NYU’s departments of Sociology and Environmental Studies will relocate to 79 Washington Square East during the spring 2025 semester after a yearslong renovation of the former Goddard Hall, which once served as a residential building.
The departments will move in late January and early February, university spokesperson John Beckman said in a statement to WSN. They had been located at the Puck Building at Houston and Lafayette Street, where the university held classes for more than two decades before its lease expired and rent increased. Bart Bonikowski, an associate professor of sociology and politics, said the move was initially scheduled for winter break but a delay in furniture delivery slowed the progress.
“Being so close to the beating heart of downtown New York City is a sociologist’s dream,” Bonikowski said. “That alone will make the new space interesting for many of us. But besides that, having easy access to other parts of NYU should promote more frequent interaction — and collaboration — with colleagues and students at other departments.”
The renovation has involved several stages of demolition and interior renovations to transform the building into a suitable space for academic departments. Bonikowski said that while some faculty members initially felt partial to their Puck Building offices and were hesitant about the move, many contributed to the design process for the new building and adjusted to the idea with time. He said the most notable difference between the Puck Building and the new space is that the Sociology Department will now occupy three floors instead of one.
“We have done our best to design the space in a way that promotes movement across the floors so that spontaneous interactions can be sustained,” Bonikowski said. “We had occupied a single floor in the Puck Building, so routinely running into colleagues and students was a feature of daily life at the department. We want that to continue at Goddard as much as possible.”
The university first announced plans to move in February 2022, when the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service — which was housed in the Puck Building with the other departments — relocated to 17th Street. The Sociology Department then began sharing a temporary space on Lafayette Street with NYU’s Office of the Bursar.
The university announced its proposed $515 million Capital Budget in May, which included Goddard Hall’s conversion into an academic building, as well as Rubin Hall’s reopening and renovations to the Tandon School of Engineering. NYU spokesperson Joseph Tirella had told WSN that after the proposed budget would be reviewed by the university’s board of trustees in June, the former residence hall’s transformation would begin.
NYU is also set to expand its College of Arts & Science into a new building on West Fourth Street in the next few months. The move will mark the university’s first building dedicated solely to CAS, after it had been centralized at the Silver Center for Arts and Science since 1892.
Contact Rory Lustberg at rlustberg@nyunews.com.
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