Student Life in New York
New York is one of the great cities of the world - an exciting place to live and study. Visit the major museums, at student rates - the Met, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the Whitney - but stop in also at the Morgan Library to see how you would decorate your study if you had $100 million after taxes. Go to Lincoln Center for the Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, or chamber music at Alice Tully Hall, or opera at the Metropolitain. Discount tickets are available for many performances, or wait until summer, when the same programs come free to the city parks.
There is of course the theater: Broadway, Off-Broadway, and the so-called Off-Off-Broadway theater, which flourishes wherever three actors can find a room and a dozen folding chairs. There are modern dance companies, folk and ethnic dance companies, and five major ballet companies; there are two major opera companies, the Met and the New York City Opera, and each borough has its smaller companies; and as for film, New York is a permanent festival. Almost any film you might want to see, from the past or the present, is playing somewhere in the city this month.
Serious eating is also a part of the city's culture. The city is a large delicatessen, with sections for each of the world's cuisines. For under $10 you can dine superbly in Chinatown or be fed to exhaustion in Little Italy. Just south of campus there is good shopping and nightlife and a concentration of cheap and excellent restaurants.
The campus on Morningside Heights is located in the Upper West Side of Manhattan Island. The Heights is a pleasant and lively neighborhood, about four miles north of Midtown, situated on a scenic bluff (from which it takes its name) overlooking the Hudson River to the west and Morningside Park to the east. Virtually all students and most faculty live in the neighborhood, within easy walking distance of the campus. The campus itself is spacious and still quite faithful to the original design, now almost one hundred years old, but the famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White. The Department of Biological Sciences is housed in the Sherman Fairchild Center for the Life Sciences. It is a modern facility, designed by an internationally famous architectural firm, Mitchell-Giurgola. Nearby is the University Physical Fitness Center, with two gymnasiums, two swimming pools, saunas, squash and handball courts, a running track, and other facilities. There are tennis courts in campus and in Riverside Park, a block away, and the park provides a pleasant environment for jogging.