New York City has the Cambridge blues

The Empire State Building in New York City was lit in Cambridge’s emblematic light blue to coincide with an exclusive 800th anniversary gala at Gotham Hall this evening. Hundreds of alumni, among them Sir David Frost, Henry Louis Gates, Salman Rushdie and Stephen Fry, will be in attendance.

The programme will feature music, readings and a spectacular light show which opened the celebrations in the UK earlier this year, specially adapted to play out on the walls of Gotham Hall.

Far from just being a party for the University’s fast-growing community of American alumni and friends, however, organisers hope that the event will reflect a very special intellectual relationship between Cambridge and the United States.

From the senior elder of the first Pilgrim colony on board the Mayflower to Barack Obama’s first White House Counsel, American history is littered with the names of Cambridge alumni – among them politicians, scientists, poets, thinkers, writers and theologians.

Even John Harvard, after whom the oldest institution of higher learning in the US is named, was from Cambridge. The University of course also gave its name to its sister settlement, Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the Charles River from Boston. On December 3rd, Cambridge’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor Gordon Johnson took part in an historic lecture exchange with Harvard to mark the links between these great institutions of higher education.

The Empire State building will remain in Cambridge blue throughout the weekend.

A New York City landmark, the Empire State Building soars more than a quarter of a mile above Manhattan. First opened to the public in 1931, more than 3.5 million people visit the 86th floor observatory each year. 

Photo of the Empire State Building taken by johndeguzman
http://twitpic.com/s6sf4