I think the French Judge was bribed when making this list.
Florida Southern is okay but No.4? It’s got a lot of southern style buildings with Spanish moss hanging everywhere, and does overlook a lake. But it is #4 because it has 7 Frank Lloyd Wright ‘structures’ and everyone thinks that’s so wonderful. They aren’t all buildings. One is a fountain, and one is a series of stairways (because the college is built on a hill to overlook the lake) and there is a LOT of climbing so if you don’t like climbing, you won’t find it beautiful. If you are on one of the stairways going down, you won’t be able to see the lake because they are covered and the roofs are 7’ and you can’t see a view, just the roof slanting down. One building is a chapel but we weren’t allow in there so I don’t know if it is beautiful or not. And I don’t think the structures match the southern column buildings.
I went to CU and have never been all that gaga over the yellow stone and red roofs, but the view of the flatirons are great. It is fine for going to school (not ugly).
I was looking for their methodology but it just says by T&L Editors - so - of course, it’s opinion. I wonder how they update it each time they do it - who gets cut and why? Who gets added and why?
If you like cemeteries on campus, sure it’s nice Even without, surprisingly not really.
But like every rank - no matter if it’s the best baseball player ever (Willie Mays), best QB ever (Dan Fouts), or whose campus is nicer - Duke or UNC and the answer is Duke by a mile and they’re not even in a similar league - well that’s what rank does - because like most every rank - it’s 100% opinion.
A selective handful of shots of the Montlake Cut, where the Windermere Cup is held, a regatta that attracts tippy top crews from around the world who come and compete against the UW’s venerable men’s and women’s rowers. We have a couple of these Gothic adorned bridges, the other marking the end of Portage Bay and the beginning of Lake Union. The mountain in the bottom picture is Mt. Olympus in the Olympics coastal range.
Re the cherry blossoms, that happens at a very specific time of year, almost always in the month of March. We’ve had a pretty mild winter thus far and for that reason they are expected to be delayed a few weeks this year. When they are in full bloom and the sun is reflecting off the terra cotta in the Quad, it is hard for me to imagine a more aesthetic campus location. People fly in to see it.
I would say more about the weather but honestly those of us who live here appreciate the “it rains all the time” reputation so more people don’t come.
It is a basic issue with US college architecture that so many of the popular styles were some sort of “revival” style. Even true “colonial” and early US buildings were already a type of revival style, and those campuses inevitably have many more from much more recently.
I don’t mind personally, and indeed I think the history of the revival takes on a life of its own. But truly new stuff? I guess some Internationalist and Brutalist buildings? Not usually what people consider “beautiful”, though . . . .
By the way, that bridge is awesome. And I do love a good bridge.
Building the campus in a style to make it seem older than it is. Grinding the steps down to make them seem like they were really many centuries old for one thing.
Supposedly Yale broke new window panes as they were building their Gothic campus just so they could be repaired (of course Yale tour guides are notoriously unreliable, so who knows).
Generally, some sort of fantasy has typically been a part of US college design. At once point, people wanted to imagine being ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and poets. At another, British empiricists (or, ironically, classicists) in Oxford or Edinburgh. Occasionally, a time traveler from an imagined future. And so on.
I think it is easy to poke fun, and of course there is almost always a very dark side to all this. But personally I think it is fine to acknowledge all that, but then have some fun ourselves leaning into the fantasies.
I think that’s why I like UNC’s campus. The history is real. The newer buildings look like new buildings. The old buildings look like real old buildings contemporary to their times.
So take a building like Old East. It is borrowing styling from ancient temples and such. And actually, a lot of that was added later, during renovations in 1822 and 1844. Originally in 1790s form it was more an imitation of the buildings at New England colleges like Harvard and Yale (nothing organic to the Carolinas), which themselves were then renovated in this period. Originally they were all more plain, smaller-scale Georgian buildings, itself a style the colonists had been borrowing from England for “important” buildings. By the time they were renovated, England was not such a hot source, but Classical stuff was big.
So to me at least, there isn’t a big distinction between UNC first imitating New England colleges, and then adding on some Classical elements, and those same New England colleges getting bored with all the brick and columns and going for some Gothic stuff. None of this was based on local vernacular architecture, it was all some sort of aspirational imitation/borrowing, often from multiple different historic periods, particularly as they were renovated over the years to suit changing tastes in collegiate architecture.
Chili and cole slaw on my hotdogs whenever I’m in the right place.
Also agree on faux gothic. Modern steel beams defeat the whole purpose of flying buttresses which are meant to redistribute the weight of the vaulted ceilings. A cool fact about Wesleyan’s ultra-modern Center for the Arts: completely built with load-bearing walls.
It’s funny, my husband loves brutalist architecture and he seems to have passed this on to our kids. My D26 was just chatting with him recently about how fascinated she is with the Simon Fraser University campus in Vancouver. (link to an article with some pictures, if anyone here is curious about that campus)
To your broader point, see Princeton’s latest addition to collegiate neo-gothic in the form of Whitman College, circa 2007, which Princeton itself says “marks revival of traditional architecture”.
Everybody is imitating somebody, particularly where US architecture is concerned. Part of the UW central quad is modeled after some portion of Christ Church, Oxford. It’s still beautiful and I don’t mind borrowing from Oxford. That’s pretty close to OG I assume.
Importantly, you know the difference between brutalism and using the term as code for “I don’t like that”.
Of course, I didn’t know the difference myself until that thread we were in several months ago.
There are some cool modern collegiate buildings that incorporate stone and glass beautifully. A mix did not hurt at all. Campuses that are overrun with red brick get boring quickly.
Yeah, my favorite campus style is actually “eclectic”. Variety is the spice of life, and all that. And if they have some nice examples from many different eras, it becomes a sort of living architectural museum.
That said, some people like a more cohesive campus. It is all good–with so many colleges in the US, we can all have plenty of whatever we like.
Even without, surprisingly not really.
