Mendel Gottesman Library, Yeshiva University
Joseph helped build Yeshiva's $5 million central library in the late 1960s; half a century later, the university cut much of its brick exterior open and replaced it with glass.
Yeshiva University's Mendel Gottesman Library, located at 2520 Amsterdam Avenue between West 185th and 186th Streets in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, was built…. Photographed in 2014; a current view, not a construction-period photograph.
Current view · 2014 · Photo: Beyond My Ken · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source
Why this project matters
- Project identity
- Verified
- Kelly connection
- Family source
- Masonry scope
- Strong
Rita’s list
Transcription: Yeshiva University Library — 1967
Recorded by Rita Bartscherer · Bartscherer family record
KM-060
1 of two
“Yeshiva University Library — 1967”
Construction began in January 1966 on a six-story library for 750,000 volumes. The building opened by the late 1960s and underwent its first major restoration in 2015–16.
Joseph's masonry sits inside a long institutional continuity, but the envelope itself was later radically rethought for a different idea of what a university library should feel like.
What Kelly did here
Family source
Strong
Exterior brick masonry and masonry backup are strongly indicated by preservation documentation describing the building's brick, concrete, terra-cotta and glass composition; interior CMU/block service, shaft and partition work is also plausible.
This scope is recorded as strong, not documented. It is a disciplined reading of the building and the trade practice of the period, not a contract-level record of Kelly’s work.
The construction team
- 01Architect
Armand Bartos & Associates
What happened to it
Still standing
Sources
4 citedOpen →
- 01jta.org
yeshiva university announces construction plans for 31000000 for 1967
- 02
- 03parks.ny.gov
NYNewYorkCoDominicanHistoricDistrictform
- 04yu.edu
gottesman library to get makeover
- Beyond My Ken · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · 2014-05-30
Yeshiva University's Mendel Gottesman Library, located at 2520 Amsterdam Avenue between West 185th and 186th Streets in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, was built…. Photographed in 2014; a current view, not a construction-period photograph.
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