Talk:Columbia University tunnels

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 9 September 2007. The result of the discussion was Keep.

I definitely don't agree that this article should be removed altogether, but most of it would be more appropriate in an article on Columbia tunnel lore. The Pupin stuff was obviously just embellished for the purpose of mythologizing it; hell, I was often guilty of bending the truth for dramatic effect when I took groups down there. Even the somewhat accurate stuff is mixed up -- for example, the steam tunnels on the west side of campus don't have rails for coal carts; those are in the tunnels under the powerhouse. Anyway, the tunnels *are* interesting enough to be worth seeing, especially the coal ones cos they're awesome and they're being destroyed from all the powerhouse work, and people are going to be telling each other these stories and going down there whether there's a Wikipedia article or not. I think whoever wrote the big red box needs to chill. --dylan 24.239.137.27 04:08, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pupin Hall

There's another reason why it's implausible to claim Pupin went untouched until 2003: it's where Ken Hechtman got his uranium. Durova 04:55, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I once spoke to George Hamawy, a Radiation Safety Officer at CU, about radiation in the basement of pupin. He said that his first job, upon being hired (a few years ago) was to clean up that basement.


And regarding the comment that there couldn't have been any remnants of old experiments on the first floor of Pupin: Pegram laboratory was a nuclear research facility, so if it connected to the first floor of Pupin, it's entirely possible that work was being done in that space after the Manhattan Project. Beth 17:05, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Of course the first floor of Pupin was visited periodically. See, for example, this excerpt from a New Yorker article: http://www.undercity.org/links/archives/collegetunnels/Columbia/columbia5.txt

I just updated the description to call it -virtually- untouched while we discuss. 66.65.127.132 01:57, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inaccuracy Box

I have moved the "This Article May Be Dangerously Innacurate [sic]" box to the talk page, replacing it on the main article with the disputed tag. A lengthy discussion on why the article is factually inaccurate should not be placed directly at the top of the article as it was, and this should clearly be a much better place for it. Perhaps a more devoted editor than I would like to include some of this information in the article itself, rather than just leaving it all in a large box at the top. John5008 --- talk 02:31, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

This Article May Be Dangerously Innacurate
For the reasons to follow, this article requires review, and any actions taken based on this article are likely both dangerous and illegal: Some of this article is accurate, but there is plenty which is not. There are, for example, no tunnels from the main Columbia campus under Broadway to the Barnard campus; the persistent rumor that such tunnels exist is demonstrably false since there is a subway tunnel in the way -- and even a station toward the southern end of Barnard's campus. Any coal tunnels under Broadway would have been built before the subway and obliterated by its construction; any that were built later would have had to be deep enough to go under the tracks and their structural supports, and bulding such tunnels through the bedrock would have been very impractical.

It is also not plausible that the first floor of Pupin remained untouched for sixty years, since Pegram Hall was built with a direct connection to the east end of that floor in the early 1960s and then replaced by the Schapiro Center in the 1990s, and since the Dodge gym was attached to the front of Pupin in the 1970s. Besides, like every other Columbia department, the physics department has a severe space shortage (this is why Pegram was built in the first place) and it would have made no sense to let an entire floor of a large building lie fallow for decades.

Nor is it plausible that the area was sealed off due to radioactivity. Any such contamination would have been dangerous far beyond the walls of one floor of that building, and any contamination small enough to be contained by those walls would not have required 60 years of isolation.

I suggest deleting the article entirely, since it is so filled with errors and since it may lead readers to endanger themselves and others -- not to mention being prosecuted for burglary and trespassing -- by exploring under the Columbia campus. Trust me: the tunnels just aren't interesting enough to be worth the effort and the risks.


I think the person above personally dislikes tunneling.


Another comment (sorry, I don't know how to indent)--


I attended Columbia College back in the 1960's and at the time was probably one of the few people who spent much time exploring the tunnels. I socially engineered the necessary keys out of the security guards who used the tunnels on patrols over the years so could enter almost all of the spaces.

First, there was some sort of long curved tunnel that went out under Broadway towards Barnard from the Pupin area. It was full of piles of coal and I couldn't get through to the end so don't know if it did cross Broadway or not...I had the impression that it was used for delivering coal to some sort of a powerhouse under Low library originally, though the machinery seems to have been diesel by the time I got there. That's a good point about the subway tunnel. The coal tunnel was as I recall pretty close to the surface and in winter used to be filled with fog from the penetration of the cold from above. I even think I recall seeing shafts of light coming from the small holes in manhole covers at some point along it, but after so many years may be mistaken. Used to take Barnard girls there in winter to impress them with the fog and wierd scenery. They liked it.

Second, there used to be a tunnel connecting Furnald with Ferris Booth. I don't know if it's still there but there was a door with a crash bar that went out to Broadway from the south end of Furnald basement, and if you kept going (south) through a lockable door that was often left open, there was a short tunnel to Ferris booth and Carmen. From this you could go on to the tunnels under Butler which were some sort of designated civil defence station with barrels of civil defence supplies and of course the wrapped up steam pipes that provided heat to the campus running through.

There was a large power house under, I think, Low library, in a room with an immensely high ceiling. It was connected to the tunnels from several spots so that it was fairly easy to get to and I was there many times. You came out mostly on to a walkway that ran around the main room high on the wall near the ceiling with a wonderful, classic "modern" view down onto the machines, but I think there was another way in that let you enter further down at floor level. I can't recall ever seeing anyone ever actually working down among the turbines, which seemed odd (probably a remote control room somewhere), though I do remember talking to the staff I met around campus and their explaining a bit about the machinery to me.

Never saw anything like "red-hot" pipes with six inches clearance...even allowing for exaggeration. If the powerhouse access tunel is what the article is talking about it was easy to access. The only error I could be making is if I thought the place was under Low but it was actually under Uris or some other building. Since it's mentioned above, maybe someone can let me know where it actually was...it could have been around the then gym? For the Low tunnels, the simplest thing to do to sort things out would be to get access to the power house, figure out where it is, then if under Low, try to take the tunnels from it out to reach the system going around the campus periphery. Or, clearly security in Low (still there, eh!) should have a map.

As yes, the bugging business in 1968. Another tidbit. A clever WKCR fellow, who shall remain unnamed, figured out that the cones of the speakers built into a lot of campus rooms vibrated with the conversation within the rooms and thereby functioned in a way as a microphone. Wiring them appropriately to pick up the sounds, he found that conversations were quite decipherable. From this he started bugging political meetings, whether any were in the tunnels or not, I don't know. I was somewhat apolitical, so I didn't really pay close attention to what he found...I think the gist of it may have been that the radicals seemed to be out of touch, but this may be faulty memory on my part, with a projection of my own views.

When the students occupied buildings in '68 they built barricades in the tunels out of furniture to prevent the police or security entering and rumours spread that they had brought down tanks of chlorine from the chemistry building and rigged them us to release gas in that area if anyone tried to come through the barricades. Shades of Ypres! No idea if this was just rumour or true, but in the event, when the police raided, they made surprisingly short work of the barricades and no chlorine was released.

FurnaldHall 10:05, 2 February 2007 (UTC)