Prentis Hall is a historic building located on the

Manhattanville Manhattanville (also known as West Harlem or West Central Harlem, after its location near Harlem) is a neighborhood in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan. It is bordered on the north by 135th Street (Manhattan), 13 ...

campus of

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

at 632 West 125th Street. It houses the university's department of music and the Computer Music Center, 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, who designed several other buildings for Sheffield Farms, the building cost $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, also known as terra cotta or terra-cotta (; ; ), is a clay-based non-vitreous ceramic OED, "Terracotta""Terracotta" MFA Boston, "Cameo" database fired at relatively low temperatures. It is therefore a term used for earthenware obj ...

, 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 Computer Music Center. During the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

, 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, 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 functi ...

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, wi ...

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

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

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

References

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