NYU Bronx Heights Campus Closure
Throughout the 1960s NYU vastly expanded which quickly became problematic. For instance, they created new schools and departments like the Tisch School of the Arts, Silver School for Social Work, and the Institute of Fine Arts. In 1964, NYU purchased Washington Square Village and in 1966, they began plans for their flagship Bobst library. The following year, they added the 14-story Warren Weaver Hall and they continued to acquire significant real estate within Manhattan (“A Brief History of New York University''). However at the same time, enrollment was at an all time low, and the city had a growing reputation for crime which started to tarnish NYU's desirability to out-of-state students. As a result of these large purchases that NYU could not afford to pay back, the school was on the brink of collapse. Then-President Hester created the Financial Task Force to search for ways the school could escape its financial problems. This task force warned that NYU could become ,"“the victim of the largest and most spectacular financial collapse in the history of American higher education” (Roberts). Initially, NYU looked to move the engineering school into Barney Building into the campus at washington square. However, this plan was met with fierce criticism from Brooklyn Poly because they were concerned that an engineering school of comparable size and offerings that was moving just a few subway stops would put them in unrecoverable financial trouble (Thorsen 6). Under the direction of Stanley Seigut, an influential member of the New York State Assembly District who wanted to see both NYU and Poly both survive and merge, both schools were prompted and almost coerced to merge. If NYU refused, the state would block the sale of the University Heights campus. If Poly refused, NYu would be allowed to continue its rival engineering school at the square (Thorsen 6). This coercion is primarily why NYU was not able to continue engineering on its main campus and really only had one option. This ultimatum forced President Hester's hand as he decided to close the NYU University Heights campus in the Bronx among other cuts to faculty and sports. This is because NYU had the opportunity to solve many of their budgetary woes by selling the Heights campus to New York State for approximately 60 million dollars. For context, this equates to approximately 440 million dollars today and was more than quadruple then that of what Polytechnic's budget was that year (Thorsen 4). This meant that NYU's engineering department was now set to merge with Brooklyn Poly.