A Small Crowd Bids Farewell to NASA Building at Tom’s Restaurant
On a Tuesday, a bunch of folks gathered outside Tom’s Restaurant in New York City. This cozy, neon-lit diner is a familiar spot from the sitcom “Seinfeld,” but this group wasn’t there for the usual touristy stuff or to recreate some scenes from the show. Nope, they were actually saying goodbye to the building sitting on top of the restaurant.
Since way back in 1966, this Upper West Side location has been home to the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a lab all about figuring out the super complicated stuff about natural and man-made changes on our planet and beyond. The building, owned by Columbia University and known as Armstrong Hall, has been a hub for scientists making all kinds of groundbreaking discoveries. One of these brainiacs is Jim Hansen, who was one of the first to warn everyone about the climate dangers of greenhouse gas emissions.
But then, on April 24, NASA dropped the bomb on scientists working at the institute that the agency’s time at the location was about to come to an end. And that’s because President Donald Trump decided to sign an executive order telling agencies to take another look at their rented office spaces. The result? A whole lot of budget cuts and job losses for federal climate and Earth scientists.
Now, experts are saying that losing all these resources is gonna really hurt the science that’s super important for Americans. And it’s not just about losing jobs and money. Things are getting really tough for climate scientists these days. Many of them are speaking up about how hard it is to watch the devastating effects of global warming up close. Some are asking for more support, while others are just packing their bags and leaving the field altogether.
**An Emotional Farewell to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies**
From the outside, the brick building at Broadway and West 112th Street just looks like any old office space or apartment complex. But inside those six floors of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, there’s been a lot of cool science happening over the years. Federal researchers and Columbia scientists have been teaming up on all kinds of projects, from figuring out how the ocean and atmosphere trade carbon dioxide to running tests on whether humans could survive on Mars.
In the 1970s, Hansen cooked up a climate model on an old IBM computer that took up a whole floor. This model helped shine a light on how humans are heating up the planet, and Hansen even took his findings to Congress to talk about why we need to cut down on greenhouse gases.
“We were put here to have a chill spot for sharing info and ideas between the smart people at Columbia and the NASA research scientists,” one NASA scientist told me on the down-low. “When you’re face-to-face with folks, sometimes you come up with big ideas that you wouldn’t think of on your own.”
But now, time’s running out for this space. Even though NASA’s got the lease until 2031, they’ve told the staff that they’ll be working from home for a bit as NASA moves out of the building. Lots of employees still don’t know where they’ll be working next, so the future of their research and jobs is totally up in the air.
And there you have it, folks. A bittersweet goodbye to a building that’s been a hub of discovery for decades. Who knows what the future holds for these scientists and their important work? But hey, that’s life, right?
