Memories tagged “Dining”

1968: Year of Decision I am a Vietnam Veteran, a college graduate of the Vietnam Era, and a professional journalist. That should establish either some kind of credibility or culpability. The Vietnam War began when I was l7 years old...

Columbia College 1967

A Happy Baby at Columbia It’s funny I’ve been asked this question as I was just thinking of it the other day. My favorite place to relax on campus, and I did it A LOT, was at the…(can’t remember the...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1991

As La Rosita Goes, So Goes Morningside Heights I arrived on Manhattan’s Morningside Heights 27 years ago, a Baltimore suburbanite with little experience of urban living. I immediately fell in love with the place, embracing its grunginess with much enthusiasm....

Columbia College 1983

Boy Meets 616 One of the highlights of my Columbia housing experience was sophomore year when an acquaintance from a Barnard linguistics class asked if I would be interested in joining a Japanese special-interest house. I had just started studying...

Columbia College 2003

Downtime at Gold Rail Much of my downtime was spent at the Gold Rail bar on the east side of Broadway at about 112th St. They were famous for inexpensive (much less than the more famous West End on the...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1970

Drew’s: The First-Year’s Watering Hole I was so sorry to learn that Drew’s, at the SW corner of 106th and Broadway, had become a food market some years back. After all, if it were not for the establishment’s completely uninterested...

Columbia College 1992

Financial Aid Quite simply, I could not have even considered coming to Columbia but for having qualified for a Ford Foundation grant in 1952. The program sought high school juniors a year or more younger than their classmates (I had...

Columbia College 1956

Finding Columbia University In Bulgaria It is strange how going to an art museum in Sofia, Bulgaria makes one think of Columbia’s Henry Krumb School of Mines…. I have been coming to Bulgaria for almost 20 years. The late Prof....

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1973

Ghana Be Good During my junior year (Spring 2003), I left for what would eventually become a life changing experience. I had originally been scheduled to study in South Africa, but at the suggestion of a couple of friends, I...

Columbia College 2004

Hungarian Pastry Shop The Hungarian Pastry Shop was my place to study and relax. The comfort of exquisite pastries and refillable coffee mugs with a quality of coffee ahead of its time took you from ecstasy to a riveted concentration...

Teachers College 1981, Columbia College 1973

John Jay Allegiance I began my Columbia tutelage on John Jay 11, room 1127, to be exact. I will always remember move-in day - maneuvering those bulky, orange moving bins from the elevator to my little slice of Columbia. My...

Columbia College 2003

Life at Johnson Hall I arrived at Columbia University and Johnson Hall in August/September of 1975. This was the first academic year that Johnson Hall was coed. Previously it had been a women’s graduate dorm. I believe two or three...

Graduate School of Business 1975

Live Jazz Memories Among the memorable jazz moments that still resonate are hearing John Coltrane from point blank range at Birdland, Randy Weston and Mose Allison at the Five Spot, Herbie Mann at the Village Gate, Ella Fitzgerald at Lewisohn...

Columbia College 1966

Quantify it Joe! My favorite person at Columbia was Professor Arthur Pollister, with whom I took Histology and Quantitative Cytology. I also worked for Dr. Pollister in my senior year as a lab preparator for Histology, and I took care...

Columbia College 1964

September 12, 2001 I was in my apartment, one block from Ground Zero, when two planes destroyed my neighborhood. My husband and I (who, incidentally, had gotten married in Columbia’s Chapel) walked uptown seven miles to his mother’s house. The...

School of the Arts 2001

Serendipity “Perhaps this is old news but I heard the West End was at last closed down. V&T’s is still around, I hope? And what of the Hungarian Pastry shop next to it?” I received this question through an alumni...

Columbia College 2004

Ski Jump on Low Steps After a once-in-a-decade snowstorm in the heart of New York, my teammates and I decided (brilliantly, I might add) to venture with our ski gear out to the Low library steps. After all, we weren’t...

Columbia College 2003

Snooze I used to love the Architecture library as it had particularly comfortable easy chairs to take a snooze in between classes, since I had an early class on Tuesdays and a huge chunk of downtime until the next one....

School of General Studies 1990

Snowed In If I could relive one day in my experience at Columbia it would be a day in February 2003 when school was cancelled because of a heavy snow storm. I think the central campus was more active that...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2007

Staying Warm A daily endeavor in the New York winters. Layering…that was the key. Hopefully, the snow was new or maybe if I was lucky there would be no snow at all. Because if it was one of those days...

School of Dental and Oral Surgery 2004

Summer Activities Each of my three college summers were primarily spent on “cruise” as a Regular NROTC midshipman. When the “cruise” was over I joined my brothers (Herbert, ‘54C and Alan, ‘57C) at a hotel in the Berkshire Mountains of...

Columbia College 1957

Summer in the City The celebration of graduation by law students is always just a little muted. In the back of your mind is always the dreaded bar exam. Columbia provided a fine legal education. I learned to “think like...

Graduate School of Journalism 1972, School of Law 1976

Thank You Ford Hall I was ecstatic when I was accepted into the Fall 1985 class of Arts Administration students studying for MFA degrees in the School of the Arts. The only problem–no on campus housing available for students who...

School of the Arts 1988

The 1001 Nights of John Jay 1am on a weeknight will find most working people either asleep, preparing to go to sleep, or wanting to go to sleep. For the people of John Jay 7 it was different: 1am or...

Columbia College 2004

The Columbia Riots of 1968 In the fall of 1967 I entered the School of General Studies, following a three-year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia. I won’t say that the spring of 1968 was my happiest time...

School of General Studies 1974, School of Library Service 1976

The Hungarian Pastry Shop At the beginning of my sophomore year at Columbia College, in 1989, I decided to study Russian. Within a week of starting my first-year Russian class, taught by a charming graduate student whose name escapes me,...

School of Law 1996, Columbia College 1992

The Invisible Student You don’t know me. I was an invisible student, one of many who worked their way through Columbia. As the lights came on in the dorms, I left for my job as usher at Radio City Music...

Columbia College 1947, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1948

The Thrill (and Agony) of Winter at Columbia As a member of the Women’s Swim Team at Columbia from 1983-1987, I vividly recall both the thrill and agony of the arrival of wind, snow and ice on the CU campus....

Columbia College 1987

Tom’s I was a graduate student from a much smaller city–and Morningside Heights was not then, 1971, what it is now! Tom’s was not the facade for the fabulous Seinfeld episodes. It was rather disgusting–in terms of the ambience–and as...

School of Social Work 1977

Where to Hang Out I had three hangs-outs during my time at Columbia. My favorite was WKCR’s lounge, as my Barnard girlfriend did a classical music show there, and I could count on her showing up a lot of the...

Columbia College 1960