Tomorrow marks the first day of in-person housing selection. Still undecided on where you’re gonna live? If you’re a recluse sophomore with a number somewhere between 10/1 and 10/600, think about living in Hotel Furnald! Be sure to also check out our other housing reviews.

Location: 2960 Broadway

  • Nearby dorms: Carman, Schapiro, John Jay, and the LLC
  • Nearby food: Morton Williams, Ferris Booth, Starbucks, M2M, Ollie’s (RIP), Bernheim & Schwartz, and Häagen Dazs

Cost: $7,640/per year (same as Broadway, Wien, McBain, and Schapiro). This is the cheapest rate for non-freshman housing.

Amenities:

  • Bathrooms: One men’s and one women’s bathroom per floor, cleaned every weekday. Each floor bathroom has three showers, three toilets, and five sinks. Two unisex bathrooms on the first floor.
  • AC/Heating: Yes (although who can forget the Great Furnald AC outage of 2014?)
  • Kitchen/Lounge: Nice lounge and almost-kitchen on every floor with a TV, four armchairs, a real dinner table with chairs, and granite countertops. Each lounge/kitchen has two microwaves, a full oven, and two stovetops. New flooring was installed in each lounge over winter break during the 2014-2015 academic year. Residents consider the lobby to be the building lounge.
  • Laundry: Clean but tiny, overheated laundry facility in the basement with six washers and six dryers (one of each are currently free).
  • Computers/Printers: Miniature computer lab on the first floor with three computers and one printer.
  • Intra-transportation: Two brutally slow elevators, one on the North side and one on the South side, rumored to be replaced this summer. On the bright side, there’s hardly ever a wait time for an elevator cab.
  • Hardwood/Carpet: Rooms have hardwood floors.
  • Wi-Fi: Yes.
  • Special Stuff: Queer lounge and bike storage in the basement.

Room Variety:

  • Singles: Lots of singles (~190) that vary pretty widely from room to room, with the smallest at 100 ft. and the largest at a whopping 124 ft.
  • Doubles: a few doubles (~28) that come in two flavors: livable (~175 ft.) and huge (~275 ft.)

Furnald 8_2014

Numbers:

  • Singles can be unpredictable. Last year, the final Furnald single went to a sophomore with a lottery number of 10/505, but the year prior saw a cutoff of 10/930.
  • Doubles are great for an in-person sophomore-only group with a great lottery number. Last year, the cutoff number for a Furnald double was 10/666.

Bwog Recommendations:

  • East-facing rooms on higher floors, around 6 and up, have an amazing view of campus (Butler, the LLC, Hamilton, and college walk).
  • The building’s AC and heating are huge perks come September/January.
  • The closed-door lounges and kitchens feel like actual lounges, and are great places to cook during breaks when the dining halls are closed.
  • The 10th floor has super high ceilings in the rooms.
  • If you like your own clean space and have no problem making friends outside of your floor, then Furnald is the place for you.
  • Granite countertops in the kitchens.

Resident opinions:

  • “Furnald is one of the greatest places to live at Columbia — its facilities are beautiful and clean, the rooms are nicely sized, most are singles, and all have A/C, which is a pretty huge plus. Furnald residents also seem to have this great dynamic in which most of them know one another; you always see people getting together to study or to hang out. I think we all have a pretty wonderful time here.”
  • “It’s really quiet here, but that’s why I like it. I had no problem making friends during NSOP and in my classes. Being able to come back to a clean room after a night out is always really nice.”
  • “Sometimes I wish the people on my floor were as close with one another as the people on some of my friends’ floors in Carman.”
  • “The building itself is nice, but some of the facilities suck. The air conditioning barely worked during my first month here and the floor bathrooms are always really gross.”