Northattan

Grant's Tomb is one of Morningside Heights' key tourist attractions. Photo by Bebeto Matthews/AP

A 15-year lobbying effort to have Morningside Heights designated a historic district is about to pay off, but the area marked for approval may be much smaller than some had hoped.

Since 1996, the Morningside Heights Historic District Committee has argued that the area from 110^th to 129^th streets, between Riverside Drive and Amsterdam Avenue, is worthy of historic district status from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, pointing to its architecture, elevated natural boundaries and high density of historic institutions. Yet since the commission officially began discussions in September 2010, it has agreed to cite only the area between Claremont Avenue and Riverside  — a small fraction of the original proposal.

Gretchen Borges, vice president of the Historic District Committee, says the original proposal does a historic neighborhood greater justice. “All the land was owned by institutions for a long time, so when development occurred, it occurred all at once,” Borges said “So the neighborhood seems all of a piece because it was basically built all at the same time, and that’s not characteristic of the rest of New York. It makes the neighborhood stand together in a coherent way that we would like to see preserved.”

The Landmarks Preservation Commission did not respond to a request for comment. Its final decision is still pending, and expected within the coming weeks.

With historic district status, Morningside Heights architecture would be protected as New York City landmarks. A co-op apartment or business hoping to replace its windows would face little conflict obtaining a permit, but ambitious changes to a building’s design would be subject to formal review with the landmarks commission.

“People are under the mistaken impression that once you’re designated, your buildings are frozen in time,” said Gregory Dietrich, the founder of Gregory Dietrich Preservation Consulting and a supporter of the historic designation. “Any visit to the Landmarks Commission on a Tuesday, when they hold the hearings, will tell you otherwise. They’re constantly approving new additions.” Dietrich points to the approval of a large addition to the base of Hearst Tower, a landmarked building on 57^th Street,  as an example of how flexible the commission can be.

The area encompassed by the committee’s proposal already includes several designated landmarks. The 116^th Street subway station, Riverside Park and Grant’s Tomb are registered as state or national landmarks, giving the city little authority over them St. Paul’s Chapel, Fire Station 47 and St. Luke’s Hospital are already New York City landmarks.

Low Library is the only section of Columbia University currently with landmark status. Committee members note that Columbia, one of the crown jewels of the area, has been reluctant to get on board. Dietrich says that Maxine Griffith, executive vice president for Government and Community Affairs, has told the Morningside Heights group that it was premature to talk about Columbia’s involvement before the  city had set the district’s boundaries. Columbia is not part of the landmarks commission’s proposal, but would be covered by the Morning Side Heights group’s plan.

But Dietrich speculates that other motives may be at work. He notes that Emily Lloyd, executive vice president of the university, commissioned an inventory on historic properties and produce design guidelines on future alterations within the neighborhood. Dietrich believes the Northwest Science Building, which began construction on 120^th and Broadway in 2007, might not have received a Certificate of Appropriateness. “With district status,” said Dietrich, “at the very least there would have been consideration that this is a very historic crossroads.”

New York State Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, a founding member of the historic committee, notes that Columbia was actively engaged with the committee during its first proposal in 1996, but persuaded the committee not to include Morningside Drive, where the university owned property. “I think that’s ridiculous,” said O’Donnell. “What is a historic district? It’s an area where buildings are consistent. I think if you look at the structures on Morningside Drive, they are as consistent as the buildings on Riverside Drive. I would like someone to point out to me the differences.”

Columbia’s communications office did not respond to a request for comment.

Andrew S. Dolkart, a Morningside Heights historian and an architecture professor at Columbia, said he thinks the university is “perfectly happy not having landmarks in the area,” adding, “There are certainly some sites it’s no secret that Columbia would like to develop, and designation would probably inhibit it.”

Regardless of the landmarks commission’s decision, the Morningside Heights Committee plans to continue lobbying for wider district recognition. “We do have resources at our disposal,” said Dietrich.

Is Columbia University still in the running, in the hot, higher-education competition to build a $100 million engineering school in New York City?

Columbia University's Manhattanville development. Photo by Richard Drew/AP Photo.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn’t saying, though he did indicate on Wednesday that the city has eliminated a few of the seven proposals it’s been considering since late October.  Which ones? The mayor and his aides wouldn’t list them.

Columbia’s bid, which goes up against rival proposals from Stanford, Cornell and other prestigious institutions from around the country  (and India), is the only one that would build the city’s new high-tech graduate school in Northattan — on the university’s Manhattanville property where an expanded campus is already under construction.

The mayor’s plan for a high-tech “applied sciences” school  aims to attract more engineering talent to a city whose academic community has conspicuously lacked it, and Columbia hopes to gain a hometown advantage. In a recent interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, the university’s president, Lee Bollinger, referred to bids from institutions outside of the city as “branch campuses.”

“It would be a pity if there were an undue fascination with the new and the novel,” he told the magazine.

But this latest proposal for Columbia’s Manhattanville property comes at a time of increasing neighborhood outcry over the school’s Harlem expansions.

Local residents have been asking more and more if Columbia has been as good a New York neighbor as Bollinger claims. Of particular concern is the West Harlem Local Development Corporation, the nonprofit organization tasked with distributing about half of the $150 million that Columbia pledged to give West Harlem for community needs as part of its negotiations for the Manhattanville expansion.

Formed in 2006, with its Community Benefits Agreement with Columbia finalized in 2009, the WHLDC was intended to help ensure that $20 million of the Columbia money is allotted for an affordable housing fund, another $20 million for in-kind benefits, and $30 million for construction of an elementary and middle school in West Harlem.

But five years later, the West Harlem Local Development Corporation has no mission statement or website. It holds no public meetings, has no headquarters, and does not even have a public phone number.

While the WHLDC has received $3.55 million of Columbia’s money, the organization has not revealed how any of this money has been spent. Others have reported on some of the spending: the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development says it got  $300,000 to hire Harlem children for summer jobs, while DNAInfo reported the WHLDC has spent $400,000 in consultants and $300,000 in programming.

The lack of transparency has prompted criticism and calls for reform from an array of politicians. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued  a subpoena in November for the organization’s records, and Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem has publicly supported calls for an audit.

“The organization is weak,” said Vincent Morgan, a Harlem-based Democrat who has announced his candidacy for Rangel’s congressional seat. Morgan has made headlines recently for his outspoken criticism of the WHLDC. “The area is over 40 percent Hispanic, Dominican Americans, and there aren’t any Dominicans on the board! From a community standpoint, there are no lawyers, no bankers, nobody to know what to ask out of a contract,” Morgan said. (While the WHLDC has not officially made public any information on its board members, their names have leaked on the Internet, and consist of mostly local politicians and community representatives.)

Steps at the front of the Low Memorial Library, at Columbia University. Photo by AP Photo.

The many complaints about the development corporation’s lack of action has sent a question resonating throughout the community: has Columbia turned a blind eye to Harlem?

Thomas G. Lunke, director of planning at the Harlem Community Development Corp., said it’s not the first time Columbia has appeared to ignore community needs. Some years ago, said Lunke, Columbia agreed with community leaders that it would do a survey of northern Manhattan businesses and notify them of contracting jobs needed at the university. “Columbia has millions of dollars in contracts that they let every year, so businesses in northern Manhattan can fulfill those contracts,” said Lunke. “They said they would get back to us, but they never did.”

Still, with Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion in its early stages, and the results of the mayor’s engineering school contest still under deliberation, Curtis L. Archer, president of the Harlem Community Development Corp., said he wants to remain optimistic.

“You have to realize this is a process. Hopefully there will be somebody with strength and vision to chart a vision that will be inclusive of the community,” he said.

It’s unclear whether the current controversy over the West Harlem Local Development Corporation will have any impact on Mayor Bloomberg’s choice of which school gets to build the new engineering facility. Although a special advisory panel, the City Council and others will help vet the proposals, the mayor’s office has made clear that the final choice -– expected by January -– will be Bloomberg’s. Richard Hornsby, Columbia’s communications and public affairs director, declined to comment on the competition because the judging process is still under way.

Columbia’s proposed Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering was a last-minute entry, and it is up against strong bids from New York University, Cornell and Stanford. Unlike those schools, which hope to build on city-owned property on Roosevelt Island, Columbia’s proposal utilizes only university-owned land in Manhattanville.

Despite its roots in the city, Columbia’s proposal is considered a long shot.

“I think it’s safe to say that the city wouldn’t be doing this in the first place if there was a perception that Columbia and NYU were doing a fantastic job in applied sciences,” said Goldie Blumenstyk, writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education.  “If they can organize themselves to get greater activity out of Columbia, and get some of these other places to contribute to the New York economy — Stanford, Cornell — why not?”

UPDATE (Dec. 7, 2011): Mayor Bloomberg’s shortlist of candidates has been narrowed down to four applicants, The New York Daily News reports. Amity University and a group including New York Genome Center and Mount Sinai School of Medicine have reportedly been eliminated from the shortlist, leaving Columbia in competition with Cornell, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and New York University. The Columbia Spectator notes that the final result should be announced in January.

Johnny Depp spoke as part of a panel on his new film "The Rum Diary." Photo by E.D. Cauchi/Columbia Journalism

“I like that the characters that he chooses are very quirky, and have a lot of depth,” said Columbia journalism student Zoe Read of Johnny Depp, while waiting in line for Depp’s appearance Monday night at Columbia. “Roles like ‘Benny and Joon,’ for example – not many people could have been able to play them.”

“I agree with everything,” said Marie-Sophie Schwarzer, another student. “Also, ‘Edward Scissorhands.’”

“Also, he’s hot,” added Dalal Mawad.

Sentiments like these were widely expressed among the students who began lining up 90 minutes early at Columbia’s Miller Theatre last night to hear Depp speak about Hunter S. Thompson. In an event timed to coincide with the release of “The Rum Diary,” Depp’s new film based on an early Thompson novel, Depp participated in a panel discussing Thompson’s journalistic legacy.

For a panel assembled for the edification of journalism students, the tenor in the room was unusual: As the journalism dean, Nicholas Lemann, took the stage to emcee the proceedings, he was met with anticipatory hoots, cheers and catcalls. More cheering greeted Depp as he finally took the stage, joined by guests including documentarian Alex Gibney and the film’s director, Bruce Robinson, for whom applause was polite, though decisively less pronounced.

Based loosely on Thompson’s experiences as a young writer in Puerto Rico, “The Rum Diary” follows a very Thompson-like writer as his ethics are questioned at a crumbling community newspaper in the tropics. Thompson’s first novel, “The Rum Diary” remained unpublished until long after his later first-person, wildly subjective books and articles (including “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Hell’s Angels”) changed the medium. Why Depp, the star of “Pirates of the Caribbean” and a former People Magazine “Sexiest Man Alive,” was at a journalism school event about a movie in which excessive drinking plays a major role is a tale unto itself.

The process began last March, when Assistant Dean Irena Choi Stern, who had friends at the Film District, which is distributing the movie, learned that the company was looking for ways to market the film to college students, and hoped to arrange a screening at either Columbia or New York University, and Stern convinced Film District that Columbia’s journalism program gave it a natural advantage. What followed was a long negotiation, resolved only just over a month ago, involving much wrangling on where the appearance would fit into Depp’s promotional schedule.

While Columbia has played host to guests ranging from Henry Kissinger to Noam Chomsky to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a celebrity of Depp’s variety raises its own particular challenges. In recent years, only George Clooney’s 2005 appearance to discuss his journalism-themed film “Good Night and Good Luck” has been comparable, and appearances by paparazzi at that event informed preparations for Depp’s visit.

“I would say security detail is a big one,” said Stern. “He has his own security group that works with him, and we are working very closely with campus security. It’s not like having even a movie star of a different generation come, where it’s a little more sedate. This is teenage girls kicking it up a few notches.” As it turns out, teenage girls and paparazzi were conspicuously absent from the event, security remained cautious – those who attempted to grab a quick cellphone picture of Depp were quickly and audibly reprimanded by the theater’s staff.

Despite his fame, Depp’s appearance was approved for Columbia only because its focus was entirely centered on Thompson, “I think we have to strike this balance between fame and insight,” said Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs, who says that Columbia generally declines offers for advanced promo screenings for films. “We have to be careful about these celebrity-type things because, just because someone’s famous doesn’t mean they have a lot of insight, or that they’ll be helpful to our students.”

After weeks of buildup, Depp’s appearance filled the 688-seat Miller Theatre to near capacity.  The one-hour talk was rigorously focused on Thompson, and Depp spoke no more or less than any other panelist, but each time he met with thunderous applause. Some students were seen filing out as “The Rum Diary” began; Depp himself did not stay for the screening.

When asked about why the former Sexiest Man Alive is a bigger draw than, for example, Noam Chomsky, Stern was realistic. “Because every person who goes to the movies or watches television knows Johnny Depp. Does Noam Chomsky have that kind of exposure? No. If you’ve been in his class or have his books, maybe, but there’s nothing quite like film to get your face and name out there.”

Did you miss the live broadcast? You can listen to the full show below.