Sale of the Uptown Campus
Feeling the pressures of imminent bankruptcy, President Hester — the same Hester who had financed the building of the impressive Bobst Library — went to see Governor Nelson Rockefeller; and in the early seventies stories were circulating in the world of higher education about “strange goings on” at NYU. They were negotiating the sale of the campus on University Heights.
The bill that finally emerged from the New York State Assembly called for the sale of the Heights campus to City University of New York, and the merger of the NYU School of Engineering with Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.
This was the result of two separate sets of negotiations that took place more or less simultaneously. The sale of the campus was handled by NYU Vice President John O’Mara and a team of associates. O’Mara was a specialist in land use and appraisal. The merger of the engineering school with Brooklyn Poly was the work of physicist Sidney Borowitz, Chancellor and Executive Vice President of NYU. He had earlier been Dean of Arts and Sciences on University Heights as well as Provost, and was knowledgeable in ways of uptown life. Associated with Borowitz was NYU President Miguel De Capriles.
The original proposal called for a state engineering school on University Heights in the NYU School of Engineering, joined by Brooklyn Poly. The new school would called Manhattan Institute of Technology, the New York version of MIT. That proposal met with little enthusiasm at Polytech, which had no intention of abandoning the Borough of Brooklyn. The problem was compounded by the number of constituencies represented: the central administration of NYU; the faculty of NYU engineering school, with its own counsel; the State Department of Education; the faculty of Brooklyn Poly, represented by a union; the administration of Brooklyn Poly. State legislative leaders and New York City borough officials obviously had a strong influence.
After many months of give-and-take at countless meetings, often long and painful, and proposals considered and rejected by one or more of the many constituencies, all the parties, tired of meeting one another in a labyrinth, reached an agreement under some duress from Albany. The NYU School of Engineering was spun off from the Bronx campus and merged with Brooklyn Poly, as the Polytechnic Institute of New York (PINY), which grew in to the present Polytechnic University of New York. The rest of NYU-uptown returned to Washington Square. Control of the Bronx campus passed from the University in July, 1973.
Breaking up and moving back had been harder than moving out at the turn of the century — if indeed it could be said that the University ever “moved out,” Henry Mitchell MacCracken to the contrary. What did not go to the Heights stayed on Washington Square and not only survived but flourished. After MacCracken, the chief seat of the Chancellor and the central administrative offices were downtown.
Sale of “uptown” stirred bitterness among many loyal Heights alumni. A prominent New London physician and attorney, George a Sprecace, graduate of University College of Arts and Sciences, when asked his opinion, replied without hesitation, “The University had a fiduciary responsibility and they breached it. They did not have to cut off an arm.”
Some alumni will agree with him. Many successful professionals of modest economic backgrounds credit the school of Arts and Sciences with offering them excellent preparation for admission to graduate schools. It had also been a pleasant place, and left fond memories: a fine college on a grass-and-trees campus in the brick-and-asphalt Bronx, a different world from that of the subway crowd. To many alumni, losing Gould with its Colonnade and Ohio Field with its Violets was what losing say, Nassau Hall and Palmer Stadium would have been to the Princeton Tigers. That the feeling may still linger is suggested today in the relaxing Heights Alumni Lounge in the Washington Square complex. The first thing to hit the eye on entering is the huge clock that for decades had been the centerpiece of the Gould Library reading room on the Heights. And in the corner, overseeing all, Helen Gould beams in marble.
In any case the uptown campus was losing money. Chancellor Borowitz has said that the threat of bankruptcy was a blessing in disguise. “There was so much pressure from uptown alumni to preserve the Heights that it was only under the threat of possible financial ruin that the campus could be sold. With two campuses NYU could never have prospered as it has.”