Featuring state-of-the-art technology and “flexible space” designed to be easily modified for future technologies, the Center will permit students, faculty and scholars to pursue their studies and research in a modern learning environment. At the same time, it will ease the severe space limitations in the adjacent Immaculate Conception Priory, the residence of the Dominican Friars.

In the classical tradition of the European library, a spacious central reading room and reception areas of the Dominican Theological Library, located on the main level of the Center, will welcome friars, students, scholars and visitors from the local and international academic community. The library’s rare book collection, which contains more than two dozen incunabula (books printed in the Gutenberg era, between 1400 and 1500) and the expanding numbers of books and manuscripts, representing the eight hundred year old intellectual tradition of the Dominican Friars, will be housed in a modern climate-controlled room available to serious scholars. The main library collections will be housed on the lower level. 

A variety of instructional spaces will be on the second level of the new Academic Center. In addition to a lecture hall (“aula magna” ) that can seat 150 people for convocations, major public lectures and other academic events, the classroom level will feature a preaching studio, traditional classrooms, seminar rooms, and an audio-visual studio. These classrooms will support a wide range of educational technologies, from the simple blackboard to the interactive whiteboard. The third level will provide ample office space and meeting rooms for the teaching faculty and administration, for visiting professors and visiting scholars. State-of-the-art climate control will provide the Academic Center a comfortable environment for priestly formation and theological scholarship all year long. The new Academic Center will be fully accessible.

The exterior of the new four-story building will match that of the 100-year-old priory. While not completely replicating the main priory building, the new Center recalls the priory’s traditional Gothic architecture, but includes modern embellishments, such as large windows and airy, well-lit rooms.

The new Dominican Academic Center is strategically situated directly across the street from the Catholic University of America and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C.

- Very Rev.D. Reginald Whitt, O.P.
President of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception

 
141 East 65th Street
New York, NY  10065

Phone: (212) 535-3664
Fax: (775) 542-5511
Email: donate@opfriars.org