Prentis Hall is a historic building located on the

Manhattanville Manhattanville (also known as West Harlem or West Central Harlem) is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan bordered on the north by 135th Street; on the south by 122nd and 125th Streets; on the west by Hudson River; and on t ...

campus of

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

at 632 West 125th Street. It houses the university's department of music and the

Computer Music Center The Computer Music Center (CMC) at Columbia University is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the United States. It was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Location The CMC is hous ...

, as well as facilities for the School of the Arts. It is one of three historic buildings that survived in the university's Manhattanville plan, the others being the Studebaker Building and the Nash Building.

History

Prentis Hall was built from 1909 to 1911 as a pasteurization and bottling plant for the Sheffield Farms–Slawson–Decker Company. Designed by

Frank A. Rooke Frank Aydelott Rooke, known professionally as Frank A. Rooke, was a New York architect who designed the historic Claremont Riding Academy and numerous other structures of significance that are either in National Historic Districts or listed on ...

, who designed several other buildings for Sheffield Farms, the building costed $500,000 to construct and could process 75,000 quarts of milk per day. The building is noted for its façade of white glazed

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based ceramic glaze, unglazed or glazed ceramic where the pottery firing, fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, a ...

, which is ornately designed in a French style. Its walls are brick with steel frame covered with concrete. The entire building was built to be vermin-proof and fire-proof. Its bottling room had a 27-foot ceiling with a skylight and large dome. It was acquired by Columbia in 1949 as part of a $12,000,000 expansion plan for its School of Engineering and Applied Science, and since the 1950s has hosted the university's

. During the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

, Prentis Hall housed the Heat Transfer Research Facility, which performed may critical heat flux tests in order to determine the temperature a nuclear reactor would melt down. The building was investigated, along with

Pupin Hall Pupin Physics Laboratories , also known as Pupin Hall, is home to the Columbia University Physics Department, physics and astronomy departments of Columbia University in New York City. The building is located on the south side of 120th Street (Man ...

, in either 1967 or 1977 by the

Energy Research and Development Administration The United States Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) was a United States government organization formed from the split of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1975. It assumed the functio ...

for possible radiation contamination. Prentis Hall houses the

RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer The RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer (nicknamed ''Victor'') was the first programmable electronic synthesizer and the flagship piece of equipment at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Designed by Herbert Belar and Harry Olson at RCA, wit ...

, the first programmable music synthesizer, which takes up an entire office wall. It was moved from RCA by to the university by

Otto Luening Otto Clarence Luening (June 15, 1900 – September 2, 1996) was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music. Luening was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to German parents, Eugene, a conducto ...

and

Vladimir Ussachevsky Vladimir Alexeevich Ussachevsky (November 3, 1911 in Hailar, China – January 2, 1990 in New York, New York) was a composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music. Biography Vladimir Ussachevsky was born in the Hailar Distric ...

, who helped design the instrument, and pioneers of electronic music.

References

Harlem Industrial buildings and structures in Manhattan Columbia University campus {{NewYork-university-stub