Brown versus Northwestern ED?

circuitrider
Thu, 25 Oct 2018 15:24:42 +0000

Have to agree with @mamaedefamilia - I can’t see how CC can be of any help determining which of two excellent schools would be more attractive to someone who has never set foot on either. FWIW, I never said either Brown or Northwestern was better looking than the other, I simply stated the obvious that they were very different from each other in history, setting and what they were trying to project to the public via their architectural choices. And, Northwestern is the more monolithic of the two. Here is what Thomas Gaines, author of one of the earliest and most frequently cited works on American college campus planning, has to say about Northwestern:

Northwestern University attempted to tie its various structures together with an epidemic of white-and-gray-speckled brick laid in double-stretcher Flemish bond. Though the buildings vary in design, there is so much tight mass on this campus that the continuity of brickwork turn out to be too much of a good thing.

Thomas Gaines, “The Campus as a Work of Art” (Praeger Press; 1991)