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There are not many spaces in Manhattan like General Theological Seminary’s campus. The Close, as it’s called (rhymes with “dose”), fills up nearly an entire block of Chelsea between Ninth and Tenth Avenues and 20th and 21st Streets, its buildings ringing a green courtyard with big old trees and winding paths. The buildings — there are 13 of them — are almost completely unified Collegiate Gothic. It was all put up in the decades before and after 1900, and it is largely un-messed-around-with. There is no steel-and-glass Louvre pyramid or brutalist library jammed into the middle. It’s a nearly pure neo-Gothic campus, built mostly in brick rather than limestone, visibly worn enough to make it even more authentic and lovely, a nicely executed American echo of medieval Oxford that inarguably feels like New York. Although it educates clerics for the Episcopal Church, it also runs a little nondenominational preschool for both adult students’ children and outside kids, which means you occasionally see a group of tots playing on the grass. Clement Clarke Moore, author of “The Night Before Christmas,” lived across the street, was a professor at the school, and donated the land it sits upon.
The only hints of this century appear at the ends of the block. On Tenth Avenue, a large building was sold off in 2007 to become the Desmond Tutu Center, which incorporates the High Line Hotel. At the Ninth Avenue end, it sold off a 1960s modern building around the same time, to be replaced by new condos. All of that happened because the seminary was in financial trouble, with a too-small endowment and running at an annual deficit. Since then, the institution made other moves to save itself, notably a semi-merger with Virginia Theological Seminary. It has run into other problems, including criticism for its affiliation with a Catholic music school with an anti-LGBTQ history and a staff revolt over its dean, Kurt Dunkle, who stepped down not long thereafter. The real-estate sell-off was its Hail Mary.
The pass didn’t lead to a win, and last week, GTS made a bigger move, making a 99-year-lease deal that gives over the Close to Vanderbilt University. GTS will keep some offices and apartments for its masters’ students there, but the real point is to give Vanderbilt a campus in New York. According to The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, Vanderbilt is looking to expand its programs into fields where New York City is stocked with talent and resources, like media, fashion, and finance. You might suspect that it’s modeled, at least slightly, on Cornell’s slick new tech center on Roosevelt Island.
One could reasonably be fearful for the physical fabric of the place. Whenever an architectural treasure changes hands, particularly when it needs renovation, it’s inherently at risk. But a few things suggest that the GTS campus won’t be varaged. It’s in a historic district, so nothing tall can go up. Any exterior changes are subject to Landmarks Preservation Commission approval, and this is just the sort of architecture that Landmarks doesn’t like to see messed with. Moreover, GTS itself is still the landlord — it’s not selling, and it will presumably have veto power over any big changes. According to the Journal story, the old GTS buildings need $32 million in repair work. That is a staggering amount for a little institution, but a middling ask at the elite level of a big college’s largest donors. Plenty of successful Vanderbilt alumni live in New York — and if they are nostalgic for dear old Vanderbilt’s Kirkland Hall, they’re going to feel very much at home in the similar confines of the Close. Whether that coaxes their wallets open is up to the fundraisers and the Almighty.
