NYU Deutsches Haus

 university, cultural center / centre

2-story building completed around 1854 as a stable. It was remodeled in 1916 to serve as home and studio for sculptor Paul Manship. It was converted for residential use by Maynicke & Franke in 1916 for Sailors Snug Harbor. NYU acquired the building in 1949. In the 1950s, the building housed an NYU art studio. Since 1977, it has housed Deutsches Haus - New York’s leading institution for culture and language of the German-speaking world.

It is faced is beige-painted smooth stucco. The south-facing windows have both brick and stone sills, while those on the east facade have small stone sills and wooden exterior shutters. The ground-floor windows on this elevation are round-arched. The south facade is capped by a simple metal roof cornice. The southern section of the east facade has a tall parapet, sloped up to the flat center part, and highlighted by four stone spheres at the corners. The northern section is one story tall, with an angled metal mansard.

During the 1960s, the NYU Department of German Languages and Literature began a campaign to establish a German cultural center on campus, leading to a donation of $100,000 by the West German government. The funding was insufficient to start a center, however. Instead, NYU used it to support 10 visiting professors from Germany between 1968 and 1974. In the fall of 1975, NYU entered into negotiations with the New York branch of Goethe Institute, reaching an agreement for the establishment of a Deutsches Haus in early 1976.