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New York University
Workers are tearing apart Gothic stone towers piece by piece... it's May 21st, 1894, and New York University's first building is being demolished right where you stand. That original University Building, completed in 1835, rose in dramatic Gothic Revival spires at the corner of Waverly Place and Washington Place, its English cathedral style shocking Americans used to simple red brick colleges. But here's what'll make your spine tingle... this very ground was once a potter's field and public gallows before becoming Washington Square Park. The university literally built its foundation on top of unmarked graves and execution grounds. The Gothic building was so oversized for its tiny student body that NYU rented empty floors to struggling artists and inventors, accidentally creating America's first university arts district. In 1924, a young professor named Thomas Wolfe earned exactly $1,800 teaching English here for seven months... using that money to complete his masterpiece "Look Homeward, Angel" in a nearby Greenwich Village apartment. Students still whisper about the ghost of a student who supposedly killed himself in one of those demolished turrets, his spirit now wandering among today's modern NYU buildings that rose from those same haunted grounds.
Did You Know?
- New York University (NYU) was one of America’s first secular universities, founded in 1831 by Albert Gallatin, a former Secretary of the Treasury, with a mission to provide practical, merit-based education accessible to all—a radical departure from the classical, religiously affiliated colleges of the era. Despite this progressive vision, its early classes were mostly filled by sons of wealthy white Protestant families, reflecting the social complexities of 19th-century New York.
- NYU’s original campus near City Hall was so crowded that it moved to a much larger site in the Bronx in 1894, known as University Heights—a neighborhood whose name still reflects this academic legacy. The Bronx campus was eventually sold in 1973 during a financial crisis, leading to the merger of its undergraduate programs with Washington Square College in Greenwich Village, which remains NYU’s vibrant, urban heart today.
- NYU played a surprising role in American science history: the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, was founded at NYU in 1876, highlighting the university’s early commitment to scientific education and research. This little-known fact underscores NYU’s influence beyond the humanities and into the realms of chemistry and innovation.