Invitation to the unveiling of Havemeyer Hall and the Hall of Languages, along with the breaking of ground for the library, 1895.

Excerpt from the 1895 University Heights yearbook, the Violet, portraying MacCracken as an almost Moses like figure leading students to the Bronx.

On October 19, 1895, MacCracken invited a number of politicians, professors, journalists and socialites to showcase New York University’s new campus and break ground for the future Gould Memorial Library. Initial reactions to the new campus were overwhelmingly positive. Observers stated that the new NYU home created an atmosphere of a small-town college, creating a much more communal environment than at Washington Square. The New York Herald stated that the campus was “unequaled for picturesqueness” and Harpers’s Weekly claimed that the quadrangle had “attained the appearance of an old time seat of learning.” Two years later praise for the new campus continued. The New York Times commented that, “New York has never possessed such a college. Her universities have been, so far as fraternal college union and association went, but little more than upper day schools” and that “the new sit is exquisitely beautiful in its scenic displays. No finer could have been found within a hundred miles of the enlarged New York than this hillside clothed in academic solitude.” In the public eye MacCracken achieved his goal of creating a campus that evoked grandiosity and tradition.

The Tally Ho Wagon. In 1894, students traveled uptown to their new home.

Students hanging out on their new campus, c. 1900s.