Borough of Manhattan Community College — 199 Chambers Street campus, first construction phase
Joseph's first BMCC entry catches a campus that would become a physical monument to New York's fiscal crisis: construction stopped at a bare steel frame, then students later marched to the abandoned site demanding that the city finish it.
The Chambers Street campus with Independence Plaza behind it, photographed in 2014. A contextual view of the completed complex.
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: Manhattan Community College — 1974
Recorded by Rita Bartscherer · Bartscherer family record
KM-107
1 of two
“Manhattan Community College — 1974”
The fiscal crisis froze BMCC's purpose-built campus with only a steel frame standing. Students later marched to the abandoned site, and construction resumed before the college occupied 199 Chambers Street in 1983.
The same project appears twice on Joseph's list because New York itself interrupted the job: first construction, then fiscal collapse, then a politically fought-for restart.
What Kelly did here
Family source
Strong
Substantial exterior brick masonry / brick cladding integrated with the concrete megastructure, plus likely interior CMU/service/fire-separation walls. This is not merely a generic alteration scope: public planning and campus sources describe 199 Chambers itself as a brick-and-concrete megastructure with brick-clad upper floors.
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
Caudill Rowlett Scott Partnership
What happened to it
Still standing
Sources
4 citedOpen →
- 01bmcc.catalog.cuny.edu
profile
- 02getty.edu
CONAFullSubject
- 03discovery.nypl.org
cb1414190
- 04commons.wikimedia.org
File:Borough of Manhattan Community College and Independence Plaza North and Sou
- Beyond My Ken · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · 2014-07-29
The Chambers Street campus with Independence Plaza behind it, photographed in 2014. A contextual view of the completed complex.
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