portions predating the present campus. Some of these remain open to students, while others are closed to the public.
New buildings and structures on the campus, especially those built after Second World War, have often only been constructed after a contentious process often involving open debate and community protest. Often the complaints raised during periods of expansion have included issues beyond the debate over construction of designs that diverged from the original McKim, Mead, and White plan. Protests often involved complaints against the university administration. This was the case with Uris Hall, built in the 1960s and more recently with Alfred Lerner Hall, a deconstructivist structure completed in 1998 and designed by Columbia's then-Dean of Architecture, Bernard Tschumi. These same issues have surfaced in the debate over future expansion into Manhattanville.
Columbia's library system includes over 9.5 million volumes, making it the fifth largest collegiate and eighth largest library system in the country.
Several buildings on the Morningside Heights campus are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Low Memorial Library, a National Historic Landmark and the centerpiece of the campus, is listed for its architectural significance. Philosophy Hall is listed as the site of the invention of FM radio. Also listed is Pupin Hall, another National Historic Landmark, which houses the physics and astronomy departments. Here the first experiments on the fission of uranium were conducted by Enrico Fermi. The uranium atom was split there ten days after the world's first atom-splitting in Copenhagen, Denmark.