Building Plans at Columbia’s Athletic Complex Stir Unease Among Neighbors

Ruby Washington/The New York Times

While a full-blown tempest has swirled around Columbia University’s plans for a satellite campus in Harlem, a teapot-size storm has been brewing over the university’s more modest plans involving two celebrity architects in Inwood.

Starting in the 1920s, when Lou Gehrig was playing baseball on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, the university began moving its outdoor athletic fields to the northern tip of Manhattan. Now, the Baker Field complex, where football fans perennially come to watch the Lions lose to other Ivy League teams, stretches to 26 acres around 218th Street, encompassing baseball, softball and soccer fields; tennis courts; a track; and a boathouse.

Inwood neighbors say they understand the problem but contend the design, by the acclaimed architect Steven Holl, a Columbia professor, is out of character with the sedate Art Deco and Tudor-style apartment buildings to the south. The angular Holl building would be set partly on stilts and accented by terraces and stepped ramps that echo urban fire escapes.

“It does not relate well to the community,” said Gail Addiss, 61, an architect who lives opposite Baker Field. “It’s similar to Frank Gehry architecture — large metal things whose glare is going to cause more brightness to reflect into people’s windows.”


Read the whole story at The New York Times, by Joseph Berger