Alfred Lerner Hall is the student center or students' union of Columbia University. It is named for Al Lerner, who financed part of its construction. Situated on the university's historic Morningside Heights campus in New York City, the building, designed by deconstructivist architect Bernard Tschumi, then dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, opened in 1999, replacing the previous student center, Ferris Booth Hall, which stood from 1960-1996. The cafeteria in Lerner Hall still bears the name of Ferris Booth, and unlike the other large cafeteria on campus in John Jay, Ferris Booth utilizes only plastic silverware and paper plates. The building attempts to both conform to its context of neoclassical McKim, Mead, and White buildings as well as break out of their mold. In so doing, Lerner Hall features redbrick cladding and proportions that hold the street wall of university buildings along Broadway, but reveals a vast glass wall to the campus fabricated by Eiffel Constructions Metalliques, descendant of the firm that built the Eiffel Tower. Behind the wall are a series of escalating ramps that give the building a unified sense of space and are meant to act as a social meeting place much like the steps of Low Memorial Library.
