1980Manhattan, New YorkEducation

Borough of Manhattan Community College — 199 Chambers Street campus, resumed construction

Joseph's second BMCC entry captures the restart: after a five-year fiscal-crisis hiatus and a student campaign to finish the abandoned steel frame, construction resumed and the downtown campus finally opened.

Borough of Manhattan Community College — 199 Chambers Street campus, resumed construction — The completed Chambers Street campus, photographed in 2014, long after the resumed construction phase.

The completed Chambers Street campus, photographed in 2014, long after the resumed construction phase.

Current view · 2014 · Photo: Beyond My Ken · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

01The story

Why this project matters

Project identity
Verified
Kelly connection
Family source
Masonry scope
Probable

Rita’s list

Rita Bartscherer’s handwritten entry: Manhattan Community College — 1980

Transcription: Manhattan Community College — 1980

Recorded by Rita Bartscherer · Bartscherer family record

Entry

KM-147

Sheet

2 of two

As written

Manhattan Community College — 1980

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.

Why it matters

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.

02What Kelly did

What Kelly did here

Kelly connection

Family source

Scope confidence

Probable

Likely: most likely CMU/concrete-block classroom, corridor, service and fire-rated walls, with exterior brick/block wall systems where the school/library used masonry cladding.

This scope is recorded as probable, 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.

03Who built it

The construction team

The construction team for this job has not yet been established.

04What happened

What happened to it

Still standing

On the map

199 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007

Still standing

Sources

3 citedOpen →
What this record rests on
  1. 01
  2. 02
    bmcc.cuny.edu

    joshua smith president who led bmccs move to 199 chambers remembered at ceremony

  3. 03
    commons.wikimedia.org

    File:Borough of Manhattan Community College and Independence Plaza North and Sou

Image credits
  • Beyond My Ken · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · 2014-07-29

    The completed Chambers Street campus, photographed in 2014, long after the resumed construction phase.

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