BARNARD COLLEGE

Roughly between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, West 116th to West 120th Streets
Milbank, Fiske and Brinckerhoff Halls: Charles Rich, 1897–98
Brooks and Hewitt Halls: Charles Rich, 1906–08 and McKim, Mead and White, 1926–27
Students’ Hall/Barnard Hall: Arnold Brunner, 1916

After a lengthy campaign for women’s education at Columbia College, Barnard College was established with funds from wealthy female donors. The college was named after Frederick A. P. Barnard, the recently deceased president of Columbia College. Its first buildings, Milbank, Fiske and Brinckerhoff Halls, form a U-shaped complex that references Columbia’s Beaux-Arts style, with red brick and limestone façades incorporating Classical and Renaissance motifs such as ornamental quoins, cartouches, roundels and keyed window surrounds. The construction of dormitories soon followed. Brooks Hall mimics the Milbank complex, but includes a large portico. The Renaissance-inspired Hewitt Hall was built later to accommodate the college’s growing population. With views to the river blocked by new construction on Claremont Avenue, Barnard re-oriented itself eastward with a new student center called Students’ Hall (later renamed Barnard Hall), aligned with an entrance gate on Broadway.

 

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