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.

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
Why this project matters
- Project identity
- Verified
- Kelly connection
- Family source
- Masonry scope
- Probable
Rita’s list

Transcription: Manhattan Community College — 1980
Recorded by Rita Bartscherer · Bartscherer family record
KM-147
2 of two
“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.
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
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.
The construction team
The construction team for this job has not yet been established.
What happened to it
Still standing
Sources
3 citedOpen →
- 01bmcc.catalog.cuny.edu
profile
- 02bmcc.cuny.edu
joshua smith president who led bmccs move to 199 chambers remembered at ceremony
- 03commons.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 completed Chambers Street campus, photographed in 2014, long after the resumed construction phase.
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