Baruch College - Newman Vertical Campus (New York City, New York)

 university  Add category

249-foot, 17-story postmodern university building completed in 2001 as the William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, it serves as the hub of Baruch College. The building features a tiered glass-enclosed atrium that allows natural daylight into public spaces and subterranean levels.

It has a 5-story red-brick base on the south and west sides, and extending halfway down the north side. Bowing out from it and rises up and then tapering inward (and extending to the ground at the east half of the north facade) the rest of the building is clad in steel and glass. The 13-story atrium that has been stepped so that sunlight can penetrate all the way from the south to the north side of the building, even reaching across 25th Street to splash the William and Anita Newman Library. This staggered arrangement creates a series of smaller spaces within the atrium.

There are entrances on the north side, facing the plaza, as well as at the southwest corner. Here the base is cut away and the monumental glass-and-steel floors coming swooping in from above, narrowing to a single support column with a curved steel canopy around it that covers some of the entryway, set atop two short sets of steps. Along the west elevation on Lexington Avenue, the north half of the ground floor has a band of plate-glass with a metal canopy, and two sets of glass double-doors at the north end. This section houses the Baruch College Bookstore. The 2nd floor has a near-continuous window band, and a ban of horizontal metal vents separates the next three floors of the base, which have bays of punched square window openings. The upper floors are separating into two masses, north and south, with long bands of windows.

The building contains the Zicklin School of Business, Mildred and George Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, Lawrence N. Field Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Stan Ross Department of Accountancy, as well as conference spaces, classrooms and research facilities, faculty and administrative offices, a theater, and fitness center.