library suicide

[George Thompson]

The atrium is 12 stories high.

I occasionally encounter someone who finds the balconies & stairs disquieting, but not so very often, actually.  I would suppose it to be a reasonably common issue.

I was told by people who were with the library in the 1960s, when the building was designed, that the director of the library was not consulted in the planning.  I was also told that the president of NYU wanted a big goddamned building that would dominate the square and assert NYU's presence.  Zoning requirements limited the building to floorspace 6x the plot of land it would stand on.  The Pres could have had a 12 story building on 1/2 the plot, or a 6 story building on the whole plot, but neither met his requirement of a big goddamned building.  So with so finagling -- I'm not saying bribery, mind you -- the zoning board accepted a 12 story building filling the whole plot, so long as the atrium used up half the possible floor space.

I came to NYU about 6 months before Bobst opened.  The common babble on campus then was, "I'll be afraid to walk across the atrium, because I might be hit by a jumper."  This from people who would walk down the streets, under the windows of apartment buildings & offices.  The university assigned one of the psych profs to write a paper proving that jumpers don't jump inside buildings.  Like a well-trained social scientist, he ignored all evidence that would undercut his position, viz, the scarcity of buildings designed so as to facilitate jumping within the building, and produced the paper, which I doubt anyone read.

In the event, we managed to go 30+ years without a jumper.  Since we have had one and a copycat, we have to anticipate the possibility of others, I suppose, and the university is going to enclose the balconies and stairs.  In the meanwhile, I continue to cross the atrium, when necessary.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 12:54 pm
Subject: Re: library suicide

> On Tuesday, October 14, 2003, at 07:57 PM, David Barnhart wrote:
>
> > I have a problem with heights.  This library has a stairway from
> each> level to the next on an atrium seven or so stories tall.  I
> have to
> > walk
> > on the inside of the stairway to avoid vertigo...
>
> i was just about to say the same thing.  it's a beautiful space,
> but a
> kind of hell for an acrophobe.
>
> arnold
>