Bronx Community College Breaks Ground for Stern Building

Bronx Community College’s new building is intended to match the campus’s original structures. (Robert A.M. Stern Architects image)

Bronx Community College of the City University of New York will break ground Tuesday for a 98,000-square-foot academic building and library by Robert A.M. Stern Architects. The new structure, expected to cost $102-million, is intended to match the college’s other classical-revival buildings, designed by Stanford White more than 100 years ago.

White created the first master plan for the 43-acre campus, which is set on a bluff overlooking the Harlem River and which originally belonged to New York University. He also designed the campus’s landmark Gould Memorial Library, which opened in 1900, and the 1901 colonnade known as the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. The Modernist architect Marcel Breuer did another master plan for the campus in 1956, and designed several buildings that were constructed in the 60s. The community college moved to the campus in 1973.

Mr. Stern, who is dean of the Yale University School of Architecture in addition to overseeing a busy architecture practice, is without question the country’s most prominent designer of retro buildings. Among his firm’s current commissions are the George W. Bush Presidential Library, which will be built at Southern Methodist University, and a pair of new residential colleges at Yale.

The new North Instructional Building for Bronx Community College is Mr. Stern’s first at a community college, according to the college’s news release. The building will have classrooms and a cafe on the first floor and, above that, a two-story library with a vaulted ceiling. The building is designed to achieve a silver rating in the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Program.

Mr. Stern’s firm created a video about the campus and the new building: