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New York University is a very odd fish. It was founded (as the University of the City of New York) in the 1830’s as an academic refuge for the city’s Dutch Reformed and Presbyterians opposed to the very Episcopalian flavor of Columbia College, though it was never officially aligned to either denomination. Around the turn of the century when Columbia moved uptown to a brand spanking new beaux-arts campus NYU decided to follow suit by moving even further uptown and building their own classically-inspired campus. They kept their buildings in Greenwich Village, however, and by the 1970’s found the Bronx campus (University Heights) to be a burden on the old chequebook and sold it to the City.

In the meantime, NYU was known (and pretty much had been since it was founded) as a “commuter school”, which is to say that most (though not all) of its students were from around the metropolitan area who travelled from home to school and back again. This has completely changed in the 1980’s, as graduates who had done well for themselves (and other philanthropists) began donating large sums to NYU and it remade itself in the image of the normal residential university (again, like Columbia). Of course, having forsaken their proper campus they were stuck with a number of buildings around Greenwich Village and so pretty much began to buy up any building of any size that came onto the market in the neighborhood. [A commenter on Curbed.com says that NYU is probably the largest landowner in the City after Trinity Church. The largest landowner is actually the (Catholic) Archdiocese of New York, followed by Columbia University (which happens to own Rockefeller Center, among other things). After that, I’m not sure but NYU probably has more land, while I would think Trinity Chuch probably has higher returns for the particular land they own.] NYU is now an almost entirely residential university in that even if its students are not living in dorms they are almost certainly not living with their parents nearby. Indeed, the proportion of native New Yorkers has fallen while those from other states and countries has risen markedly.

I’ve had a fair amount of experience with NYU. According to facebook.com I have seven friends there, though one spent his freshman year there and wisely thought “This place is for suckers” and transferred to Georgetown, while another friend (now graduated) never bothered to join the Facebook. Anyhow, in my final year of high school I had a good friend who was a year older than me (a Holy Child girl, troublemakers all) who went to NYU. Most weeks I would head down one afternoon after school (always Mondays actually; I’m a creature of habit and it suited her schedule) and have dinner and, to use the parlance of our times, “hang out” and “chill” until heading back up to yonder Westchester around 9 o’clock. As you can imagine, one met a fair number of NYUers during such perambulations and I have to say, though the young lady in question did have a pretty roommate from Connecticut (a ‘Darienfrau’ as Igby Slocum would say, though she was actually from Guildford), I not even once met a single person with whom I might want to voluntarily spend any of my time. They were, to a man, boring, self-obsessed nitwits, completey devoid of anything interesting. Though (I’m told) a number of Columbians were irate at me for having described their academy as “a fallen institution”, fallen though it is Columbia is still better than NYU. I have not nearly spent the same amount of time at Columbia as I have down at NYU and yet I’ve met interesting people from there. Also, my mother works at Columbia and though she likes to tell many hilarious stories of the freaks she has met amongst the studentry, she also tells of a number of very kind, nice, and interesting students she has had the occasion to meet. I very much doubt this would be the case if she was working at NYU. The most interesting people at NYU are actually the security guards who, although they all take their jobs terribly seriously (and rightly so), are usually much better for some decent chat than the students. Of course, Fordham students are superb and beat NYUers and Columbians any day of the week.

But who, then, are the other NYUers whom I count amongst my friends? They still manage to be interesting folks. Strangely enough none of the eight Violets I know are friends with one another. In addition to the Holy Child girl and the wise Georgetown transfer, there is 3) a fellow Thorntonian (guy), 4) a Bronxvillian guy, 5) a hilarious girl from Larchmont whom I’m good friends with, 6) and 7) two girls, both Californian, I know from the summer I spent at Oxford, and 8) a girl who is a member of my Upper East Side circle of friends. The reader will note the preponderance of females. NYU is very much a feminine university these days; I mean, heck, their athletic nickname is the Violets after all, not the Fighting Irish. Of the guys I know, one’s only their because he’s exceptionally talented in the realm of film, another knew well enough to transfer away from NYU, and the third is a fellow Thorntonian (Thorntonians are known for either surviving in adverse situations or cracking up and going loony, so that accounts for his survival to date). Every NYU girl complains about the lack of available men since NYU predictably attracts a large number of men of… err… “alternative lifestyle options”. Naturally this creates a situation, like the Anglican priesthood, where being a male at NYU one might automatically be tarred with suspicions of being “of an alternative lifestyle” and thus a very large proportion of self-respecting young men are deterred from even applying.

But back to Curbed. So NYU is building yet another dorm and many are complaining about their precious neighborhood being turned into the quarter for spoiled students. Ah well. I’m not terribly troubled. Greenwich Village to me is part of Manhattan’s vast underbelly, a term I use only half abusingly. It’s just that most places below Gramercy Park seem either too crowded or too weird for me to live. It’s not that the underbelly is ugly, there are some beautiful buildings and some quite charming parts. But as the Brits say about France, “lovely place, shame about the people”. And you know, if you go for the SoHo/Chelsea/Village scene, then fair enough. Enjoy it all you like. I’m just an Upper East Side kinda guy myself.

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