NYU Wagner Celebrates New Home with Official Ribbon Cutting, Remarks from NYC Mayors and Former Wagner Deans
On Wednesday, March 12, 2025, the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service officially celebrated its new home at 105 E. 17th Street with a ribbon cutting ceremony, which featured remarks from current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, former Mayor Bill de Blasio NYU Wagner Dean Sherry Glied, NYU Provost Georgina Dopico, former Wagner deans, and Professor Mitchell L. Moss.
After spending two decades at the iconic Puck Building, Wagner began its move to its new Union Square location in Summer 2024. The building at 105 E. 17th Street is a fitting home for Wagner—it was built during Robert Wagner’s mayoral administration and sits across from the former Tammany Hall building, a significant symbol of New York City public service history.
The new building boasts three floors and 70,000 square feet of faculty, student, and administrative spaces, including 12 state-of-the-art classrooms custom designed for Wagner, individual and group study spaces, expansive student lounge space, a faculty seminar room, numerous conference rooms, and a large event space. The move marks the first time in Wagner’s history that all of the school’s offices, classrooms, and event spaces are under one roof, bringing the community together in a new and exciting way.
“Our move to 105 E. 17th Street has been the step that brings everything together and everyone together,” said Glied. “The space has overnight become a hub for our students. And since January, when we opened the classrooms, the space has been buzzing. It’s truly electric.”
Additionally, the move to the dynamic Union Square neighborhood allows for new partnerships and community engagement efforts as Wagner students study real-world scenarios in a bustling hub of urban life.
The ribbon cutting ceremony served as a celebration of Wagner’s storied traditions—with former deans Ellen Schall, Jo Ivey Boufford, and Bob Berne sharing memories of their tenures—and as an opportunity to recognize Wagner’s continued commitment to public service in a pivotal moment in the history of the field.
“We have to restore faith [in public service] with our actions, by showing that we can actually make government work better, and more and more pertinent all the time—and the way you do that is with great people,” said de Blasio, who has been an adjunct faculty member at Wagner since 2022. “Wagner is producing those great people, and that’s why this work is sacred. This new building is going to make it stronger, and this is the generation that will turn the tide.”
