The building, originally named New Hall,[2] broke ground in 1957 along with an adjacent student center called Ferris Booth Hall, which was later demolished to make way for Alfred Lerner Hall.[3] The building was designed by Harvey Clarkson of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, which designed the Empire State Building.[4]
The building opened in 1959 to the all-male undergraduates of Columbia College. However, the aesthetics of the building along with other buildings constructed during Grayson L. Kirk's tenure was criticized by students, faculty, and critics alike, including Jacques Barzun, Andrew Dolkart, Barry Bergdoll, and Ada Louise Huxtable.[5][6] Architecture critic Allan Temko noted that the building's long hallways and pattern of two double rooms with a shared bath resembled a “Victorian reformatory” and its lounge “a bus station with Muzak.”[7] In 1962, Temko again criticized Carman as "dull and bureaucratic... [with] skimpy and unimaginative detail."[8] Dean of the Yale School of Architecture Robert A. M. Stern, who graduated from Columbia a year after the building's completion, wrote in an unpublished piece that "[Carman and Ferris Booth Halls] are unfortunately mediocre in their conception."[9]
After the building broke ground, a informal naming contest was organized by the Columbia Daily Spectator, with the "serious" category winner suggesting the building be named after dean Herbert Hawkes and the "humorous" category suggesting it to be named after Aaron Burr, as a counterpart to Hamilton Hall, at the opposite end of campus. However, neither name was endorsed by the university. As a placeholder, it was referred to as New Hall until it was finally named Carman Hall in 1965, in honor of Harry Carman, who served as dean of Columbia College from 1943 to 1950.[10][11][12]
In November 2021, Carman Hall was evacuated after bomb threats surfaced on Twitter claiming that improvised explosives have been placed in the building.[13][14]
The building frequently served as the residence of the protagonist in Paul Auster's works, including 4 3 2 1 and Winter Journal; in the latter he describes Carman as "an austere environment, ugly and charmless, but nevertheless far better than the dungeonlike rooms to be found in the older dorms."[39][40] A section of the Ben Coes novel, First Strike, was also set in the building.[41] The building was also referenced in Christopher John Farley's young-adult novel, Zero O'Clock.[42]
In his memoir, Photographs of My Father, Paul Spike notes that "not a trace of style ruins the ugly face of Carman Hall."[43]
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