Principia College Historic District

Last updated

Principia College Historic District
Principia College (2152575562).jpg
Principia College Chapel
USA Illinois location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location Principia College, Elsah, Illinois, United States
Coordinates 38°56′56″N90°20′51″W / 38.94889°N 90.34750°W / 38.94889; -90.34750
Area290 acres (120 ha)
Built1940 (1940)
Architect Bernard Maybeck; Henry Gutterson
Architectural style Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival
NRHP reference No. 93001605
Significant dates
Added to NRHPApril 19, 1993 [1]
Designated NHLDApril 19, 1993 [2]

The Principia College Historic District is a National Historic Landmark District encompassing the central portion of the campus of Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. The campus master plan, as well as eleven of its buildings, are important late designs of architect Bernard Maybeck, best known for his influential architecture in the American West. The Principia was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1993, [2] [3] and was also placed on the National Register of Historic Places that same year. [1]

Contents

Description and history

The Principia was founded by Mary Kimball Morgan in 1898 as an educational institution primarily serving the needs of Christian Scientists. Beginning with primary and secondary schools, the organization (unaffiliated with the Church of Christ, Scientist but operating with its approval) established Principia College in the early 20th century. Initially based in St. Louis, Missouri, the organization in the 1910s began to search for a suitable campus location for the college. A former country estate overlooking the Mississippi River just south of Elsah was purchased, and college president Frederic E. Morgan hired West Coast architect Bernard Maybeck to develop the campus master plan and buildings. Maybeck used the existing roads on the estate as a foundation, and laid out what resembles an English country village. [3]

The centerpiece and first permanent building of the campus is the chapel. It was built in 1931–34 in Maybeck's conception of an American Colonial Revival structure, with a limestone exterior. Most of the other buildings Maybeck designed have steel frames and use concrete extensively inside, but have exteriors of stone, brick, and timbering. In the later phases of the campus construction, the onsite work was supervised by Henry Gutterson, who also contributed designs for several of the buildings. One architectural oddity on the campus is what is called the "Mistake House", which was used as a design and materials test vehicle by Maybeck. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Illinois Institute of Technology</span> Private university in Chicago, Illinois

Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), commonly referred to as Illinois Tech, is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has programs in architecture, business, communications, design, engineering, industrial technology, information technology, law, psychology, and science. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elsah, Illinois</span> Village in Illinois, United States

Elsah is a village in Jersey County, Illinois. As of the 2020 census, the village had a total population of 519. Michael Pitchford is the village's current acting mayor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Maybeck</span> American architect

Bernard Ralph Maybeck was an American architect in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early 20th century. He was an instructor at University of California, Berkeley. Most of his major buildings were in the San Francisco Bay Area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coonley House</span> United States national historic place

The Avery Coonley House, also known as the Coonley House or Coonley Estate was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Constructed 1908–12, this is a residential estate of several buildings built on the banks of the Des Plaines River in Riverside, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. It is itself a National Historic Landmark and is included in another National Historic Landmark, the Riverside Historic District.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Principia College</span> Private liberal arts college in Elsah, Illinois, U.S.

Principia College is a private liberal arts college in Elsah, Illinois. It was founded in 1912 by Mary Kimball Morgan with the purpose of "serving the Cause of Christian Science." "Although the College is not affiliated with the Christian Science Church, the practice of Christian Science is the cornerstone of campus life."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darwin D. Martin House</span> American historic house in New York (1905)

The Darwin D. Martin House Complex is a historic house museum in Buffalo, New York. The property's buildings were designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright and built between 1903 and 1905. The house is considered to be one of the most important projects from Wright's Prairie School era.

The campus of the University of California, Berkeley, and its surrounding community are home to a number of notable buildings by early 20th-century campus architect John Galen Howard, his peer Bernard Maybeck, and their colleague Julia Morgan. Subsequent tenures as supervising architect held by George W. Kelham and Arthur Brown, Jr. saw the addition of several buildings in neoclassical and other revival styles, while the building boom after World War II introduced modernist buildings by architects such as Vernon DeMars, Joseph Esherick, John Carl Warnecke, Gardner Dailey, Anshen & Allen, and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Recent decades have seen additions including the postmodernist Haas School of Business by Charles Willard Moore, Soda Hall by Edward Larrabee Barnes, and the East Asian Library by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Pennsylvania Campus Historic District</span> Historic district in Pennsylvania, United States

The University of Pennsylvania Campus Historic District is a historic district on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The university relocated from Center City to West Philadelphia in the 1870s, and its oldest buildings date from that period. The Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 28, 1978.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Principia</span> Educational organization for Christian Scientists

The Principia is an educational institution for Christian Scientists located on two campuses in the St. Louis, Missouri metropolitan area of the United States. Principia School, located in Town and Country, West St. Louis County, serves students from early childhood through high school, and Principia College, located about thirty miles away, is on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River in Elsah, Illinois.

Butler Stevens Sturtevant was an American landscape architect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old Main, Knox College</span> United States historic place

Old Main is the oldest building on the campus of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Completed in 1857, it is a distinctive Gothic Tudor design of Swedish architect Charles Ulricson. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961 as one of the few surviving sites to host one of the famous 1858 Lincoln–Douglas debates. The building underwent a major restoration in the 1930s, which modernized its interior and restored its exterior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Church of Christ, Scientist (Berkeley, California)</span> Historic church in California, United States

First Church of Christ, Scientist, Berkeley, now also known as Christian Science Society, Berkeley, is a Christian Science church, located at 2619 Dwight Way at Bowditch Street across the street from People's Park, in Berkeley, in Alameda County, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kennicott Grove</span> Historic house in Illinois, United States

Kennicott Grove is an area of prairie and wooded lands that includes the home of John Kennicott (1802–1863) and his family, including his son Robert Kennicott (1835–1866). John Kennicott was an agriculturalist and a doctor. Robert Kennicott was a naturalist and an explorer, who founded the Chicago Academy of Sciences. The grove is 123 acres (0.50 km2) in size. It is located near the intersection of Milwaukee Ave. and Lake Ave. in Glenview, Illinois, in the United States. Kennicott Grove was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976. The site is maintained by the Glenview Park District as The Grove National Historic Landmark or also The Grove, and contains a nature interpretive center, historic buildings, and nature trails.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Davis and Elkins Historic District</span> Historic district in West Virginia, United States

The Davis and Elkins Historic District is a National Historic Landmark District on the campus of Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia. It includes two mansions, the Senator Stephen Benton Elkins House (Halliehurst) and Graceland, that are separately listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A gate house and an ice house are also included in the district. These four structures are associated with the families of Henry Gassaway Davis (1823-1916) and Stephen Benton Elkins (1841-1911), who were dominating figures in the politics and economy of West Virginia in the late 19th century. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parsons Memorial Lodge</span> United States historic place

The Parsons Memorial Lodge is a small building built in 1915 by the Sierra Club at the northern end of Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. It was one of the earliest structures built of stone in a national park.

This is an incomplete list of historic properties and districts at United States colleges and universities that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). This includes National Historic Landmarks (NHLs) and other National Register of Historic Places listings. It includes listings at current and former educational institutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norris, Madison, and Fishing Bridge Museums</span> United States historic place

The Norris, Madison, and Fishing Bridge Museums are three "trailside museums" within Yellowstone National Park in the western United States. Built in 1929 to designs by Herbert Maier, they are preeminent early examples of the National Park Service Rustic style of architecture, and served as models for the construction of park buildings elsewhere in the park system in the 1930s. They were collectively designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Register of Historic Places listings in Alameda County, California</span>

This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Alameda County, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry W. Cleaveland</span> American architect

Henry William Cleaveland was an American architect based in New York, New York, and then San Francisco, California, and Portland, Oregon. He was one of the founding members of the American Institute of Architects, and several of his works have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. His works include Ralston Hall, a National Historic Landmark in the San Francisco Bay Area, the original Palace Hotel in San Francisco, and the Bidwell Mansion in Chico, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Unitarian Church (Berkeley, California)</span> Church building in California, US

The First Unitarian Church in Berkeley, California is a former church building that was built in 1898. It was designed by Albert C. Schweinfurth, who made unconventional use of Shingle Style architecture, usually applied to homes, in designing a church. It was also highly unusual for a church building in several other ways, including the use of industrial-style metal sash windows, sections of redwood tree trunks as pillars, the strong horizontal emphasis, and a semicircular apse with a conical roof.The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the California State Historic Resources Survey, and is a City of Berkeley Landmark. It has also been known as University Dance Studio and Bancroft Dance Studio for its current use.

References

  1. 1 2 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
  2. 1 2 "Principia College Historic District". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011. Retrieved October 12, 2007.
  3. 1 2 3 "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination" (pdf). National Park Service.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help). Accompanying photos, exterior and interior  (8.63 MB)