Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture, Le Penseur (The Thinker), has a few copies in New York City, and while one of them sits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the largest and most photogenic copy is this one, on the Columbia University campus. It is located next to Maison Française, which is immediately to the east of Low Library.

Columbia University is located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, bordering Harlem to the north and east and Upper West Side to the south. The McKim, Meade, and White architectural team designed the current campus in the late 1890s, replacing older campuses further downtown.