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With the 10-year anniversary of Lerner Hall upon us, we wanted to reflect on the history of the building and on its architectural context. This week, we sat down with Andrew Dolkart, the James Marston Fitch Associate Professor of Historic Preservation at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, to discuss the origins of the Morningside campus, the dreariness of the Business School, and the future of architecture at Columbia.What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Can you give us the Cliff Notes history of the Morningside campus? Why was the neighborhood so undeveloped when Columbia first purchased land up here?

This was the site of an insane asylum, and so that wasn’t good neighbors. Real estate investors weren’t going to invest if there was an insane asylum next door. That was one thing. Two, it’s very isolated here—and most importantly, there was no mass transit. So there used to be els—elevated rail lines. When the el came up Columbus Avenue, instead of coming up here, when it got to 110th Street, it went up Eighth Avenue in Harlem. It led to the development of Harlem and the Upper West Side.

If you were a real estate developer, why would you develop here when you could develop in Harlem, and then you were close to the elevated? There are some row houses in the neighborhood that are pretty early that were a disaster and were mostly foreclosed on by the banks.

So Columbia buys the land here—I think it was in December of 1893—and Columbia had a new president, Seth Low, who was really intent on making Columbia into the great urban university. And Columbia was on a very constricted site in Midtown. He knew that the school needed to move, and he wanted to keep the school in New York, though a lot of the trustees did not. They wanted to move the school out of the city all together, so that it would become a typical American college on a big, landscaped lot. This was actually the closest available land in the developed city because New York Hospital, which owned the asylum, was moving it out to White Plains. So Columbia made a deal with New York Hospital to buy a small portion of the asylum property. Low got the trustees to go along, so they bought the land, and they had no idea what to do with it.

So they had a very lengthy architectural process, where they hired three architects to come up with designs, and they could never decide what to do. Finally, they decided to choose Charles McKim as their architect, who was a partner at McKim, Meade, and White—which in the early 1890s was becoming the most prestigious firm in America. And eventually, McKim would become the most prestigious architect in America.

I always tell people how hard it is for us to remember that there was a time when the most avant-garde architecture was Classical and Renaissance design. And so, McKim really exemplified the most advanced design ideas in America. And he and Seth Low got along really well. And they came up with the master plan. It’s basically McKim’s master plan for the campus. And the key element was that it had to be built in pieces, because Columbia had no money. And it had no history of getting money from the alums. So it was very difficult. In order to buy the land they had to take out a mortgage and sell the Midtown property. And then once the plan was established, they didn’t have the money to build.

Low himself gave one million dollars to build the library. He was an only child of a huge China trading fortune. He had inherited his father’s money when his father died, and he gave the money for Low Library as a memorial to his father. So it’s actually a memorial to Abiel Abbot Low.

Construction began at this [the north] end of the campus. The idea originally was they would build the library, they would build the gym and the power plant, and they would build the science labs. And so Schermerhorn was the biology building, Havemeyer was for chemistry, Fayerweather was for physics, and what is now Mathematics was the engineering school.

And the liberal arts would be located in the asylum buildings, until they were needed for new construction. Which is why Buell still survives. That was an asylum building, and they just never built on that site, so it’s still there.

So on Oct. 1, 1897, classes began here. And the library was finished, and at least those classroom buildings were finished. And then over the years, the master plan was filled in. Mostly under Seth Low’s successor, Nicholas Murray Butler.

And McKim, Meade, and White remained the architects until the 1930s, when they basically were fired. They were trying to lure a donor for Butler Library, so they hired that donor’s favorite architect. So everything was designed by McKim, Meade, and White on the historic campus, except that McKim’s deal with Columbia was that if anybody donated money and specifically said, “We’re giving you this money, but X has to design the building,” then that would happen. And so the chapel and Lewisohn Hall were designed by other architects. But otherwise, the historic campus is basically Charles McKim’s master plan.

What was the first building to break with the Neoclassical aesthetic?

The Neoclassical aesthetic remained in place through the 1930s, so that includes all of McKim, Meade, and White’s buildings and it includes Butler Library too, which was designed by a different architect. I don’t think it’s a very good building, but it’s certainly part of the aesthetic of the campus, so it fits in very well with the campus.

But in the post-war period, when new construction began, I think two things occurred: One was that the leadership at Columbia had no interest whatsoever in quality architecture. And two was, following the design ideas of the day, which was appropriate I think, they turned to modern design. The unfortunate thing was they turned to really third-rate architects to design Uris, or the engineering school, or Carman Hall. There’s a lot of really pretty bad architecture from the ’50s and ’60s on the campus.

But they broke away with the original campus idea. I don’t think designing in a Classical or Renaissance manner in the ’50s or ’60s would have been the right way to go. But at the same time, Columbia was hiring these not-very-good architects. You know, Harvard and Yale and Princeton were hiring Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, and Alvar Aalto, and Eero Saarinen, and all the great architects, so that was a big difference.

Things changed later in the 20th century. Columbia got interested in higher-quality design on campus, and that’s certainly true now, that there is an effort.

The new laboratory building by Rafael Moneo, and the fact that Renzo Piano is doing the new campus—I think there’s more of an interest in returning to Columbia’s roots as a patron of great architecture.

Can you talk a little more about what the Northwest Corner Building means for architecture at Columbia?

I think it is a statement about building high-quality architecture that’s contemporary. It’s a really sophisticated, contemporary building for the site. One that fits in with the campus but doesn’t imitate the campus. From what I’ve seen so far—I haven’t seen the interior—I think it’s quite a wonderful building. I like the metal on the street façade and the transparency on the campus façade. It is somewhat open; it’s going to have walls of glass in the library. It’s a beautiful building.

In the 1960s, I.M. Pei proposed constructing two rather hulking towers on the South Lawn. Why did that plan ultimately fail?

Well, it’s not clear that that was every really a serious project. It would have been huge structures on the campus. I don’t think the campus could have held something quite so big. I don’t know if you’ve seen Barry Bergdoll’s book on the making of Columbia. He hypothesizes that it wasn’t really a realistic plan. It was a reaction to the gym fiasco in the park, to show that Columbia was going to build on the campus and not in the neighborhood. It made a point, but it wasn’t actually ever going to be built.

Speaking of disasters, can you talk a little about the planning behind the Amsterdam side of campus?

There was a master plan that McKim, Meade, and White did for the east campus, that included what’s now the Faculty House and the president’s house and the dormitory that I never remember the name of, that was originally Johnson Hall. And then there were supposed to be other buildings in that design idea that were to be on that whole section, but they were never done.

That was part of the post-war design. The plan—Harrison and Abramovitz were the architects—was a very interesting one to connect the east campus to the main campus. And since we’re up on a terrace, the idea was, well they’d build the bridge and you could flow easily back and forth. And it was an interesting idea on paper, but it never really worked. Because people came to the Law School or the School of International Affairs from the subway, so they didn’t come onto campus. They entered on Amsterdam Avenue, and then entered the Law School through the service entrance. I think it was an interesting idea, I think it was a failure—and it also creates that dark, bleak section of Amsterdam Avenue. There was a proposal in the 1990s to remove the plaza. But it’s hard to get money to remove something; it’s easier to get money to build something.

Ten years on, Lerner Hall is perhaps the most polarizing structure on campus. Can you talk about the origin of the building? How has it aged?

Lerner is an interesting puzzle because Lerner was going to be this incredibly contemporary, dynamic building, and it was going to make a statement that Columbia was really interested in contemporary design, and they hired Bernard Tschumi, who was the dean here, another world-class architect.

But I think it suffers from two things: One was that here you have a very, very avant-garde contemporary architect, but he was forced in part of the building to work in a kind of contextual manner. So the brick sections next to the library—his heart was not in that, and I think it looks kind of phony. Whereas I love the wall, the glass wall. I think the glass wall is really beautiful. But the problem is that it was designed before e-mail and the idea was that everybody would be going to their mailboxes, and those ramps would be incredibly dynamic and you’d see this flow of people walking up and down the ramps all the time. Nobody goes and gets their mail anymore. And also, everybody knows the shortcuts, so they don’t go on the ramps. You don’t really see the dynamism that was planned. So in a sense, it became kind of anachronistic. People never used the ramps in the manner in which Tschumi had envisioned, which is kind of too bad. I always want to see a dance event, to see how dynamic those ramps could be.

How does the architecture of this campus reflect Columbia’s philosophy as an institution?

I think that one of the key elements of the design here that McKim and especially Low were very, very strong on was that Columbia was to be a university in the city, and that the city was a classroom.

People have the image now that Columbia is very enclosed. But that actually was not the vision originally. The vision was that you would stand at the top of the stairs of Low Library and you could look out on the city. Now that’s blocked by Butler Library. But actually it would have been blocked earlier because the image was that everything to the south was going to be filled with row houses. But once the subway opened in 1904, apartment houses appeared. So by the time you get the apartment houses, they were blocking the view anyway.

But that was the idea, that Columbia would be part of the city, of New York. In fact, Low renamed Columbia “Columbia University in the City of New York.”

That was very much a part of the educational philosophy. Low was opposed to dormitories. The dormitories weren’t added until Nicholas Murray Butler, and they buy the campus south of 116th Street, and McKim, Meade, and White extends the master plan with dormitories. So I think that an idea that’s still very potent at Columbia is that Columbia is part of a great urban center. And I think that Low believed that the one thing Columbia had that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton did not have was New York, and I think that that’s still true.

If you had your druthers, what would change around here?

There could be better maintenance on the campus. South Court, the big court in front of Low Library. The concrete’s really shabby. It needs major work. The stairs are cracked and their alignment is coming off. It’s a very expensive project, but it really needs to be done. It’s Columbia’s front yard. And then there are smaller things like restoring the bronze lamps, restoring the iron. I think that there needs to be a little bit more attention paid to the conditions on the campus. I think Columbia’s done a spectacular job in the manner in which it treats apartment houses. The staff that deals with buildings really has a feel now for the older architecture. But it means an investment. And money is always hard to find. I find it sad that the first thing you see when you come in is the crumbling concrete.

Since I’ve been here, since the late 1970s as a graduate student, I think that the key change that I have seen—besides the interest in hiring talented architects—is the landscaping. There was no landscaping, practically, on the campus. There was a master-planning study that was done in the 1990s. And one of the suggestions that came out of it was how important it was to do landscaping. And so all of the gardens you see on the campus, the gardens that are just south of 116th Street, along the walls, these gardens that are out here, these garden plots—all of the planting has been a result of that. And the trees have been trimmed. Trees are cared for now. It’s just been an amazing change. That’s been fantastic. And I’d like to see that continue.

Are there particular features of this campus that you think students don’t notice?

Everything is very carefully planned. The fact that Low Library is the only building that’s all stone, so that’s the primary building. And the classroom buildings are mostly brick, which was a sort of secondary material. Nobody has any reason to go into Low Library. But its magnificent interior, it’s very richly detailed. It’s always worth taking a detour into Low Library. Also, the interior of the chapel is one of the great masterpieces of American design. It’s all structural; it’s all clay, various clay materials. It’s very beautiful, and it was considered a masterpiece when it was done, and I think it is one of the great buildings. But people on campus don’t ever think to go in.

There’s a lot of subtle little things, like the bronze lamps—they need restoration—but they are really beautifully done. All the buildings look like they’re the same. And on your initial view, you say, “Oh, they’re all the same.” But actually, each one is different. The proportions are a little different, the porticos are different. The cornices are magnificent. They’re all these copper cornices, and they’re really elaborate. And if you look up, or if you’re in a classroom on a high floor and you look out the window, they’re really spectacular.

Do you have a favorite building on campus?

I guess the chapel is my favorite building on campus. It really is a masterpiece. And Low also is really spectacular. The other thing I really love is the old science lecture hall in Havemeyer. That’s still there, that gets used for movies. It’s a terrific space.

A least favorite?

Now there’s a tough one: between Uris and the engineering school—I’m not sure which I’d vote for. I’m not talking about the Uris addition, which is the front, but the original Uris, visible up above. It’s just a really dull ’50s building. I think coming close is Schapiro Hall, a more recent building. Really clumsy attempt at trying to be McKim, without the finesse of McKim. And it has too much stone on it. The architects missed the notion that this [Low] is supposed to be the stone building.

Favorite building in New York?

I always like to tell people that it’s the New York Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church because it’s a building nobody’s ever heard of, which is a fantastic church in Crown Heights in Brooklyn. But in Manhattan, my favorite building is 1 Wall Street, which is the old Irving Trust Company. And it’s a 1929 skyscraper that’s just spectacularly beautiful.

Looking to the future, what do you think about the plans for Manhattanville?

It’s premature to comment on the quality of the architecture, but Renzo Piano is one of the world’s great architects, so I’m optimistic. But there are a lot of really interesting ideas about creating a sense of transparency on the lower floors of the buildings. So we’ll see. I’ve been in favor of Manhattanville because a great institution is going to expand. And if it’s not in Manhattanville, it’s going to be on Morningside Heights. And it would lead to the demolition of a lot of really important buildings—the residential buildings in the neighborhood. There isn’t really much that will be lost of note in Manhattanville. Columbia’s going to be keeping a couple of the major buildings there. I think it’s a good place for Columbia to expand.

So has Columbia abandoned its Neoclassical roots for good?

I think so. I think when McKim designed this campus, that was the avant-garde architecture of the day. And I don’t think we should be designing buildings that look like McKim’s designs. We should be designing for the 21st century. I believe that as a preservationist, that every era has its architecture. And I’m in favor of new buildings that reflect our time. And I think that there’s the potential for the new campus to be quite spectacular. So we’ll see.