I’m in New York, spending the day at the Fordham campus, which is a bustling and very urban place. I’m also so exhausted from dealing with this seething mass of humanity that all I can offer right now are a couple pictures of the Kyle Morrow room in an incarnation that I never knew. It’s pretty wild, and so different from its current configuration that I didn’t even recognize this first image at all:
It was only when I saw the longer view with the windows (and those curtains!) that I recognized the room:
So, who used this space? And for what?
Bonus:
It looks to me like it was Austin Powers’s inner sanctum … well, you know what I mean.
Tres groovy as the bon vivants would say.
Do I see ashtrays in there?
The Shepherd School used this as a last-resort recital space in ’83 and ’84. My senior recital occurred here, and it looked very much like this. They would move the furniture back, set up a few stacking chairs, and have a smallish grand piano by the windows. I don’t remember ashtrays but the large heavy “permanent” ones were not unusual in public spaces.
I believe the bonus photograph was taken by “Grungy” from a Sid Richardson College balcony, looking northeast, far, far northeast, beyond the hedges, towards Central Park. Maybe. I could be wrong.
Oh man, I needed that laugh. You’re a real pal!
You’re very welcome!
It’s a good guess, but the last time I was at Fordham I didn’t shoot out of the upper-floor windows.
I’ve poked about the interweb a bit and found pretty much nothing, so I’ll ask here, who was Kyle Morrow?
In my day, this room was known as the Fondren Lounge. We would go there for a study break, to smoke (yes, smoke!), talk, eat, drink (no booze), compare notes, etc. The room was occasionally reconfigured with rows of chairs for such events as debates and lectures. I recall seeing then senator-candidate, the late John Tower, speak there.
That’s the way I remember it, too.
This link https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/65965/thr19500929.pdf?sequence=1 from a post on a different topic has a small story under the heading “Play Postponed” which mentions another use of the Lecture Lounge.