A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Longtime tenants of 542 West 112th St. and their first undergraduate neighbors
By Jack Bradner
Columbia’s apartments right above Upside Pizza welcomed their first cohort of undergraduates this fall. But not all of its tenants are newcomers. Taped to an apartment’s front door, a printed-out letter introduces Mr. and Mrs. Mirza, an elderly couple who has lived in 542 West 112th for over 40 years. Their letter is a thoughtful, uplifting welcome: “We hope you enjoy your time here and in the neighborhood,” it concludes, “Wishing you a wonderful school year!”
Encouraged by the Mirzas’ note, I stopped by one afternoon to introduce myself. After I rang the doorbell, Mrs. Mirza greeted me with a handshake and bright smile. Three weeks later, she, Mr. Mirza, and their daughter Aaisha, BC ’04, welcomed me into their home for a conversation about their time in 542 and Morningside Heights. Aisha, who is a licensed medical social worker, takes care of her parents throughout the week, and because English is Mr. and Mrs. Mirza’s third language—they speak Punjabi and Urdu—she helped translate her parents’ story.
Mrs. Mirza showed me through the foyer and into their living room. Mounted to the wall, a wooden bird-shaped clock counted away the Sunday evening. As I sank into their couch, Mrs. Mirza carried over a plate of samosas, a cup of hot chai, and other treats—before I could lean back, she shuffled a cushion behind me. Sitting on a chair across from me, Mr. Mirza was eager to start the conversation, dressed up for the occasion in an autumnal diamond-knit sweater vest.
When Mr. Mirza came to New York in 1975, he only had $600 in his pocket. Soon after arriving from Pakistan, he realized that the few contacts he had in New York City were hours away. Even though he has a masters in agricultural chemistry, Mr. Mirza couldn’t pursue his research career in New York, instead taking up various jobs to provide for his family, who joined Mr. Mirza in 1982. Aaisha explained that being so far from the support of grandparents, aunts, and uncles was a huge burden and cultural shift for her family, especially considering the lack of diversity near Columbia in the mid-’80s.
“My mom talks a lot about how she would wear traditional clothes, and people would really stare,” Aaisha said, “She had a lot of experiences like that. Now, when she goes out for a walk, she sees people wearing similar clothes—it’s so diverse.”
While immigrating to the U.S. had its obvious hardships, for Mr. and Mrs. Mirza, getting access to better medical care for Aaisha’s brother was their priority. As soon as the family got to New York, Aaisha’s older brother was diagnosed with renal failure and received immediate treatment. Later on, Mrs. Mirza donated one of her kidneys to aid his recovery, and the transplant took place at Columbia’s New York Presbyterian Hospital. Decades later, Aaisha’s older brother lives in England with his family. When they can, Aaisha’s siblings return to Morningside Heights to visit their parents and stay at the home they grew up in.
Before the Mirzas moved to 542, they first lived in 600 West 113, which most students now know as Nuss, and the building had only a few other South Asian tenants. Without a designated space to pray, Mr. Mirza and a few other residents founded a communal prayer room. Each paying a fraction of the rent for the apartment 12B, they maintained the room as a publicly-available space for prayers and services. Even after the Mirzas moved into their current apartment in 542, Aaisha and her family continued to pray at Nuss for years. Remarkably, the Mirzas and others kept the 12B prayer room open even after Columbia’s 2003 expansion of undergraduate housing to six floors of Nuss. Columbia moved the prayer room to the first floor.
Initially, however, Columbia planned to shut down the prayer room entirely. Aaisha explained that in 2022, the University left a notice on the door of 12B informing the tenants that they couldn’t use the room after the end of the year. According to Kenneth Schaeffer, CC ’76, a lawyer who represented Nuss tenants evicted by Columbia in the ’80s, the University wanted to turn the prayer space into a dorm. But as legal attention accumulated, Columbia backed off and instead helped relocate the prayer room to the building’s first floor, which is more easily accessible for practicing students.
In 1986, Mr. and Mrs. Mirza brought their family to 542, to the home that Aaisha and her siblings grew up in. Before Columbia transformed the building into an undergraduate dorm, 542 had a more residential essence, with longer-term graduate students and their families staying for years at a time. But on the first day of last year’s spring semester, Columbia Housing notified graduate school tenants about the University’s plan to empty out 542 to make space for undergraduate housing. By May 31, the building was practically empty. Because tenants had to relocate on such short notice, some left a bunch of belongings behind, and the summer months grew somber without neighbors.
“There were so many moving sales and things like that, and it was a bit heartbreaking to see because of the way the move and everything was scheduled,” Aaisha said. So far this year, though, the Mirzas have enjoyed meeting their new neighbors. “We’ve been undergrads, so [Mrs. Mirza]she has an idea of what that generation is like,” Aaisha continued with a laugh, “Everyone’s really nice. It’s a different energy, but in some ways, I think it’s nice for them to have that.”
At the same time, 542’s transformation has been particularly disruptive. Early this summer, Mr. and Mrs. Mirza had some difficulties with their health, which on its own required a lot of time and energy from Aaisha. To make their apartment compliant with dorm restrictions, Columbia needed to install a set of fire-safety sprinklers. In July, Columbia gave the Mirzas a two-week timeline to vacate their residence. What they were told would just take a few days quickly turned into ten. For Aaisha, transporting her parents to her sister’s residence made the situation even more complex: “It felt very overwhelming,” she said.
Since the start of the year, Aaisha explained, even day-to-day logistics have become more difficult for the Mirzas. Without Columbia IDs for the second lobby door, the Mirzas can’t enter their own building without a familiar security guard to buzz them in. But because new security guards aren’t briefed about the building’s permanent residents, it’s still a problem. Worse still, they haven’t received their mail in eight weeks. Because 542 is now an undergraduate dorm, Columbia’s protocols won’t let tenants ship packages there. A few weeks ago, one of the packages that got turned away had medical supplies for Mr. Mirza. Since then, Aaisha has been in contact with public safety officials, who are still trying to resolve the situation.
“We understand the importance of safety and security and want to make sure we’re complying with all of that, but at the same time, I wish there was a way we could be made aware of things going on in the building. I kind of feel like we’ve been forgotten,” Aaisha said. “Maybe things were not completely thought through and some details got lost along the way, but hopefully we can figure it out. I’m trying best to extend that grace and be patient until things get better.”
