THE Bronx’ very own Hall of Fame predates the sports halls of fame in Cooperstown, NY, Canton, OH and Springfield, MA. There are halls of fame for rock and roll, cowgirls, country music, robots, clowns, therapists, snowmobiling, and thousands of others. A Google search for the phrase “hall of fame” lists the Rock & Roll Museum in Cleveland as its Number One item; and while Google finds nearly 8 million mentions of the phrase “hall of fame” on the internet, none of its first ten pages of findings mention The Hall of Fame for Great Americans. Yet, it’s the model for all the Halls that followed it.
The original Hall was the brainchild of Henry M. MacCracken, President of New York University in 1901. He would place a classical arcade on one of the highest points in the Bronx, from which there are spectacular views of Manhattan and beyond, the palisades of New Jersey. He would honor great Americans in the fields of government, science and the arts, and would hire the renowned architect Stanford White to build a tribute to the great men (and a few women) and call it the Hall Of Fame for Great Americans; people would come to this great hall from miles around.
MacCracken built the NYU campus beginning in 1894 on a bluff overlooking the Harlem River, purchasing an estate in what was then open country. The complex includes the domed Gould Memorial Library, Baker Hall of Philosophy and Hall of Languages, all New York City landmarks. The Hall of Fame, a 630-foot semicircular classical colonnade, juts out over the highest elevation in the Bronx.
A group of 100 electors culled from the ranks of university presidents, historians, journalists and educators nominated and voted for Hall of Fame admission every five years, later changed to every three. Qualifications for admission included US citizenship, and nominees were required to be deceased for 25 years. The original 29 inductees included George Washington, with the last bust installed to date being Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1992. In 2016, two busts, Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, were removed; as they served as enemy combatants for four years, I’m not complaining too much about it.
Walking the hall you will find busts of 98 of the country’s greatest politicans, scholars, teachers and authors, created by some of the country’s most noted sculptors. Even the name plates under the busts were made by Tiffany Studios. Most of the names familiar from American history books can be found in the Hall, including Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Morse, Robert Fulton; both Wright brothers and Thomas Edison are represented. There are several lesser-known figures such as astronomers Simon Newcomb and Maria Mitchell, first American Nobel Prize winner in science Albert Michelson, and anaesthetist William T. Green Morton.
MacCracken conceived the Hall of Fame as a major tourist attraction and for much of the 20th Century his dream was realized. Circle Line boats would slow or stop in the Harlem River below the colonnade; patriotic music would play, and the narrator would intone the exploits of many of the hall’s burgeoning number of inductees. These days, however, the Hall, unfortunately, seems never to be crowded.
The Hall began to deteriorate after NYU moved out of the campus and the Bronx Community College moved in back in 1976. The bronzes, which have been cited by the National Society of Sculptors to be “the most significant collection of bronzes in the country” suffered from the effects of acid rain and the colonnade supports were crumbling. Fortunately, funds were found to rehabilitate and restore the Hall between 1980 and 1985. However, four inductees are on hold until funds can be found for the $25,000 apiece each bust will require.
Usually the Hall of Fame is open seven days a week from 10am to 5pm. Enter the Bronx Community College campus at the gate on Hall of Fame Terrace just past Loring Place North. One thing I would say: go on an overcast day or one with a high overcast, as the curving corridors present a challenge with shadows interfering with good shots on bright, sunny days. In 2023, the Hall was closed for renovations, but is supposed to open by November; we’ll see. I’d like to get up there again, as this photo was taken during my last previous visit in 2016.
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10/18/23
13 comments
I don’t remember where I heard this, but apparently the guards on duty at the campus entrance sometimes will refuse to let Hall of Fame visitors enter even when the Hall is open. Maybe it depends on what mood they’re in, who knows.
I have run into trouble with the CUNY guards up there for the sin of aiming my camera on campus grounds.
When I was a student at NYU Uptown (which is what the University Heights campus was often called), my work-study job was to man the information desk at the entrance to the Hall of Fame walkway. It was a great job: I had a quiet place to do my homework (visitors almost never came); a telephone to call my girlfriend; and magnificent views when I took my daily walk to make sure vandals hadn’t pitched any of the busts into the Hudson River the night before. I still look up when I pass by the campus on the highway, but I haven’t been back there since NYU sold the campus in 1973.
Good to hear from you, and hopefully you and Barbara are doing well.
Thanks for this posting – brought back lots of memories. I am a 1969 graduate of the NYU Heights campus where the Hall of Fame is located, so that venue played an important role in my life.
Just a few corrections to the names and dates, please. The NYU official who spearheaded the development of the entire University Heights campus, including the Hall of Fame, was Henry M. MacCracken, who was NYU’s CEO (then called chancellor) from 1891-1910. NYU’s original Washington Square campus growth was limited as Manhattan’s population exploded in the late 19th century, so MacCracken pushed for NYU to expand into a new campus in the then-bucolic Bronx. The campus location atop a steep bluff made it especially attractive.
NYU’s financial troubles in the early 1970s, coupled with increasing public safety issues in the surrounding neighborhood, forced NYU to sell the campus to CUNY for Bronx Community College in 1973, which it remains today, 50 years later. I had the opportunity to attend a Heights campus reunion there a few years ago, and thankfully the classical beauty of the old campus still remains, including the Hall of Fame. Indeed, its oldest building, a 19th century mansion that was incorporated into the original 1894 campus, is still there and retains the name MacCracken Hall.
Here’s a Wikipedia link about Henry MacCracken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_MacCracken
We are, Kevin! Come visit us in Virginia sometime!
I suppose it was a good thought on the part of its founder, but I would hazard a guess that most if not all the honorees are otherwise memorialized elsewhere and there is no compelling reason to visit the BCC campus.
You’d be surprised. I never heard of some of the people there.
Well, some are known primarily just in their own field of endeavor, but my thought was more like, whether they have their own museum or national monument (like a birthplace, that sort of thing), some institution somewhere is bound to have honored them somehow.
I feel that I have to go to this at least one time, because I always pass by this whenever I’m on the Major Deegan Expressway.
I’m surprised it isnt slathered in grafitti
I was working toward my Masters at the NYU Engineering School in the Bronx in the early 70’s. One Spring evening, after driving down from Westchester, I got to school only to find that classes had been cancelled because of student anti-war protests. The Gould Memorial Library (otherwise known as the “Great Green Nipple of Knowledge), was also closed. Rather than head home, I took advantage of the daylight and strolled around the Hall of Fame. I didn’t know many of the honorees, but Lee and Jackson were still there. I wonder if the student body was absorbed into the Washington Square campus after 1973. NYU Engineering had high academic standards – I wonder how Bronx Community College compares?
I can answer at least some of your questions. When NYU closed its University Heights campus in 1973, its liberal arts students and faculty were merged into NYU’s other undergraduate liberal arts school (Washington Square College) and renamed the NYU College of Arts and Sciences. At the same time NYU spun off uptown’s Engineering College, which merged into the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (renamed Polytechnic Institute of New York). Years later, in 2004, history repeated itself when NYU and Polytechnic began a joint affiliation, which became a full merger in 2014; the combined school in 2015 resulted in the school changing its name to the Tandon School of Engineering, named after a benefactor who gave the school $100 million.
The whole somewhat complicated history of NYU’s Engineering schools is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_University_Tandon_School_of_Engineering