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notes
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Financed by former
Brooklyn mayor and Columbia College President, Seth Low, who wanted a
grandiose project with which to bolster the recognition of Columbia
College as well as his 1903 mayoral campaign, this edifice was meant to
serve as a library and classroom building. Spatial and structural
inadequacies forced functional changes, and today it is Columbia's main
administration building and memorial hall.
McKim's erudite design refers to numerous models,
including the Pantheon, R. M. Hunt's Administration Building for the 1893
World's Columbian Exposition and the Library of Congress. With its
monumental colonnaded temple front and prominent dome, the building was
intended to be the centerpiece of Columbia's campus. It stands in sharp
contrast to the stolid and simple brick and limestone classroom buildings. |