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What do You Owe an Icon? How Astute Planning and Advanced Building Technology are Giving Columbia¹s Great Low Library its Due
Presenter(s): Margaret Castillo, Helpern Architects; David Helpern, Helpern Architects; Irwin Lefkowitz, Columbia University; Edmund P. Meade, Robert Silman Associates
For New York and possibly for the rest of the country, especially those who lived through the 1960s, Columbia¹s Low Memorial Library is education. Completed by McKim, Mead and White in 1897 as the set piece of Columbia University¹s then-new uptown campus, Low Library has experienced most of the building technology upgrades of the last century as retrofits. To address Low Library¹s coherence, ensure usability and maintainability, and safeguard its iconic stature, Columbia has undertaken a phased restoration and modernization. This presentation will detail the investigation and restoration process. This anecdotal program will raise issues of stewardship, decision-making, and remediation of a significant historic structure. |
 This knowledge resource from SCUP is a concurrent session presented at the Society's thirty-seventh annual, international conference and Expo, SCUP–37, in San Diego, CA (USA), in July of 2002. Audiocassettes of this and other SCUP–37 sessions are available for purchase here. |
| Due to our concern for the privacy of members of the face-to-face audiences at SCUP–37, our digital archives of SCUP–37 presentations end at the beginning of the question and answer portion of each session. Whenever we can, we not only provide streaming audio but the slide show or visual presentation used by the presenters, as well. |
