Judson Memorial Church
In 1890 the cornerstone was laid for Judson Memorial Church. Reverend Edward Judson, DD commissioned architect Stanford White to create the building as a memorial to his father, Adoniram D. Judson, who served as one of the first American foreign missionaries. In the cornerstone, the Rev. Judson placed copies of a Bible that his father had translated into Burmese.
Havana
In December 1999, NYU became the first U.S. film school to screen works in Havana. Tisch School of the Arts was the first American film school to be invited to screen works at the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, a major showcase for Latin American filmmakers that draws an audience of 500,000.
Martin Luther King
On February 10, 1961, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to a capacity crowd at the Hall of Fame Playhouse located at the University Heights campus. Dr. King lectured on "The Future of Integration" and urged non-violent protest. He emphasized the need for "persistence," and the inevitability of "sacrifice, suffering, and struggle" associated with achieving justice.
Constance Baker Motley
A civil rights activist, lawyer, state senator, and judge, Constance Baker Motley received an A.B. in economics from NYU in 1943. After receiving a law degree from Columbia University, Motley worked under the tutelage of Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and eventually became associate chief counsel for the association. She aided in several key civil rights cases, including Brown v. Board of Education. In the early 1960s Motley continued her fight for equality, arguing ten civil rights cases on the floor of the U.S. Supreme Court. She won nine. In 1964, she left the NAACP to become the first African-American woman state senator in New York. She served in this capacity until the winter of 1965, when the New York City Council elected her the first woman to serve as President of the Borough of Manhattan. The following year, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Motley for a Federal District Court judgeship for the Southern District of New York. Confirmed in August of 1966, Motley became the first African-American woman named to the federal bench.
Women Law
Dr. Emily Kempin, a graduate of the Zurich Law School, has been credited with the formation and the success of the University's first woman's law class, held on October 30, 1890. Prior to teaching the class, she had been permitted to attend legal lectures with men in 1888 and taught Roman law to male students.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was a Greenwich Village resident and frequent speaker at NYU. She lived at 29 Washington Square West from 1942 to 1949 and on more than one occasion participated in NYU events.
Isabel Ebel
Isabel C. Ebel graduated in 1934 from the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aeronautical Engineering and was believed to be the only woman in the United States holding that degree at that time. While at NYU, she was also the only woman enrolled at the University Heights campus out of a registration of more than 2,200 students.