Collegiate Gothic

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Princeton University Graduate College (1913), Ralph Adams Cram Princeton University Graduate College, NJ - looking north.jpg
Princeton University Graduate College (1913), Ralph Adams Cram
Willard Straight Hall (1925), Cornell University, William Adams Delano, architect Cornell - Willard Straight Hall 1936.jpg
Willard Straight Hall (1925), Cornell University, William Adams Delano, architect
Law Quadrangle (1923-33), University of Michigan, York and Sawyer UniversityOfMichiganInsideLawQuad.jpg
Law Quadrangle (1923–33), University of Michigan, York and Sawyer
Trinity College (1851), University of Toronto, Kivas Tully TrinBellwood.jpg
Trinity College (1851), University of Toronto, Kivas Tully
Memorial Quadrangle (1917-1921), Yale University, James Gamble Rogers Branford Court west dusk.JPG
Memorial Quadrangle (1917–1921), Yale University, James Gamble Rogers
Gore Hall (1837-41), Harvard College, Richard Bond, architect Rand, McNally and co.'s handy guide to Boston and environs (1906) (14781718982).jpg
Gore Hall (1837–41), Harvard College, Richard Bond, architect
Quadrangle Dormitories (1894-1911), University of Pennsylvania, Cope and Stewardson, architects Upenn Quad Entrance.JPG
Quadrangle Dormitories (1894–1911), University of Pennsylvania, Cope and Stewardson, architects
Cornell University, Lyon, McFaddin and War Memorial (1928), Charles Klauder Bell Tower Arch (2723450742).jpg
Cornell University, Lyon, McFaddin and War Memorial (1928), Charles Klauder
Mitchell Tower (1901-1908), University of Chicago, Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, architects. Modeled after the Magdalen Tower (1492-1508), Oxford University (left). Magdalen-Mitchell comparison.jpg
Mitchell Tower (1901–1908), University of Chicago, Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, architects. Modeled after the Magdalen Tower (1492–1508), Oxford University (left).
Brookings Hall (1902), Washington University Brookings.jpg
Brookings Hall (1902), Washington University
Trinity College (Connecticut), (1878) William Burges Trinity College, Connecticut, in 1905 Postcard.jpg
Trinity College (Connecticut), (1878) William Burges

Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for college and high school buildings in the United States and Canada, and to a certain extent Europe. A form of historicist architecture, it took its inspiration from English Tudor and Gothic buildings. It has returned in the 21st century in the form of prominent new buildings at schools and universities including Cornell, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Washington University, and Yale. [1] [2]

Contents

Ralph Adams Cram, arguably the leading Gothic Revival architect and theoretician in the early 20th century, wrote about the appeal of the Gothic for educational facilities in his book The Gothic Quest: "Through architecture and its allied arts we have the power to bend men and sway them as few have who depended on the spoken word. It is for us, as part of our duty as our highest privilege to act...for spreading what is true." [3]

History

Beginnings

Gothic Revival architecture was used for American college buildings as early as 1829, when "Old Kenyon" was completed on the campus of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. [4] Another early example was Alexander Jackson Davis's University Hall (1833–37, demolished 1890), on New York University's Washington Square campus. Richard Bond's church-like library for Harvard College, Gore Hall (1837–41, demolished 1913), became the model for other library buildings. [5] [6] James Renwick Jr.'s Free Academy Building (1847–49, demolished 1928), for what is today City College of New York, continued in the style. Inspired by London's Hampton Court Palace, Swedish-born Charles Ulricson designed Old Main (1856–57) at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. [7]

Following the Civil War, many idiosyncratic High Victorian Gothic buildings were added to the campuses of American colleges. Examples include Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Boynton Hall, 1868, by Stephen C. Earle); [8] Yale College (Farnam Hall, 1869–70, by Russell Sturgis); the University of Pennsylvania (College Hall, 1870–72, Thomas W. Richards); Harvard College (Memorial Hall, 1870–77, William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt); and Cornell University (Sage Hall (1871–75, Charles Babcock). In 1871, English architect William Burges designed a row of vigorous French Gothic-inspired buildings for Trinity CollegeSeabury Hall, Northam Tower, Jarvis Hall (all completed 1878) – in Hartford, Connecticut.[ citation needed ]

Tastes became more conservative in the 1880s, and "collegiate architecture soon after came to prefer a more scholarly and less restless Gothic." [9]

Movement

Beginning in the late-1880s, Philadelphia architects Walter Cope and John Stewardson expanded the campus of Bryn Mawr College in an understated English Gothic style that was highly sensitive to site and materials. Inspired by the architecture of Oxford and Cambridge universities, and historicists but not literal copyists, Cope & Stewardson were highly influential in establishing the Collegiate Gothic style. [10] Commissions followed for collections of buildings at the University of Pennsylvania (1895–1911), Princeton University (1896–1902), and Washington University in St. Louis (1899–1909), marking the nascent beginnings of a movement that transformed many college campuses across the country.

In 1901, the firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge created a master plan for a Collegiate Gothic campus for the fledgling University of Chicago, then spent the next 15 years completing it. Some of their works, such as the Mitchell Tower (1901–1908), were near-literal copies of historic buildings.

George Browne Post designed the City College of New York's new campus (1903–1907) at Hamilton Heights, Manhattan, in the style.[ citation needed ]

The style was experienced up-close by a wide audience at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. The World's Fair and 1904 Olympic Games were held on the newly completed campus of Washington University, which delayed occupying its buildings until 1905.[ citation needed ]

The movement gained further momentum when Charles Donagh Maginnis designed Gasson Hall at Boston College in 1908. Maginnis & Walsh went on to design Collegiate Gothic buildings at some twenty-five other campuses, including the main buildings at Emmanuel College (Massachusetts), and the law school at the University of Notre Dame.[ citation needed ]

Ralph Adams Cram designed a series of Collegiate Gothic buildings for the Princeton University Graduate College (1911–1917).

James Gamble Rogers did extensive work at Yale University, beginning in 1917. Some critics claim he took historicist fantasy to an extreme, while others choose to focus on what is widely considered to be the resulting beautiful and sophisticated Yale campus. [11] Rogers was criticized by the growing Modernist movement. [12] His cathedral-like Sterling Memorial Library (1927–1930), with its ecclesiastical imagery and lavish use of ornament, came under vocal attack from one of Yale's own undergraduates:

A modern building constructed for purely modern needs has no excuse for going off in an orgy of meretricious medievalism and stale iconography. [13]

Other architects, notably John Russell Pope and Bertram Goodhue (who just before his death sketched the original version of Yale's Sterling Library from which Rogers worked), advocated for and contributed to Yale's particular version of Collegiate Gothic. [14] [15]

When McMaster University moved to Hamilton, Ontario, Canadian architect William Lyon Somerville designed its new campus (1928–1930) in the style.[ citation needed ]

Origins of the term

American architect Alexander Jackson Davis is "generally credited with coining the term" [16] documented in a handwritten description of his own "English Collegiate Gothic Mansion" of 1853 for the Harrals of Bridgeport, Connecticut. [17] By the 1890s, the movement was known as "Collegiate Gothic". [18]

1904 commentary

In his praise for Cope & Stewardson's Quadrangle Dormitories at the University of Pennsylvania, architect Ralph Adams Cram revealed some of the racial and cultural implications underlying the Collegiate Gothic:

It was, of course, in the great group of dormitories for the University of Pennsylvania that Cope and Stewardson first came before the entire country as the great exponents of architectural poetry and of the importance of historical continuity and the connotation of scholasticism. These buildings are among the most remarkable yet built in America ...

First of all, let it be said at once that primarily they are what they should be: scholastic in inspiration and effect, and scholastic of the type that is ours by inheritance; of Oxford and Cambridge, not of Padua or Wittenberg or Paris. They are picturesque also, even dramatic; they are altogether wonderful in mass and in composition. If they are not a constant inspiration to those who dwell within their walls or pass through their "quads" or their vaulted archways, it is not their fault but that of the men themselves.

The [Spanish-American War Memorial] tower has been severely criticized as an archaeological abstraction reared to commemorate contemporary American heroism. The criticism seems just to me, though only in a measure. American heroism harks back to English heroism; the blood shed before Manila and on San Juan Hill was the same blood that flowed at Bosworth Field, Flodden, and the Boyne. Therefore the British base of the design is indispensable, for such were the racial foundations. [19]

Culmination

Collegiate Gothic complexes were most often horizontal compositions, save for a single tower or towers serving as an exclamation.

At the University of Pittsburgh, Charles Klauder was commissioned by University of Pittsburgh chancellor John Gabbert Bowman to design a tall building in the form of a Gothic tower. [20] What he produced, the Cathedral of Learning (1926–37), has been described as the literal culmination of late Gothic Revival architecture. [21] A combination of Gothic spire and modern skyscraper, the steel-frame, limestone-clad, 42-story structure is both the world's second tallest university building and Gothic-styled edifice. [22] The tower contain a half-acre Gothic hall supported only by its 52-foot (16 m) tall arches. [23] It is accompanied by the campus's other Gothic Revival structures by Klauder, including the Stephen Foster Memorial (1935–1937) and the French Gothic Heinz Memorial Chapel (1933–1938).

21st-century revival

A number of colleges and universities have commissioned major new buildings in the Collegiate Gothic style in recent years. These include Princeton University's Whitman College, designed by Porphyrios Associates, and Benjamin Franklin College and Pauli Murray College, both designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, at Yale University. [24] The University of Southern California's USC Village [25] was created as an inexpensive post-modern nod to collegiate revival. (Harley Ellis Devereaux, 2017).

Architects of the Collegiate Gothic style

Examples

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph Adams Cram</span> American architect (1863–1942)

Ralph Adams Cram was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partnerships in which he worked. Cram was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gothic Revival architecture</span> Architectural movement

Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half of the 19th century, mostly in England. Increasingly serious and learned admirers sought to revive medieval Gothic architecture, intending to complement or even supersede the neoclassical styles prevalent at the time. Gothic Revival draws upon features of medieval examples, including decorative patterns, finials, lancet windows, and hood moulds. By the middle of the 19th century, Gothic Revival had become the pre-eminent architectural style in the Western world, only to begin to fall out of fashion in the 1880s and early 1890s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victorian architecture</span> Series of architectural revival styles

Victorian architecture is a series of architectural revival styles in the mid-to-late 19th century. Victorian refers to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), called the Victorian era, during which period the styles known as Victorian were used in construction. However, many elements of what is typically termed "Victorian" architecture did not become popular until later in Victoria's reign, roughly from 1850 and later. The styles often included interpretations and eclectic revivals of historic styles (see Historicism). The name represents the British and French custom of naming architectural styles for a reigning monarch. Within this naming and classification scheme, it followed Georgian architecture and later Regency architecture and was succeeded by Edwardian architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bertram Goodhue</span> American architect

Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was an American architect celebrated for his work in Gothic Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival design. He also designed notable typefaces, including Cheltenham and Merrymount for the Merrymount Press. Later in life, Goodhue freed his architectural style with works like El Fureidis in Montecito, one of the three estates designed by Goodhue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Yellin</span> American master blacksmith and metal designer

Samuel Yellin (1884–1940), was an American master blacksmith, and metal designer.

Charles Zeller Klauder was an American architect best known for his work on university buildings and campus designs, especially his Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, the first educational skyscraper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maginnis & Walsh</span>

Maginnis & Walsh was an architecture firm started by Charles Donagh Maginnis and Timothy Francis Walsh in 1905. It was known for its innovative design of churches in Boston in the first half of the twentieth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Donagh Maginnis</span>

Charles Donagh Maginnis was an Irish-American architect. He emigrated to Boston at age 18, trained as an architect and went on to form the firm Maginnis & Walsh, designing ecclesiastical and campus buildings across America. From 1937 to 1939, Maginnis held the office of President of the American Institute of Architects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Gamble Rogers</span> American architect

James Gamble Rogers was an American architect. A proponent of what came to be known as Collegiate Gothic architecture, he is best known for his academic commissions at Yale University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and elsewhere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romanesque Revival architecture</span> Style of building in 19th century

Romanesque Revival is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to feature more simplified arches and windows than their historic counterparts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cope and Stewardson</span> American architecture firm

Cope and Stewardson (1885–1912) was a Philadelphia architecture firm founded by Walter Cope and John Stewardson, and best known for its Collegiate Gothic building and campus designs. Cope and Stewardson established the firm in 1885, and were joined by John's brother Emlyn in 1887. It went on to become one of the most influential and prolific firms of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. They made formative additions to the campuses of Bryn Mawr College, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Washington University in St. Louis. They also designed nine cottages and an administrative building at the Sleighton School, which showed their adaptability to other styles, because their buildings here were Colonial Revival with Federal influences. In 1912, the firm was succeeded by Stewardson and Page formed by Emlyn Stewardson and George Bispham Page.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clapp Hall</span> United States historic place

George Hubbard Clapp Hall is a contributing property to the Schenley Farms National Historic District on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The six-story Gothic Revival structure, designed by Trautwein & Howard, was completed in 1956 and serves as the primary facility of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Biological Sciences. It contains laboratories, classrooms, a greenhouse, and an amphitheater-style lecture hall with 404 seats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cram and Ferguson Architects</span>

Cram and Ferguson Architects is an architecture firm based in Concord, Massachusetts. The company was founded as a partnership in 1889 by the "preeminent American Ecclesiastical Gothicist" Ralph Adams Cram and Charles Francis Wentworth. In 1890 they were joined by Bertram Goodhue, who was made a partner in 1895.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Miles Day</span>

Frank Miles Day was a Philadelphia-based architect who specialized in residences and academic buildings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gasson Hall</span> Main building of Boston College

Gasson Hall is a building on the campus of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Designed by Charles Donagh Maginnis in 1908, the hall has influenced the development of Collegiate Gothic architecture in North America. Gasson Hall is named after the 13th president of Boston College, Thomas I. Gasson, S.J., considered BC's "second founder."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bard College Campus</span> College campus in New York, US

The campus of Bard College comprises 1,000 acres (400 ha) in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus, situated on the east shore of the Hudson River, offers sweeping views of the Catskill Mountains and is within the Hudson River Historic District, a National Historic Landmark. Almost all campus buildings built prior to 1950 are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as contributing features to the historic district.

The history of college campuses in the United States begins in 1636 with the founding of Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, then known as New Towne. Early colonial colleges, which included not only Harvard, but also College of William & Mary, Yale University and The College of New Jersey, were modeled after equivalent English and Scottish institutions, but American establishments gradually split with their forebears, both physically and academically.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quadrangle Dormitories (University of Pennsylvania)</span> United States historic place

The Quadrangle Dormitories are a complex of 39 conjoined residence houses at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The architectural firm of Cope and Stewardson designed the houses in an exuberant Neo-Jacobean version of the Collegiate Gothic style, and completed most of them between 1894 and 1912. The dormitories stretch from 36th to 38th Streets and from Spruce Street to Hamilton Walk. West of the Memorial Tower at 37th Street, the houses on the north side follow the diagonal of Woodland Avenue and form a long triangle with the houses on the south side. From 1895 to 1971, the dormitories housed only male students.

Ermelindo Eduardo Ardolino, known as Edward Ardolino was an Italian-born American stone carver and architectural sculptor of the early twentieth century. He was the most prominent member of the Ardolino family of stone carvers. He worked with leading architects and sculptors, including architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue and sculptor Lee Lawrie. Ardolino participated in at least nine Goodhue-Lawrie collaborations including the Los Angeles Public Library and the Nebraska State Capitol. His carvings adorn a significant number of important public and private buildings and monuments, including four buildings in the Federal Triangle of Washington, D.C.

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