Guest Writer Olin Bose (CC ’28) joins Bwog in uncovering the mysteries of Schermerhorn Hall.

Schermerhorn Hall and its extension have always provoked mysteries. Where is the seventh floor? Where do the tunnels go? What’s up with the garage behind it? Why is the building such a mess?

Using three floorplans I have found for the building throughout the University libraries (1898, 1942, and 1970), as well as exploration throughout the building itself, I have not only been able to answer these questions but also ones seemingly irrelevant to the building.

Background

Schermerhorn Hall was constructed in 1897 as a home for the natural science departments. It was a fairly simple building with a basement (now known as floor 3), sub-basement (2), and four floors (now 4, 6, 8, and 9). Just like Havemeyer Hall, it also had a circular two-story lecture hall in the back (hereafter referred to as the Rotunda). The original plan hosted the Geology, Mineralogy, Botany, Psychology, and Zoology departments.

As the departments began running out of space, the twelve-story Schermerhorn Extension was built, opening in 1929. In 1946 the building was renovated again, and two more floors (5 and 7) were added as mezzanines between previous ones. Two other floors (including 3) were extended, previously having balconies above the floor below. 

Basics: Stairways

When originally built, Schermerhorn had only one set of stairs. From the basement to the second floor, the stairway occupied the center of the building (where the elevator now is). The stairway on the higher floors is on the left side of the building and is still there, now known as Stairway X.

Stairway Y is located between Schermerhorn and the Extension. It was added at the same time as the extension. When climbing up Stairway Y, the floor on Schermerhorn and the Extension is half a set of stairs apart.

The extension contains yet another staircase. In order for each staircase in the building group to have a distinctive name, it is called Stairway… X.

Floor numbers

Originally, Schermerhorn and the extension had floor numbers that did not match: for example, Schermerhorn’s ground floor (3) connected to the Extension’s floor 4. After the extra two floors were added, the Schermerhorn floor numbers were changed (from 1-6) to match the adjacent Extension floor numbers (which went from Basement to 11). This is why the lowest Schermerhorn floor now has the number 2. This is also when the Extension’s room numbers were changed from starting at 01 to 51.

The Mysterious 7th Floor

Anyone who’s been in Schermerhorn long enough will realize that the building does not seem to have a seventh floor (not the extension). The elevator has buttons 2-9, but pressing the 7 button does nothing. 

If one tries to enter through Stairway X, they will see one small door, painted so it can’t be entered. People who try Stairway Y will see a door entering a chamber with a fire extinguisher and two wooden doors: one labeled 703 and “Geomorphology Storeroom”, and the other with no label. Neither can be entered. 

Geology Library

The Geology Library was the last of the libraries to occupy the building, and by 1970 it was the largest. The library itself occupied Room 601 in the left (west) wing of the 6th floor. However, it also had stack rooms open to students. Built sometime between 1942 and 1970, they occupied a large amount of space on the north half of the sixth floor (formerly occupied by classrooms) as well as almost the entire 7th floor. Staircase X was partially truncated in order to create a path between the library and the stacks.

1970 floor plans courtesy of Columbia’s Buildings Collection

The presence of the stack room explains why the sixth-floor corridor, even today, is much narrower than those on the eighth and ninth floors. One can also see doors on the north side of the sixth-floor hallway, but most are painted in, and just one is openable (but locked). The stack room also has seventh-floor entrances as well, one of which is the painted-in door photographed below in Stairway X and the other is the inaccessible unmarked wooden door next to Room 703.

However, The Geology Library closed in 2018 and was replaced by the Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics. When they built the center, they gutted the library area and replaced it with a new interior, complete in 2021.

When looking at the 3D layout of the Irving Institute provided on the Matiz Architecture website, something interesting can be seen. Only the library itself was part of the renovation, and not the stacks. Furthermore, the door that had been previously used to enter the stacks seems to have been removed and replaced with part of the back wall of a conference room. (I could not visit the conference room myself to prove this theory.)

If one knows where to look, the presence of this path from the library to the stack room can still be seen here in this photograph of Stairway X. The above door is the painted-out seventh-floor entrance to the stack room. On the lower level (the sixth-floor landing), it can be seen that part of the stairwell was walled off to contain the path from the library to the stacks. The staircase was truncated in this area, and instead of a window, there is a bulletin board. 

Finally, in the emergency exit floor plan on the sixth floor, the site of the door to the stack room can be seen on the seventh-floor landing.

Mysterious Contents

Now, because the entrances to the stack room have been either blocked off, painted in, or locked, it begs the question of what, if anything, is still inside the stack room.

As it turns out, I was not the first person to know about the stack room after the Geology library closed. Bwogger Simon Panfilio was somehow able to get inside it in the 2021-22 school year, writing about his visit in his “Alternate Campus Tour” article:

“Additionally, you’ll see that the Schermerhorn staircase skips the seventh floor, going straight from the sixth to the eighth floor! On this secret seventh floor, you’ll find an abandoned library filled with books about geology, as well as some light reading about Ronald Reagan written before he was president! Always something to learn!”

Fans of geology, however, should not fret that they are missing out on literary content. Sometime after his article, books were taken from the stacks to the Uris Business Library, where they stand on the first mezzanine level. I know this for sure because I found the exact same book in Uris that had formerly rotted away in the abandoned stacks. This book, and all of the other books on the Uris shelves, are still marked as belonging to “Geology Library” and, when looked up on CLIO, give their location as “Geology Collection – Stored In Uris Business Library.”

Now knowing what happened to the books, it is an open question of what is currently in the stack space? Is it used as miscellaneous storage? Does it contain just empty bookshelves? Is it unused? If so, the University should try to do something with the unused space, perhaps turning it back into offices or classrooms, or using it as “offsite” storage space for a library.

Basement Tunnels

As any avid WikiCU reader would know, several tunnels reach out below Schermerhorn, but the map may not be as complete as once thought. On WikiCU, the map shows two tunnels adjacent to Schermerhorn: one on the west side to Avery, and one on the east side to Fayerweather. I did not see if either of these was fully true but I found another building connection and solved another mystery in the process.

First of all, the Rotunda in the basement started as a “Museum of Geology,” which is odd for such a miserable, dark area. By 1970 it was split into three large labs, offices, and classrooms, as well as some smaller areas. When I came across these rooms today, the rooms no longer seemed to be labs or offices. One of the large rooms, 210, was locked. Notably, there was a sign on it indicating that the room inside was part of Avery Library. However, Avery Library is south of the Rotunda, meaning that 210 is discontiguous from the rest of the library but there is likely some underground connection between the south end of Schermerhorn and Avery Library.

The Schermerhorn basement is a sight to behold as it contains old tables and file cabinets. It also contains hallways longer than the building above. If one goes westward, they will reach a set of double doors, and if open, will eventually (after passing through a Backrooms-like hallway) lead to the hallway with no floor tile seen below with an antiquated door stating “Locker Room.” 

Using the 1970 floor plan for reference, this is the entrance to a little-spoken-of “Service Building,” which has three stories. One might see the service building above ground too: the “garage door” one might see behind Schermerhorn from outside of Chef Mike’s is the entrance of a 187 square-foot elevator, which goes two stories below. The Service Building contains (or used to contain) storage of many things including but not limited to special rooms for books, paper, and garden equipment, as well as more general central storage rooms. It also contains quite a few locker rooms and even dining rooms (presumably for maintenance workers). The bottom level also contains a loading dock and a large garage area.

It should be noted that the Service Building has an entrance on floor 2 of Schermerhorn and two different floors of Uris. This means these two buildings are (or at least were) connected underground. Perhaps this is how the books were moved between the buildings.

Conclusion

I hope you have learned a lot of new interesting about the Mysteries of Schermerhorn. Columbia’s campus has changed a lot throughout the decades and it’s important to understand the effects of past changes on things we see today. 

Schermerhorn Hall via Bwarchives

Article Images via Olin Bose or attributed