Talk:Columbia University tunnels/Talk archive 2006-2007

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)