U of Chicago campus architecture

zapfino
Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:02:37 +0000

Just for my own curiosity, I followed up on JHS’s suggestion and inquired of Dean Boyer at U Chicago. He replied: "Your assumption about the desire to create immediate historical lineage is correct. That is exactly what the founders of the University were attempting to do.

The seals were selected by a faculty committee chaired by Professor Ernest Burton of the Divinity School. They sought to pull together a representation of European, Asian, and American universities, and to signify broad geographic coverage as well. Some of the institutions selected were deemed to be our intellectual and academic peers, while others were chosen because they represented areas of the nation or of the world that were of interest to the committee.

Space did not allow for comprehensive coverage, and some of the choices that were made might seem strange to today’s eyes. But this was the first decade of the 20th century, not the first decade of the 21st, and the choices seemed to make sense at the time."

As for the seals on the facade of U Washington’s library, a reference librarian kindly replied:
"The universities are: Toronto, Louvain, Virginia, California, Yale, Heidelberg, Bologna, Oxford, Paris, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Upsala, and Salamanca.

In 1923, then-President Suzzallo requested that faculty nominate historical figures to be made into statues near the tops of the stained glass windows. Moses, Louis Pasteur, Dante, Shakespeare, Plato, Benjamin Franklin, Justinian, Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Goethe, Herodotus, Adam Smith, Homer, Gutenberg, Beethoven, Darwin, and Grotius were selected from the faculty nominations by a committee. It is not clear whether the university emblems were chosen in a similar manner… The Washington Alumnus (February 1927) rather vaguely notes that ‘all [decorative elements, including the emblems] have been given infinite thought.’"

I’d still be interested if anyone knows of any other universities that incorporated these sort of architectural details into their buildings.

Simply as a matter of college rankings “carved in stone”, I find it quite interesting to consider these architectural details at three universities from three decades of the early 20th century. Some of the universities represented were prominent even 100 years ago; others that were prominent in some respects did not maintain that status; and, still others that are prominent now became so only after the first decades of the 20th century.

Since this thread morphed beyond the University of Chicago forums, perhaps a moderator can move it to a different forum? (not sure which one as it primarily might interest those with with an interest in campus architecture or the history of universities—or, perhaps, those who have Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture” on their iPods) :)