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Nanette Shaw
Week of Public Events Celebrates New Campus in Landmark Building Ten years after the B. Altman department store closed, the doors of 365 Fifth Avenue will be swinging open to the public again, this time in celebration of the CUNY Graduate Center’s new campus in the landmark building between 34th and 35th Streets. From April 3 to 7, "Celebrating the Center" will offer the city a week of free public lectures, concerts, readings, symposia, and films. Headliners include Leon Lederman, among three Nobel Prize laureates; Grace Paley and Phillip Lopate, among dozens of authors; William Julius Wilson, among numerous distinguished academics; and on-screen appearances of Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers. The nearly three-dozen events encompass readings by novelists, poets, and journalists; three music concerts — classical, jazz, and Asian; a series of pre-1950s films about department stores; exhibitions of architecture, science, and art; and examinations of such subjects as the frontiers of science, the core issues of education, literature and arts in the city, human rights, and global change. A complete schedule is attached. All events are free and open to the public but seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. For further information, call 1-212-817-8215 or e-mail The CUNY Graduate Center, which ranks among the country’s leading doctoral studies institutions, moved from its old building at 42nd Street last fall, and the celebration marks the inauguration of the new campus’s cultural and conference complex, which includes a 389-seat auditorium, a 185-seat recital hall, a 70-seat multipurpose theater, a film screening room, and an art gallery that will be visible from Fifth Avenue. The Graduate Center’s new campus provides the city with a major new educational and cultural center, reestablishes a missing link on Fifth Avenue, and brings to public use a building held in fond esteem by New Yorkers for much of this century. The school inhabits the Fifth Avenue side of the landmark, palazzo-style building, joining Oxford University Press and the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library, which occupies the Madison Avenue side. B. Altman and Company moved to their then-new building in 1906, and the Madison Avenue addition opened in 1914. The Graduate Center’s 580,000 square feet, or roughly three-fifths of the building, provide the school for the first time with a facility designed to meet its unique needs as an institution focused on doctoral studies. Architects for the project are Gwathmey Siegel & Associates. In addition to classrooms, offices, and student spaces, and the cultural and conference complex, the nine-floor structure features a greatly expanded library and a dining commons (in the former location of B. Altman’s Charleston Gardens restaurant). Gwathmey Siegel’s design incorporates some of the original elements into the renovations, such as the wood-paneled main entranceway and the original elevator and staircase that are being used within the three-level library. The building was purchased and renovated by the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York. Founded in 1961, The Graduate Center is a nationally unique partnership that draws its highly regarded 1,600 member faculty pool from leading scholars throughout the CUNY system and New York City cultural and scientific institutions, augmented by a core of about 100 Graduate Center appointments. According to a recent National Research Council study, a third of the school’s rated doctoral programs are among the country’s top twenty, and the arts and humanities programs collectively rank 16th. In addition to conducting all 31 of CUNY’s doctoral programs, the school offers 7 master’s degrees and administers the CUNY BA program. In all, the school enrolls about 4,000 students. Further information about The Graduate Center and its programs can be found at its website: |