March 21 (Bloomberg) -- New York University, the largest private university in the U.S., received a $200 million gift from the charitable foundation named for OppenheimerFunds Inc. founder Leon Levy to set up a center for research on ancient civilizations.

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World will offer graduate degrees and support interdisciplinary research in areas ranging from art and history to geology and economics, the university said today. The institute will also build a library and host lectures and public exhibitions, the university said.

The Leon Levy Foundation's gift is the largest the university has ever received to start an academic program, spokesman John Beckman said.

``What's exciting about the program is that it's getting away from the notion of a single field to create a new field which embraces many of the traditional disciplines such as archeology, history, philosophy, geography and literature,'' Glen Bowersock, a professor of ancient history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, said in an interview.

The gift from the Leon Levy Foundation consists of cash and a six-story townhouse in Manhattan, the university said.

``This gift will allow us to use the study of antiquities as a paradigm of how you find richer study and insight,'' NYU President John Sexton said in a telephone interview from Mexico where he is traveling.

Under Levy, a native New Yorker, Oppenheimer became the ninth-largest U.S. mutual fund group, with more than $120 billion in assets by 2003, when he died at 77. Levy, who started with $200 from bar mitzvah gifts when he was 13, amassed a fortune over the years and donated to many cultural institutions.

History Enthusiast

Levy and the university began discussing creation of an ancient studies program at New York University a few years before his death, Beckman said. Levy, a history enthusiast, had served as vice chairman of the university's Institute of Fine Arts and its investment committee, according to the university.

New York University has the largest enrollment of any private university in the U.S. Founded in 1831, it has about 40,000 graduate and undergraduate students.

The university will set up a search committee to find a director and choose a candidate by the end of the year, Sexton said. The first students will enroll in September 2008, he said.

If the program is a success, Levy Foundation trustee Shelby White, the widow of Leon Levy, plans to make a ``second very large gift'' to the institute, Sexton said.

``Obviously, Shelby wants to see how things are going, it's all in her discretion,'' he said.

The institute will be housed in a 27,000-square-foot townhouse on East 84th Street in Manhattan that the Levy Foundation purchased in 2004, Sexton said. That building could become a part of New York University in the future if the Levy Foundation awards a second grant, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Cole in New York at pcole3@Bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 21, 2006 17:04 EST