Studebaker Building

Eric Washington

The steel-framed brick and terracotta service facility for Studebaker automobiles was built in 1923. But 14 years later, the building reopened as the Riverside Plant of the Borden milk company–the “Largest Milk Pasteurizing Plant in the World; an outstanding achievement in milk plant engineering,” (Milk Plant Monthly, September 1937) — with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia presiding at the opening ceremony.

The building is emblematic on a grand scale of the dairy and milk processing trade that once thrived in Manhattanville. The building’s sustained use as a production facility includes the manufacture of the internationally famous (Madame) Alexander Dolls.

The Studebaker building (as it is still known) is conspicuously located within the focus area of Columbia University’s campus expansion.