A Setting for Excellence: The Story of the Planning and Development of the Ann Arbor Campus of the University of Michigan 9780472119530, 9780472120925

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A Setting For Excellence THE STORY OF THE PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANN ARBOR CAMPUS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Frederick W. Mayer University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor

Page iv → Copyright © by Frederick W. Mayer 2015 All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2018

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A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-472-11953-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-472-12092-5 (e-book)

Page vii → To Nina—whose love, support, encouragement, and assistance were essential to the completion of this book Page viii →

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FOREWORD The observation by Winston Churchill that “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us” certainly is true for university campuses. The lives and learning of generations of students and alumni are shaped in profound ways by the campuses where they spend the formative years of their lives. As one of the nation’s largest and most prominent universities, the University of Michigan has long played an important role in influencing the evolution of the university campus in America. While there are times when the mix of old and new buildings and the chaotic activities of thousands of students can create a haphazard appearance at a university, campus planning has in fact become a highly refined form of architecture. This is demonstrated, in a convincing fashion, by this immensely informative and entertaining history of the evolution of the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan by Fred Mayer, who served for more than three decades as the campus planner for the university during an important period of its growth during the late twentieth century. By tracing the development of the Michigan campus from its early days to the present, within the context of the evolution of higher education in America, Mayer provides a strong argument for the importance of rigorous and enlightened campus planning as a critical element of the learning environment of the university. His comprehensive history of campus planning, illustrated with photos, maps, and diagrams from Michigan’s history, is an outstanding contribution to the university’s history as it approaches its bicentennial in 2017. But more important, Mayer’s book provides a valuable treatise on the evolution of campus planning as an architectural discipline. Mayer demonstrates how such planning, influenced by people, events, and the environment of the times, is a critical element of university strategy as the mix of resources shifts among public and private support. This book represents an important contribution to understanding both the discipline and considerations that shape the evolution of one of the most important institutions in contemporary society, the American university. James J. Duderstadt President Emeritus University of Michigan Page x →

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PREFACE Throughout its long and distinguished history, the University of Michigan has always occupied a position in the forefront of American higher education. Michigan set the pattern for the establishment of the public universities created in the states organized under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787—a model that influenced many other public universities throughout the country. Michigan was one of the leaders in the movement to establish the place of research in the American university. Its presidents have been prominent in the field of higher education, and it has supplied numerous chief executives to other institutions, both the great public universities and many highly respected private institutions. Michigan possesses one of the largest student bodies in the nation; it has the largest group of living alumni in the country; its athletic programs are well known and very successful; and most important of all, its academic reputation is now and has always been among the very best. The history of the university and how it established its position at the forefront of American higher education has been recorded on numerous occasions—most notably in Andrew Ten Brook’s history of the university in 1875; Elizabeth Farrand’s 1885 work; Burke Hinsdale’s 1906 work; the four-volume Encyclopedic Survey of 1942–58; Howard Peckham’s 1967 sesquicentennial history, The Making of the University of Michigan; and Margaret and Nicholas Steneck’s 1994 update of Peckham’s book. Each of these works gave considerable attention to the physical development and buildings of the university. But a comprehensive history of the planning and development of the campus from the point of view of a design professional has been lacking. Dean Emeritus Wells Bennett of the College of Architecture and Design began work on such a book, but his death in 1966 brought that effort to an end before he could complete it. The goal of this book is to fill at least a part of that void, by recording the history of campus planning and development for the Ann Arbor campus since it was created in 1837. Campus planning at Michigan has a long and very interesting history that is largely unknown, even among those on campus who interact daily with the physical environment that has developed as a result of this process. When the subject comes up in discussions, it is not uncommon for someone who wishes to appear witty to say, “Campus planning? I didn’t think there was any planning at this place.” Such remarks usually elicit a laugh but also display a woeful ignorance of the actual facts. Fortunately, this situation is starting to change. Julia Truettner’s 2003 work Aspirations for Excellence: Alexander Jackson Davis and the First Campus Plan for the University of Michigan, 1838 provides a definitive history of the first phase of campus planning and construction in the pre–Civil War period. This book carries that discussion forward to the present time, although not with as much detail as Truettner’s work. My emphasis here is on campus planning and the development of the campus as a whole. I have not attempted to do detailed architectural histories or critiques of each building, although this needs to be done as well. Rather, I have concentrated my efforts on the planning and development of that unique place we know as the Michigan campus. I have examined the various plans that have been prepared for it and identified the key persons involved with the planning efforts, and I have attempted to identify why some plans succeeded and others did not. Particularly in regard to the nineteenth century campus, there are critical gaps in the historical records, and the buildings themselves Page xii → have long since disappeared. In most cases, it has been possible to make reasonable inferences. In others, such as what role Alexander Jackson Davis actually played in creating the second (1840) plan, we may never have definitive answers. Nonetheless, I believe that the history of campus growth as presented in this book constitutes an accurate portrayal of the evolution of the planning and development of the Ann Arbor campus and may also provide useful insights into the role of master planning and its success or lack thereof within the larger framework of American higher education. I have great respect for historians, particularly for their discipline, rigor, and thoroughness in pursuing their research by following every line of inquiry to its end and leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to verify every detail of an event before writing about it. I am not quite as relentless. While I have carefully studied the main theme of the planning and development of the campus as an entity, I have not had the time or inclination to pursue

in-depth research on each of the individual buildings that are now or have been part of the campus. This important work is beginning to take place. In this book, I have established the basic facts about each building as needed to tell the story of campus planning and development. However, a rigorous and orderly cataloging and historical description of each building remains to be done. Such work, when completed, will undoubtedly produce facts and insights beyond what is presented in this volume, which is to be expected as ongoing research continues to unearth and record new information. Although the primary focus of this book is on campus planning and the comprehensive, integrated development of the institution, considerable space is devoted to the description of individual buildings, landscapes, site development, and engineering projects and to how they relate to the overall framework of campus development. I have done this because individual projects are the vehicles through which a plan is implemented. A plan sets forth an overall framework for campus development—a series of planning principles and design guidelines that should be employed in the design of individual projects created to expand or redevelop the campus. It is the projects themselves, however, that translate these principles and guidelines into physical reality, and it is through this process that it is possible to judge the effectiveness of a plan. If new buildings are placed on the sites recommended in the plan, if new plazas and walkways are created where they are recommended, if proposed street closures take place, if proposed open space and architectural preservation recommendations are followed, the plan can be judged effective. But if individual architects, landscape designers, engineers, or university administrators choose to ignore the plan’s recommendations, it is obviously ineffective. Individual projects are the true measure of a plan’s effectiveness, utility, and success. I have chosen to include in this book a series of anecdotes, found at the end of each chapter, that relate to the planning and development of the campus. These stories are all based on fact, but since they are largely peripheral incidents that have been passed down by word of mouth, they have often become embellished a bit in the telling. They are sometimes humorous and always provide insights into the human side of the process of campus development. They show that despite the best of efforts, things do not always go as planned or in as orderly and logical a manner as the planners might desire. They provide a lighter diversion from the more serious main theme of the book, and I hope that the reader will enjoy and appreciate them. In relating the story of the evolution of the Ann Arbor campus, I have employed three different approaches, depending on the time period and the extent of personal involvement on my part. For the period 1817–1966, I offer traditional documentary history based primarily on the work of earlier authors, original documents, and a few personal conversations with people, such as Harlan Hatcher or Wilbur Pierpont, who were directly involved with this phase of campus history. During 1966–2003, I played a key role in shaping the plans and projects described in the book; therefore, my discussion of this period is a blend of documentary history and personal recollection. It describes the development of the campus as seen through my own eyes. Any speculation herein about the future of the campus and the issues confronting it is purely a product of my own thinking based on my long experience with the university. It should not be taken as Page xiii → a reflection of the attitudes, philosophy, or policy of the university, its administration, or its board of regents. It is my hope that by combining these three approaches, I have provided the reader with the most meaningful and interesting insights I have to offer into the evolution of the Ann Arbor campus and the people and processes that have made it the place it is today. In this book I have chosen to concentrate on the Central Campus because it is the oldest and most historic part of the Ann Arbor Campus. It has also set the precedents for planning and development, which have been applied on the other campus areas. It is not my intent to ignore the other Ann Arbor Campuses, and I am currently in the process of completing a manuscript that covers the Medical Center, the North Campus, the Athletic Area, and the other university facilities in the Ann Arbor area. It is my hope to publish that work as a companion to this book. Page xiv →

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to several individuals whose direct support and assistance were essential to the successful completion of this book. Julia M. Truettner assisted me in the preparation of the first part of the manuscript and provided research input, illustrations, and critiques throughout the entire course of the project. Dorothy Estelle assisted with the latter part of the manuscript. Richard and Susan Rigterink helped to assemble and process the historic illustrations and took many of the contemporary photographs. Frank Cianciola assisted with the historical illustrations, Ken Cobb with contemporary photos. Jim Christman drew several illustrations that appear in the book. Mary Ann Drew helped to obtain necessary permissions. Tom Dwyer, Aaron McCollough, Christopher Dreyer, and Marcia LaBrenz were the capable editorial team at the University of Michigan Press. The staff at the Bentley Historical Library, including Francis X. Blouin, Karen Jania, Greg Kinney, and Nancy Bartlett, were most helpful, as was Paul Courant. Jim and Anne Duderstadt provided constant encouragement throughout the project. In addition, Jim took the initiative to bring together those people who could help take the project from manuscript to completed book, and he arranged for the support needed to bring the project to a successful conclusion. Anne was particularly generous in giving me access to the illustrative materials that she assembled for her own book The University of Michigan: A Photographic Saga. Without the help of these capable and supportive individuals, this book would not have been possible. Another group whose very real contributions to the content of this book I would like to acknowledge are the professional and administrative colleagues with whom I have worked since the 1960s in the planning and development of the Michigan campus. The size of this group is too large to list everyone by name, and it is inevitable that some important people would be omitted should I attempt to do so. In the main body of the text, I have identified some of the key individuals associated with specific projects or events, but, again, it is not possible to mention everyone. Nevertheless, I remember and appreciate the work of all of the many people who contributed to the evolution of the Michigan campus over the course of my thirty-seven-year tenure. Together, we all played our part in making the campus the place it is today.

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CHAPTER 1 PROLOGUE Detroit and Ann Arbor The term campus signifies many things to many people: a uniquely American contribution to the fields of urban design and higher education; perhaps the most successful example of creating a pleasant American urban environment; a much-copied prototype of sound practices of land development; and most important of all, an image carried in the minds of millions of university graduates of the place where they spent one of the most important and formative periods of their lives, as well as a model of the quality for which we should strive in the development of our built environment. To paraphrase Winston Churchill’s observation about buildings, we shape our campuses, and they, in turn, shape us. Each American campus has a unique story to tell about how it was planned and developed: some were designed in their entirety by a great architect or landscape architect, while others grew by a slow process of evolution over many years, involving many different planners and designers. All campuses have come to exert a profound influence on their students, faculty, and alumni and, in so doing, on the development of the United States itself. From its very beginning, the University of Michigan was a leader among American academic institutions and exerted a major influence on American higher education. Its first president, Henry Philip Tappan, is widely acknowledged as an educational pioneer who sought to introduce the traditions of the European university to America, particularly in the areas of science and research. Andrew Dickson White, the first president and cofounder of Cornell University, was the first professor of history at Michigan and implemented many of Dr. Tappan’s ideas at Cornell. Four subsequent presidents of Cornell—Charles Kendall Adams, Edmund Ezra Day, Frank Rhodes, and Jeffrey Page 2 → Lehman—came directly from the Ann Arbor campus. In the late nineteenth century, when Senator Leland Stanford was creating his new university at Palo Alto, he sought the advice of the foremost university leaders in the country on the selection of his first president. This group included Presidents Elliot of Harvard, Porter of Yale, McCosh of Princeton, and Angell of Michigan. In recent years, the presidents of Princeton, MIT, Cornell, Columbia, Wellesley, Radcliff, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Washington, the University of Texas, and a number of other schools have all been chosen from among the faculty and staff of the Ann Arbor campus. Furthermore, Michigan has the largest group of living alumni of any university in the country. These many individuals seem to have held overwhelmingly positive images of the time they spent in Ann Arbor and on the Michigan campus, and the reputation and influence of the university has spread widely throughout the world of higher education. Despite the university’s influential role in the development of American higher education, the planning and development of the Michigan campus itself has been insufficiently documented. The institution has been so busy looking forward that it has not taken much time to look back. In fact, many on campus are largely unaware of the rich history of planning that went into their campus. The University of Michigan is not alone in this regard. Many universities suffer a similar lack of historical understanding of their own campus development. The evolution of the campuses of a a few universities, such as Harvard, Virginia, and Stanford, is well documented because of their association with famous designers or historical personalities or thanks to the presence of a prolific historical writer in their midst, but most are less well recorded. Campus planning is a relatively young profession, and like many young professions, it is too busy inventing itself to do a good job of documenting its history. The objective of this book is to rectify that deficiency, at least in respect to the development of the University of Michigan. It is hoped that it will prove to be both a useful addition to the literature of campus planning and an enjoyable enlightenment for the students, faculty, and alumni of the university.

THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

The idea of creating a University of Michigan dates back to the early days of the Michigan Territory. It was probably inspired by Article III of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which states, “Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” But the actual realization of this idea in the Michigan Territory was first conceived of by a small group of men that included territorial governor Lewis Cass, secretary of the Michigan Territory William Woodbridge, Judge John Griffin, Father Gabriel Richard, the Reverend John Montieth, and, most important of all, Judge Page 3 → Augustus Woodward. Woodward was a graduate of Columbia College and a friend of Thomas Jefferson, who had appointed him to his position. He was also a friend of Major Charles-Pierre L’Enfant, who had prepared the plan for Washington, DC. One of his first endeavors upon arriving in the Michigan Territory was to prepare a plan for the city of Detroit. This plan, with some modifications, established the basic pattern that characterizes the oldest part of that city today. Woodward, along with Richard and Montieth, was also very interested in the creation of an educational system to serve the territory of Michigan. Father Richard had been attempting to organize primary education since 1804. By 1817, the territorial legislature agreed to the creation of a public school system to serve the communities of Detroit, Frenchtown (Monroe), Sault Ste. Marie, and Mackinac Island. It fell to Woodward to draft the actual educational law. The concept of a “university” that he envisioned was far broader than anything that had been conceived of before in the United States. It did not derive from any of the existing American colleges or even the great British universities; rather, it used as its model the Imperial University of France, created by Napoleon a decade earlier. It was a centralized system of public schools, rather than a “university” as we use that term today. The scheme created by Woodward in conjunction with Richard, Montieth, and Woodbridge was called the Catholepistemiad and was adopted into law on August 26, 1817. The curriculum was established by Woodward based on his 1816 book, A System of Universal Science. Very forward-looking, covering thirteen areas of human knowledge, with particular emphasis on the sciences, the curriculum was to be carried out by didactors (teachers) in their respective fields. Two weeks after the founding of the university, the territorial legislature appointed the Reverend John Montieth as president (with responsibility for seven of the academic areas) and Father Gabriel Richard as vice president (with responsibility for the remaining six areas). A few days later, they established public primary schools in Detroit, Monroe, and Mackinac Island, as well as a classical academy in Detroit. The organic act had given them the power “to establish colleges, academies, schools, libraries, museums, athenaeums, botanic gardens, laboratories . . . and to appoint instructors and instructrices in, among, and throughout the various counties, cities, towns, townships, and other geographical divisions of Michigan.” A two-story building measuring twenty-four by fifty feet, funded largely by private contributions, was begun on the corner of Bates and Congress Streets in Detroit almost immediately, to provide a facility for the Detroit operation (figs. 1.2–3). In October 1817, the board of trustees established a college in Detroit; however, no student in the territory was adequately prepared to undertake postsecondary education, and therefore no courses were offered. It appears that the primary reason for establishing the college was to receive the land that the Native Americans had offered “to the college” under the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs. It was comprised of 3,840 acres—half to go to St. Anne’s Church, half to the “new college at Detroit.” However, neither these lands nor the townships that had been granted to the Michigan Territory by the federal government in 1804 could be located, because southeast Michigan had not yet been surveyed. On April 30, 1821, the governor and judges of the territory reorganized the university, placing it under the direction of the governor and a twenty-member board of trustees. They were given control of the lands deeded to the university and authority to “establish such colleges, academies and schools, depending upon the said University, as they may think proper, and as the funds of the corporation will permit.” The Page 4 → principal result of this change was that direction of the university was transferred from the faculty to an outside board. Richard and Montieth maintained their faculty positions but lost their administrative titles, and in the summer of 1821, Montieth left for a professorship at Hamilton College in New York. In 1826, the legislative council of the state allowed all townships containing fifty or more families to employ a schoolmaster, thereby establishing the basis for local public school systems in the state. As a result, the trustees of the university gave up supervision of the primary schools, thereby ending the unified educational system envisioned by Woodward and his associates.

The 1820s were characterized by a good deal of confusion over the lands granted to the university by the Native Americans and the federal government, as well as two additional townships granted by Congress in 1826. The primary school continued to operate, but the classical academy was closed in 1827. In 1831, the building was leased to the city of Detroit for the operation of a common school, but it was returned to the university in 1833, after the city passed a law permitting taxation for school sites and buildings. The cholera epidemic of 1832 took the life of Father Gabriel Richard, one of the original founders of the university and a major force in public education in Michigan for thirty-four years. In 1834, the school building was leased to two schoolmasters for a “high school.” In that same year, the trustees sold 767 acres of land (which was credited as two sections) along the Maumee River for five thousand dollars. This money was set aside as a general fund for the University of Michigan. The other Native American gift was held until 1849. Page 5 → By the mid-1830s, the population of Michigan had reached eighty-five thousand, well in excess of the sixty thousand needed for statehood, and the topic of admission to the Union now became the central issue of political life. A constitutional convention met in Detroit in May and June in 1835 and turned out a constitution in six weeks. This constitution was adopted by the voters of Michigan in 1835. The educational provisions were heavily influenced by two men from the town of Marshall, John D. Pierce (Brown University) and Isaac Crary (Trinity College). They, in turn, appear to have been influenced by M. Victor Cousin’s 1831 Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia, which discussed the state-run system of primary and secondary schools in Prussia. The Prussian system was a centralized one along the lines of the Napoleonic model that had influenced Woodward. The 1835 Constitution provided for a superintendent of public instruction, appointed by the governor with the consent of the legislature. The superintendent was given authority over all public instruction, including the university, and his responsibilities were clearly spelled out in Article X. Of greatest significance to the university was the following provision: “The legislature shall make measures for the protection, improvement or other disposition of such lands as have been or may hereafter be, reserved or granted by the United States to the state, for support of a University; and the funds accruing . . . shall be and remain a permanent fund for the support of said University, with such branches as the public convenience may hereafter demand.” The wording of this provision suggests that the delegates accepted the fact that the university was already in existence. The year of 1836 was largely devoted to resolving the boundary dispute with Ohio and gaining admission to the Union. In December, a convention held in Ann Arbor agreed to the boundary settlement and passed the act of admission. Isaac Crary inserted into this act wording that transferred from the townships or counties to the state the responsibility for the sale of the lands granted to Michigan by Congress for public schools and for the university. This was done so that the local governments would not dissipate the funds inappropriately. In July 1836, Governor Stevens T. Mason had appointed John D. Pierce to the position of superintendent of public instruction. He was confirmed by the legislature and asked to prepare a plan for common schools as well as a university with branches, to be submitted to the next session. In January 1837, Michigan was admitted to the Union. From a physical planning point of view, the interesting thing about the Detroit phase of the university’s history is that by erecting a building, the university was able to create a strong presence for itself though it never actually conducted any instruction at the postsecondary level (fig. 1.3). In so doing, it established itself in the minds of the citizens of Michigan and their leaders as a fundamental part of the governmental structure of the territory and then the new state. This relationship eventually became so strong that the university was often referred to as the fourth arm of the state government. The physical presence of the university building created this image and thus defined one of the major features of the growth of the university: the importance of the physical campus.

THE CITY OF ANN ARBOR Today, when one speaks about the city of Ann Arbor, one automatically thinks of the University of Michigan, and vice versa. But as we have seen, the university did not begin in Ann Arbor, nor was the city founded as a university community. It was purely and simply a real estate speculation by two men, John Allen and Elisha

Rumsey, who had migrated to the Michigan Territory in 1824. Such endeavors were not unusual during this period in history. While the majority of the migrants to the new frontier areas were seeking a plot of agricultural Page 6 → land that would allow them to raise a family and live a decent life, others saw the west as an opportunity to make their fortune, and one of the most popular means to accomplish this goal was real estate speculation. Allen and Rumsey met in Detroit in January 1824. Allen had left his native Virginia because of some bad debts, and Rumsey had left New York State, where, according to Marwil’s History of Ann Arbor, he had deserted his family and misused a loan. In early February, they set out by sleigh to explore the country west of Detroit for an attractive location for their proposed town. They found the site they were looking for at the confluence of a river (the Huron) and one of its tributary streams (Allen Creek). The rolling topography provided access to both water and forested land. On February 14, 1824, they filed their claim with the federal land office. Allen and Rumsey purchased 480 and 160 acres respectively, at $1.25 an acre. They named the new town “Annarbour” in honor of Allen’s wife, Ann (Rumsey’s wife was also named Mary Anne), and for the natural oak arbor at the site. The name possessed a pleasant quality expected to be useful in attracting settlers to the new community. (As early as 1834, an advertisement for Washtenaw Brewery in the Michigan Emigrant showed the city name as two words, as did J. F. Stratton’s 1836 map of the city.) Before any lots could be sold, however, an 1821 territorial law required “a true map or plat thereby to be recorded.” Therefore, in Detroit on May 25, 1824, Allen and Rumsey filed the first plan for the city of Ann Arbor (fig. 1.4). The plan itself was a typical American grid layout with one block at the center designated as a courthouse square, to provide space for a courthouse and jail. Allen and Rumsey had secured the designation of their new community as the county seat, which they felt would assure its prosperity. But they had to pay a price for the designation, a contribution in “the amount of one thousand dollars” in cash; labor and materials had to be provided for the construction of the courthouse and jail, as well as a bridge over the Huron River. In addition, they were required to give to the county “such lots and parcels of ground” as were “deemed necessary for public uses.” This arrangement set the precedent for a later transaction that would result in the relocation of the University of Michigan from Detroit to Ann Arbor. In the 1820s and 1830s, Ann Arbor became primarily a town that provided services to the surrounding agricultural areas. The courthouse attracted lawyers and others related to land transactions, as well as shops, mills, tanneries, breweries, and other professional and service activities. The community grew quite rapidly. By the first week in June 1824, upwards of one hundred lots were said to have been taken, and several houses were begun. Allen and Rumsey promoted the city energetically by advertising and other activities. By 1825, there were eight houses and a debating club organized by the developers. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 increased the westward flow of settlers and, at the same time, reduced the cost of shipment of goods to the east, thereby enhancing the prosperity of the surrounding agricultural areas. By 1840, Washtenaw County led the state in the production of barley and oats and in the number of horses and cattle. By 1831, the population of Ann Arbor was almost one thousand. Page 7 → All of this growth led to a brisk business in real estate transactions and attracted other land developers to Ann Arbor. One of these was Anson Brown, who had acquired land on the north side of the river, near the bridge. In 1829, he built a mill and laid out the adjacent area—now known as Lower Town—as a competitor to the Allen and Rumsey development south of the river. The names Brown gave to the streets (Broadway, Wall Street, Canal Street, Maiden Lane) were taken directly from Lower Manhattan and give some idea of the grandiose notions he had about the future of the area. Lower Town prospered for a while, but Brown’s death from cholera in 1834 put an end to the growth of this area. Since Rumsey had died in 1827, Allen was the only original developer still active. He continued to promote the community tirelessly, serving as postmaster, newspaper publisher, promoter for the water company, school organizer, village president, and constant booster of Ann Arbor. In the process, he grew wealthy. In 1836, he moved to New York City to better direct his financial affairs, but the departure of Allen did not mean an end to real estate development and speculation in the city.

In 1835, the village of Ann Arbor was officially incorporated by the Michigan Territorial Council, and an official local government structure was created. Migration to the city continued in the 1830s, encouraged by promotional devices such as the “Map of the Village of Ann Arbor” published in New York City by Nathaniel Currier (fig. 1.5). It was drawn at the behest of the newly formed Ann Arbor Land Company with the intention of stimulating sales of the newly platted areas east of State Street, which that company owned. The quality of the illustration was intended to create the image of an established, growing community that would attract potential buyers. Another feature intended to arouse interest was the designation of a large block facing State Street as the site for the state capitol. By the mid-1830s, Ann Arbor was actively competing for that designation. By 1836, the village’s chances seemed good. Ann Arbor had grown into a significant town outside of Detroit and was already serving as the site for the convention to consider statehood. Cultural institutions such as churches and schools were developing, the town now boasted two newspapers, and the railroad was due soon. The city seemed to be an attractive candidate for the capital, but it would ultimately go elsewhere. In the competition for another highly sought-after prize, the state university, Ann Arbor was more successful. Several communities within the state sought to be designated as the home for the state university, because they felt it would stimulate growth and bring prosperity to their town. Ann Arbor had already seen the positive impact that resulted from its designation as the county seat and home of the county courthouse. Community leaders such as Elijah Morgan and the organizers of the Ann Arbor Land Company were extremely anxious to see the university located in their village, and they offered the regents forty acres of free town land on which to build the campus. This offer won the day for Ann Arbor, which became the new home of the University of Michigan in March 1837 (fig. 1.6). If the Detroit phase of the university’s history served to define one lasting theme of university development—the importance of the physical campus—then the decision to move to Ann Arbor served to define a second: the need to acquire an adequate amount of land to accommodate the facilities required to carry out the university’s academic mission in an appropriate physical setting. The original board of regents understood that one city lot in Detroit would not be sufficient to accommodate a great university in a growing state; therefore, the offer of forty acres to relocate the campus was a powerful inducement to them. This forty-acre campus served the university well throughout the course of the nineteenth century, but it, too, would ultimately prove inadequate, and further expansion would be required. Thus, before the first university student had been enrolled or the first college-level course had been offered, two of the major themes of the university’s long planning history had been defined: the importance of the physical campus and the need for an adequate amount of land to accommodate the university’s facilities in an appropriate manner. A third principle, the close integration of the campus and the surrounding community, was also starting to evolve. Page 8 → Page 9 →

ANECDOTE: A SURVIVOR OF THE UNIVERSITY’S DETROIT ERA The University of Michigan’s original Detroit building is long gone. It was demolished to make way for newer structures as downtown Detroit flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But one remnant of that era still survives on the Ann Arbor campus: the entrance to the Bank of Michigan building that stood at Jefferson and Griswold in the 1820s and 1830s, only a short distance from the university building. When the bank building was demolished in the early twentieth century, the entrance was rescued by Dean Emil Lorch of the Architecture and Design School and transported to Ann Arbor. It was installed in the courtyard of Lorch Hall along with many other architectural fragments, which were used as models for drawing and sketching by students in the art and architecture programs. When these schools moved to North Campus in the early 1970s, the smaller pieces were brought to North Campus by the art students. Some of the medium-sized pieces made their way to Dominick’s restaurant nearby, but the largest pieces, including the bank entrance, were too expensive to move and were left behind. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Dean Douglas Kelbaugh put together enough money to relocate the large Corinthian capital and column base that stood next to the bank entry,

reinstalling it as an iconic sculptural element in front of the Art and Architecture Building on North Campus. He had wanted to move the bank entry as well, but there was not sufficient funding. During the construction of the Allan and Alene Smith Law Library addition and the Lorch Hall renovation, the courtyard was used as a location for construction trailers and materials storage. When the construction was completed, the courtyard was relandscaped, creating an attractive setting for the entrance (above). However, construction of the new building for the Ross Business School and of South Hall for the Law School caused the courtyard to be pressed into service once again as a construction staging area. The result is that the bank entrance is now lost among a sea of contractors’ trailers and construction materials. Ultimately, the site is likely to be used for an addition to Lorch Hall, as envisioned in the original design for that building. At that point, the historic entrance will probably be hauled off to the dump unless something is done to save it. In the opinion of this writer, the best thing to do would be to relocate it to an appropriate site on the university’s central forty acres and rededicate it as a commemorative memorial to the bicentennial of the founding of the university in 1817. The entrance is the only genuine architectural survivor of the first era of the university’s existence, and it would be a significant loss if it were to disappear into a landfill.

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CHAPTER 2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF CAMPUS PLANNING The Michigan campus did not evolve in isolation. Its planning and development were influenced by the ideas and precedents of other universities; the work of leading architects, planners, and landscape architects from both America and Europe; and the concepts, theories, and practices that were being discussed and applied throughout the professions of city planning and urban design. To fully appreciate the evolution of the Michigan campus, it is therefore necessary to have at least a basic idea of the general development of planning for higher education over the course of history and, in particular, the development of campus planning in the United States. In addition, it is important that the reader be aware of certain ideas and concepts that were developed in the practice of architecture, landscape architecture, city planning, and urban design, which exerted strong influences on the development of campus planning generally and on the planning of the Michigan campus in particular. The aim of this chapter is to acquaint the reader who is unfamiliar with this body of knowledge with a basic history of the Western university’s physical facilities that will be sufficient for understanding the evolution of the Michigan campus.

EUROPEAN PRECEDENTS The Western university that exists today can trace its roots back to the teaching that took place in the academies, agoras, and forums of ancient Greece and Rome. But with the collapse of the classic civilizations in the fifth century, the Western world entered a period known as the Dark Ages, in which the traditions of classical learning and the legacy of classical civilization came perilously close to disappearing. The institution Page 11 → that acted as the caretaker of this legacy during this perilous time was the Roman Catholic Church, particularly its monasteries. Like all other institutions, the monastic communities evolved over time. By the twelfth century, when the modern Western university began to emerge, they had become highly developed communities housed in complexes of buildings usually enclosed by a defensive wall. Within the wall were groupings of buildings with major elements, such as a church in a freestanding building in a prominent location at the heart of the complex, and groupings of monks’ rooms and dining facilities arranged around cloistered courtyards, often beautifully landscaped. This form, familiar to medieval scholars, influenced the planning and design of the university facilities that began to spread throughout Europe in the following centuries. Through their studies over the course of time, monks gained knowledge in fields such as medicine, law, and philosophy, as well as their primary field of theology. These skills were to prove very useful in the administration of the church and the operation of church-run institutions such as hospitals, hospices, and orphanages. As secular institutions grew and developed, these skills also proved useful to the civil government, the army, and other secular entities. The demand for trained people who were not specifically committed to a life in the priesthood grew, as did the desire for education on the part of students who wished to pursue a secular life rather than a religious one. Therefore, at Paris and Bologna sometime in the twelfth century, higher education emerged from the monasteries and began to take place in the outside world. Initially, the facilities that housed these educational undertakings were very modest—rooms that could be borrowed or rented in churches, guildhalls, or other civic buildings. As the institutions prospered, they were able to acquire buildings of their own for study and teaching. As the reputation of the institutions grew, they attracted students from outside their own locality, and these students had to find lodging in the university towns. At first, the only option was to find space with the residents of the town. This is still the predominant form of housing at many European universities. But it was not always an appropriate solution to the housing problem. Hospices and “halls” were created to provide accommodations for students, but these, too, had their shortcomings. Lack of adequate space, hostility between the students and the other residents of the town, exploitation of the students by local landlords, and a desire for better control of student behavior on the part the university authorities eventually led the growing universities to build housing for their students. In addition to housing, a residential community

required dining facilities and a chapel to minister to its spiritual needs. The provision of these facilities led to the basic building block of the European university for centuries to come—the college. The oldest remaining example of the European college is the Collegio da Spagna (Spanish College) at the University of Bologna. It contains all the basic elements of the classical European college: a library, a chapel, a dining hall that could also be used for lectures and assemblies, and rooms for the students and teachers. The college was more than a physical configuration; it was an academic and social organization as well. Students applied for admission to the college; instruction and dining took place in the college; and ultimately, athletic competitions took place between colleges. When enrollments grew, new colleges were founded in the same town but not necessarily adjacent to one another. The relationships between colleges were relatively loose, and the need for physical proximity was not deemed essential. After all, in the towns of medieval and Renaissance Europe, everything was within easy walking distance. A more important determinant of a college’s location than adjacency to other colleges was the availability of buildable land (fig. 2.1). As the institutions grew and more and more colleges were founded, it became clear that certain things could be done better or more efficiently if the colleges banded together to avoid duplication and to create better resources for students and faculty. For example, although each college needed a basic library of books to provide for a student’s fundamental education, a truly outstanding collection could be assembled by pooling resources in a central library. The same was true for such resources as museums, theaters, and lecture halls. Ultimately, other functions, too, were assigned to “the university” by the colleges, such as scheduling noted guest lecturers, administering exams, and granting degrees. The fundamental allegiance of the students and faculty, particularly at the English universities, remained to the colleges. Nonetheless, resources like central libraries, museums, lecture halls, and performing arts venues required facilities, and a series of “university” buildings began to develop alongside the college facilities—all within the context of the town. The plans of Oxford, Cambridge, Leuven (Louvain), and others show the pattern of university development that took place as a result of this history. Page 12 → The two great English universities at Oxford and Cambridge provided the reference points for the founders of the first American universities, and the traditions of Oxford and Cambridge influenced both the academic organization and the physical design of the colonial colleges in the New World. By the early seventeenth century, when the first American college was founded, the collegiate system and the tradition of the collegiate quadrangle plan was firmly established at both Oxford and Cambridge. It appears to have been first established by New College at Oxford, founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham, a former surveyor of the king’s works. Despite being called “new,” it is the second oldest college at Oxford and placed a greater emphasis on the education and housing of undergraduates than its predecessor, Merton College of 1264. Because of his own background, Wykeham took a particular interest in the physical configuration of the college, which took the form of an enclosed rectangle. The enclosed quadrangle plan developed at New College set the precedent for the many colleges that were added to Oxford in succeeding years. The same pattern was also commonly employed at Cambridge, so it is reasonable to say that New College was the prototype for the many colleges established at Oxford and Cambridge for the next five hundred years. In 1410, in an effort to exert greater control over student behavior and reduce animosities between the students and townspeople, Oxford authorities issued an edict requiring all students to reside in either a hall or a college. Because the enclosed, gated quadrangle offered greater opportunities for control, the college eventually became the dominant form. At Cambridge University in 1557, a major innovation took place in the layout of English colleges. Dr. John Caius, a graduate of Gonville Hall who had studied medicine in Padua and become a court physician on his return to England, endowed and refounded his old school as Gonville and Caius College and had a new court added to the old quadrangle. But unlike at earlier colleges, the new courtyard was left open on one side, on the specific instructions of the donor. This was done for health reasons, to allow a better flow of fresh air into the narrow space of the courtyard. It may well have been influenced by architectural fashion as well. As the distinguished architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner points out, this form was popular in the design of the fashionable French châteaus of the period. Whatever the reasons underlying this new form, it created an architectural expression quite

different from the enclosed quadrangle. It opened up the potential to take advantage of external views and to develop axial planning configurations more characteristic of Renaissance ideas in planning and urban design than the closed quadrangle. It also symbolized a more open relationship between the college and the outside world. This plan was employed at two other colleges founded at Cambridge at the end of the sixteenth century, Emmanuel in 1584 and Sidney Sussex in 1596. Both of these colleges were centers of Puritanism at the time, and Emmanuel would have particular links to Harvard College, the first institution of higher education in the English colonies. Page 13 → Oxford followed a more conservative path than Cambridge in both planning and architecture. Between 1555 and 1624, five new colleges were founded at Oxford, all of them laid out in a quadrangular form and employing Gothic, rather than Renaissance, architecture. The new quadrangles were more symmetrical and axial, with prominent entry gates placed at the midpoints of the perimeter walls (fig. 2.2). Despite the turmoil of the English Civil War, religious upheavals, dynastic struggles, and so on, the seventeenth century was a time of great dynamism for the British university. Curriculums were reformed, science was given a more important role, and a greater percentage of the English population attended the universities than would be the case again until the twentieth century. This interest in and enthusiasm for higher education would carry over to the English colonies and result in the establishment of Harvard College at a remarkably early date in the history of the English North American colonies (1636). In Scotland and Ireland, too, there were institutions of higher education, but they were smaller and less architecturally elegant than the English universities. Trinity College in Dublin (1591) was founded as a college, not a university, and has remained so to this day. The Scottish universities also tended to be smaller in size, consisting Page 14 → of only a few colleges. Students were still permitted to find lodgings in town at the Scottish universities, which led to some blurring of the distinction between the terms college and university—a characteristic that would also occur at American institutions. But in terms of the planning employed, the quadrangle remained the dominant form, often with smaller, less elegant buildings than in England but nonetheless arranged in such a way as to form an enclosed quadrangle. Thus, at the time of the founding of the North American colonies, the British university had developed a very specific physical manifestation, and Englishmen had a clear notion of what a college should look like and how it should be laid out. These ideas were to influence the development of the first institutions established in British North America, but the realities of the New World made it impossible to replicate the British university form exactly. From the very beginning, the American university would create new and original forms to meet the different geographic, economic, social, and political realities of the New World.

COLONIAL COLLEGES Higher education appeared in the British North American colonies at a remarkably early point in their history. Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent British colony, was founded in 1607, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded in 1619. Harvard College, the first institution of higher education, was founded in 1636, a scant seventeen years after the founding of the colony itself. Harvard was followed by William and Mary (1693), Yale (1701), Princeton (1746), Columbia (1754), the University of Pennsylvania (1755), Brown (1765), Rutgers (1766), and Dartmouth (1769). While the founders and early instructors at these schools may have carried with them the images of the glorious Gothic or classical quadrangles of their homeland, the realities of life in the New World made it utterly impossible to reproduce them in colonial America. Most of these colonial colleges, with the exception of the University of Pennsylvania, were founded by religious sects and had as their primary purpose the provision of educated clergyman, “dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the church when our ministers shall lie in their graves,” as John Harvard put it. A secondary objective of the early colleges was to provide cultured, educated gentlemen who would enter the professions and, in general, become the leaders of society. These early schools were small in size and fairly aristocratic in nature and were supported by very modest gifts and/or the support of the churches of North America. The financial support and technical expertise required to build on the level of Oxford and Cambridge were utterly lacking. What North America did have to offer, however, was an abundance of land.

Though the colonial colleges did not have the wealth to organize their facilities on the basis of a magnificent architectural composition, they did have adequate land resources to organize their facilities on a fairly generous piece of ground. Thus the concept of “the campus” was born. The word campus itself is the Latin word for “field” and was first applied to the Princeton campus in the mid-eighteenth century. Also established during the colonial era were two other features of American higher education: the tendency to found many individual colleges dispersed throughout the different colonies and the tendency to locate the colleges themselves in places removed from the core of major urban centers. This reflects the traditional American distrust of cities, as centers of immorality and corruption. For example, Cambridge was chosen as the site for Harvard to avoid the corruption that Puritans associated with the city of Boston. This romantic notion of the college in nature, removed from the corrupting influence of the city, persists to this day and has influenced the location of a large number of American university campuses. The colonial communities were anxious to have the colleges in their midst, as they provided jobs and retail trade and were a tremendous source of prestige to small colonial towns. Many of the early schools chose to locate in a particular town largely on the basis of the size of the inducement the community provided to the institution. Princeton, for example, first considered locating in New Brunswick and asked the town to pledge one thousand pounds to the college, along with ten acres of land contiguous to the college and two Page 15 → hundred acres of woodland no more than three miles from the college at its furthest point. New Brunswick was slow to comply with the conditions, and when Princeton indicated its willingness to meet them, the location of the college was shifted to Princeton. Ten years later, when the town of New Brunswick was given a second opportunity to gain a college, they were quick to provide the subscription necessary to secure the location of Rutgers within their community. At Yale, the citizens of New Haven outbid all other communities in both land and money for the privilege of having a college in their midst. At Amherst, thirteen hundred citizens of the township and countryside gave money and actually helped dig foundations and lay bricks. Thus the Ann Arbor Land Company’s offer of forty acres of land to the University of Michigan to relocate from Detroit to Ann Arbor in 1837 is quite consistent with the pattern established by several of the eastern schools. The earliest facilities provided at all of the colonial colleges—in fact, at most American colleges founded prior to the American Civil War—were housed in a single building, often of relatively imposing proportions for its time (fig. 2.3). The first Harvard building erected in the 1630s was the largest building in New England. The main building at William and Mary was the largest building in colonial Virginia (fig. 2.4), and Nassau Hall at Princeton was the largest building in North America at the time of its erection. Throughout the course of the colonial era, enrollments grew, particularly at the older institutions, and additional facilities were needed. These could take the form of either additions to existing buildings or entirely new buildings. In either case, the question of how to place the new facilities on the site had to be addressed. At William and Mary, an early plan (1695) shows a clear intent to expand the original building into the form of a traditional English quadrangle, but this did not happen. Rather, two smaller buildings were constructed to either side of the main building and somewhat forward of that building, creating an open court loosely organized along the lines of the three-sided quadrangles of Cambridge (fig. 2.5). Since this court faced the capitol along the main axis of Duke of Gloucester Street, it contributed significantly to a very elegant composition at the heart of Virginia’s colonial capital. At Harvard, a double court facing the Cambridge Commons had evolved by the 1760s. The buildings were arranged in a line at Yale, marking the beginning of the linear row plan that was to be widely employed at many campuses prior to the American Civil War. The arrangement of buildings at Kings College (Columbia) at this time also followed a linear pattern. Thus, by the eve of the American Revolution, two of the basic patterns of organization that would come to characterize the American campus had begun to emerge: the linear row and the court, or open, three-sided quadrangle. Also already established was the image of what a “campus” should be: a group of architecturally distinguished buildings arranged in an orderly and attractive manner within the overall context of a well-designed unifying landscape. Page 16 → At the time of the American Revolution, the nine colonial institutions were basically all small, liberal arts colleges. Princeton, for example, was located on a plot of four and a half acres, across the street from the shopping

and administrative center of the town. At Yale, three buildings existed at the time of the Revolution. They faced the town green but had to share the frontage of the block with the jail and almshouse, which were not removed until 1801. At the outbreak of the Revolution, Harvard consisted of only five buildings on what is now the famous Harvard Yard. The problem of future growth did not seem to trouble the colleges at this point, for two important reasons. First, they did not foresee large-scale growth in their enrollments in the coming years. This was a reasonable assumption, for most American colleges had enrollments of under one hundred students as late as the 1850s; Harvard and Yale had four or five hundred, and only William and Mary had nearly one thousand. The second factor that led the colleges to give little forethought to expansion was the availability of open land. Few people anticipated the tremendous growth of American towns and cities that was about to take place. Therefore, most colleges tended to assume that if additional land were needed, it would be readily available. During the colonial period, colleges attempted to create a composition of a building or buildings in a park. This is clear evidence that the original campus builders were concerned with creating a pleasing physical environment for their schools, but there is little indication that any of this building was done by means of a well thought-out plan. The practical surveying knowledge of the trustees and officers of the college and the architects and builders that they hired was usually the deciding factor in the location of the buildings. The need to develop a campus master plan was not yet recognized by the colonial colleges. It was not a part of the English university tradition, and the small number of buildings possessed by the various American institutions seemed to make it unnecessary. But as America transformed itself from a set of British colonies to an independent republic, this attitude would change, and the first series of campus plans would come into existence.

THE NEW REPUBLIC AND THE FIRST CAMPUS PLANS After the ordeal of the Revolutionary War and the struggle to write and adopt the Constitution, the new American Republic set about the serious tasks of defining itself politically, economically, and socially and creating institutions to carry out its objectives. The citizens of the newly founded United States viewed themselves as participants in a dramatically new venture and tended to question and challenge traditional ways of doing things, as well as established institutions and values. In the area of higher education, this attitude manifested itself in many ways. The established colonial colleges whose names reflected the British monarchy changed their names: King’s College became Columbia, Queen’s became Rutgers, Princeton became the College of New Jersey (before reverting back), and so on. But of greater significance, public, state-supported institutions were established in a number of states, particularly in the south. The universities of Georgia (1785), North Carolina (1789), Vermont (1791), Ohio (1804), and South Carolina (1805) were all founded during the first twenty years of the new Republic. By 1860, there were 260 southern colleges, with over twenty-five thousand students enrolled in them. This was more than fifty percent of the total number of college students in the United Page 17 → States, while William and Mary was still far and away the largest school in the country. In 1800, there had only been twenty colleges in the entire nation. The Northwest Ordinance, which was passed by Congress in 1787 to provide for the organization of the Northwest Territory into states and to allow for their orderly admission to the Union, stated, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” This served as the inspiration for the establishment of public universities in the states that were organized under its provisions. They evolved, in turn, into the great public universities now known collectively as the Big Ten. The state of Michigan took a leading role in this movement by establishing its state university in 1817, its first normal school in 1849, and an agricultural college in 1855. But despite the size and prominence that many American universities would later attain, the period between the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War was still an era of small institutions. Though the vast majority of colleges in America during this period were small institutions possessing only one or two buildings, growth was taking place at some of the more prominent institutions, such as Harvard, William and Mary, and Yale. In addition, a few new schools were founded with greater aspirations in terms of future growth.

Considerations of how to provide for growth in an orderly manner while retaining an attractive campus environment led to the development of the first true master plans for multibuilding campuses. As pointed out earlier, the colonial colleges did not seem to concern themselves much with the issue of growth. William and Mary had studied how the original building could be expanded to form a small quadrangle. But when growth did occur at the colonial schools, it usually took the path of adding a separate new building rather than adding to an existing one. This pattern continued after the Revolution. Growing institutions like Yale and Harvard recognized that what was needed was not merely an architectural scheme for expanding a building but, rather, a campus plan to guide the placement of a number of buildings in an orderly and attractive manner.

THE TRUMBULL PLAN FOR YALE The tradition of aligning buildings in a row at Yale dates back to the mid-eighteenth century, but a controversy in 1792 over the placement of a proposed new building led James Hillhouse, a member of Yale’s governing board, to seek the advice of noted painter and amateur architect John Trumbull, with respect to the alignment of buildings. Trumbull produced two sheets of plans that probably constitute the oldest surviving master plan for an American college (fig. 2.6). It also constituted the prototype for the collegiate row that was destined to be repeated at many American campuses, including the University of Michigan (fig. 2.7). Trumbull’s row plan for Yale was implemented over a period of years and was considered a bold alternative to the inwardly oriented collegiate forms employed in Europe. By the end of the nineteenth century, the row plan fell out of favor; it became regarded as monotonous and old-fashioned. Many of the collegiate rows, including Yale’s, were demolished to make way for the more popular forms of campus plans built around more complex and inward-looking designs. In other cases, the rows were incorporated into larger groupings, becoming one side of a quadrangle, court, or mall. This was the fate of Michigan’s original collegiate row facing State Street. Page 18 →

THE BULFINCH PLAN FOR HARVARD In 1812, Harvard hired prominent Boston architect Charles Bulfinch to design a new building to contain dining facilities, classrooms, a chapel, and the president’s office. Included in the charge to the architect was the responsibility for determining the site for the new building. It was specified that the design should “have reference to other buildings that may in the future be erected”—what is known today as a master plan. Bulfinch developed several schemes, but the one that was finally adopted concentrated the buildings on the western portion of the Harvard property (fig. 2.8). The new building, University Hall (1813), was positioned in such a way as to produce a loosely defined quadrangle with an inward orientation toward the central open space—the area known today as Harvard Yard. University Hall was positioned in a focal location on the axis between Massachusetts Hall and Harvard Hall, which gave it a very prominent location on the yard. The other buildings were positioned in such a way as to enclose and define the space of the yard. The plan even suggested how the quadrangle might grow in the future to an even larger size, with University Hall as the central building of the enlarged quadrangle. Bulfinch’s plan reintroduced the form of the traditional English quadrangle to the New World, albeit in a significantly altered and uniquely American variation. The English quadrangle was enclosed by a solid mass of architecture (even the three-sided quadrangles of Cambridge erected a wall on the fourth side), penetrated only by a limited number of gated portals. The American quadrangle was defined by a series of individual buildings separated by open spaces, to make it very accessible at many places and to allow the landscape to flow around the buildings on all sides and retain the image of buildings in a park (fig. 2.9). In Page 19 → his plan, Bulfinch called for an oval-shaped planting of trees surrounding University Hall. In so doing, he acknowledged the importance of landscape, particularly trees, to the image of the American campus. The English quadrangle, by contrast, places emphasis on lawns and flowers as the central landscape features. The large masses of trees that are common on American campuses are not characteristic of the typical English quadrangle.

THE RAMÉE PLAN FOR UNION COLLEGE

At about the same time that Bulfinch was developing his quadrangle plan for Harvard, another American campus was engaged in the development of a master plan on a grander scale than had ever been done before. From its founding in 1795, Union College in Schenectady, New York, embodied many of the liberal ideas that characterized American education during this period. It was nonsectarian, made efforts to modernize the classical curriculum, and considered itself more democratic than its principal rival in New York State, Columbia College. In 1804, a remarkable educator by the name of Eliphalet Nott became president of Union and continued the policies of curricular reform and more moderation in the rules of student behavior, thereby bringing Union to the forefront among American institutions of higher education. In his book Campus: An American Planning Tradition, Paul V. Turner described Nott’s approach. His educational philosophy revolved around the idea that the college was to be a large family, and he envisioned that each class was to constitute “‘the family of the officer who instructs them,’ that the students, president, faculty, and their families were to ‘lodge in college and board in commons,’ and that emphasis would be on ‘the decorum, ceremony, and politeness of refined domestic life.’” Nott determined that creating the family-style setting he desired required that the students be “separated from the great world.” When Nott became president, the college had just occupied a new building in the center of the city. But in 1806, in an effort to create his desired environment, Nott began to assemble a large tract of land on the outskirts of the city, on a hilltop overlooking the Mohawk River valley. In 1812, Nott began to lay the foundations for the first two buildings on the hilltop campus. In the following year, he made the acquaintance of Jacques Joseph Ramée, a French building and landscape architect then working in America. Feeling that Ramée was the right man to give physical form to his educational philosophy, Nott hired him to prepare a master plan for the new campus. Ramée worked for about a year on the project and produced several variations on the basic layout, but all of the schemes embodied the same fundamental concept: a large open court facing westward toward the mountains. The closed end was a semicircular apsidal form, and a round building was centrally located on the diameter of the semicircle. The form of the court was not new, but its scale of six hundred feet across surpassed anything that had been proposed in America to date. Indeed, this was more than a mere layout for a group of buildings; it was a long-term vision for the development of a campus (fig. 2.10). In this regard, it was probably the first true master plan ever developed. In Nott’s remarkable sixty-two-year tenure, he was only able to build two buildings: North College and South College, erected on the foundations begun in 1812. Yet Ramée’s plan proved a remarkably implementable and truly effective blueprint for the long-term development of the campus. The central building, the Nott Memorial Building, was added later in the century, in the Gothic Revival style, and subsequent buildings were placed generally in accordance with Ramée’s plan. The Union College campus seen today is clearly built according to the plan designed by Jacques Joseph Ramée almost two hundred years ago. An interesting feature of Ramée’s plan was the detailed and extensive development of the landscape that was shown in the drawings—a sharp contrast to Bulfinch’s single oval of trees at Harvard. The extensive layout of gardens and tree plantings shown on the Union plan was consistent with the American fascination with the natural landscape (manifest in the Hudson River School of painters and the park movement) and would contribute a major component to the image of the American campus. Incorporated into Ramée’s plan is an understanding that buildings and landscape create an image together. Indeed, the Union College plan succeeded in incorporating all the essential elements of a truly successful campus plan—a long-range vision that is practical and implementable and a balanced and orderly blend of architecture and landscape. It was an auspicious beginning for what was to become a long succession of outstanding American campus plans. Page 20 →

JEFFERSON’S PLAN FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA A short four years after Ramée completed his plan for Union College, Thomas Jefferson completed his landmark plan for the University of Virginia. Jefferson was one of the great intellects at the time of the founding of the new Republic, and his interests encompassed many areas, including educational reform, architecture, and planning. His ideas culminated in one of his greatest achievements (the one of which he was most proud), the University of Virginia. Much has been written about Jefferson’s architectural designs and educational philosophies. The latter

had a direct impact on the University of Michigan, since Judge Augustus Woodward communicated with Jefferson when he was formulating his concept for the Catholepistemiad. Jefferson summarized his ideas about the physical form of his new “academical village” as follows: I consider the common plan, followed in this country but not in others, of making one large and expensive building as unfortunately erroneous. It is infinitely better to erect a small and separate lodge for each separate professorship, with only a hall below for his class, and two chambers above for himself; joining these lodges by barracks for a certain portion of the students, opening into a covered way to give a dry communication between all the schools. The whole of these arranged around an open square of grass and trees, would make it, what it should be in fact, an academical village. . . . Every professor would be the police officer of the students adjacent to his own lodge, which should include those of his own class of preference, and might be at the head of their table, if, Page 21 → as I suppose, it can be reconciled with the necessary economy to dine them in smaller and separate parties rather than in a large and common mess. These separate buildings, too, might be erected successively and occasionally, as the number of professorships and students should be increased, or the funds become competent. . . . Much observation and reflection on these institutions have long convinced me that the large and crowded buildings in which youths are pent up, are equally unfriendly to health, to study, to manners, morals and order. Throughout the course of his long career, Jefferson had been exposed to many architectural and planning examples that would influence his ultimate plan: the plan of Williamsburg and the Green Mall that is now Duke of Gloucester Street; French classical architecture, particularly Louis XIV’s palace at Marley; and the typical American town of the era, with small homes clustered around a central green. He also benefited from knowledge of the plan John Mills had prepared for the University of South Carolina (1802) and of Trumbull’s plan for Yale, and he corresponded directly with architects William Thornton and Benjamin Latrobe about his plan for Virginia. All of these things undoubtedly influenced his plan, but the actual design that emerged was uniquely Jefferson’s (fig. 2.11). It consisted of a central green area surrounded on three sides by buildings. The fourth side was left open to the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The shape of the space is longer and narrower than the typical court or quadrangle. It was really an elongated court form. The long sides were composed of individual professors’ pavilions joined together by a colonnade, behind which were student rooms. On the short side was the dominant building of the composition, a large domed rotunda containing the library. This long axial form became known as the mall, another of the basic design elements that was to characterize many campus plans developed over the following years. Jefferson’s mall at Virginia may not have been the first application of this form in American campus planning (the mall that John Mills designed for South Carolina predates it), but it is clearly the most famous. The Virginia plan influenced the development of many American campuses that adopted it, and it is cited even today as one of the greatest examples of American campus planning, if not the greatest (fig. 2.12). The actual construction of Jefferson’s plan took place between 1817 and 1824, and the university opened in 1825. The design form that emerged was characteristically American, combining Jefferson’s philosophy of a personalized, familial approach to higher education with the classical American town of small houses grouped around the town green, all tied together with a colonnade of Jefferson’s own creation. The mall also provided for the possibility of growth by extension of the side elements, thereby overcoming a limitation of the earlier forms. The mall form embodied in Jefferson’s plan for Virginia now joined the other design forms—the single building in a park, the court, the row, and the quadrangle—in the basic palette employed in the planning of the American campus. The full impact of Jefferson’s plan, however, was somewhat delayed. A few schools, such as Alabama, Notre Dame, and Wisconsin, adopted the mall form in the nineteenth century, but not really until the City Beautiful era in the early twentieth century, when Jefferson’s plan was rediscovered, did the mall form became a major feature of the design of the American university campus. Page 22 → One of the major challenges facing the new nation during the first half of the nineteenth century was the

settlement of the enormous land mass it had acquired as a result of the peace treaty ending the American Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase, the Mexican War settlement, and other land acquisitions. Immigrants arrived daily to take advantage of the readily available land and other benefits offered by the new nation, and the total population grew rapidly. The settlement pattern followed Jefferson’s notion of a nation of yeomen farmers spreading out across the North American continent. The major occupation of Americans during this era was farming, and many small agriculturally oriented towns dotted the landscape. Major cities were relatively few and were located along the coasts of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Farming provided a decent livelihood for Americans at this time; farmers were able to build impressive homes and barns and could often send their sons off to school, provided it did not interfere with the farming season. The demand for higher education grew, but the response to meeting this demand took the form of founding new colleges in locations close to potential students, rather than major expansion of existing institutions. Many small colleges with total enrollments of fewer than one hundred students could be found throughout the length and breadth of the new nation. In the period between 1830 and 1850, more than eighty new private colleges were founded, often by religious men inspired by the need to supply educated clergy to the expanding nation or by secular individuals who were either motivated by the desire to provide educated citizens for the new nation or inspired by an idealistic vision of the contributions that higher education could make to the progress of humankind. The towns and cities of America welcomed the new colleges as an element of civic pride and an enhancement of the local economy, and in the new territories, state support of public universities emerged as a hallmark of westward expansion. Page 23 → The new campuses themselves generally followed the organization and planning models established at the older institutions. The vast majority started with the pattern of the single building in a park. Some secondary buildings, such as a president’s house or a small laboratory, might be added, but the vast majority of a college’s facilities and operations tended to be housed in one major academic and dormitory building. More ambitious institutions began with a campus plan based on a row, court, quadrangle, or mall concept and built their buildings in accordance with this plan over a period of years. Older schools that required facilities beyond those available in the original building began to evolve in the direction of the row, court, or mall as additional buildings were added. But the basic design forms that had developed during the colonial era and the first decades of the new Republic continued to be the models for college campuses up until the time of the American Civil War (fig. 2.13). During this era, the University of Michigan was founded, and the first plans for the Ann Arbor campus were developed. Not surprisingly, they followed the precedents established by the older eastern colleges and were directly influenced by them.

THE ROMANTIC PLAN In America in the 1840s and 1850s, a new fashion in the arts swept across the nation. Like most American aesthetic movements of the nineteenth century, it had originated in Europe and was known as “romanticism.” It impacted all of the arts: painting, sculpture, music, literature, and, of course, architecture, landscape architecture, and planning. The term romanticism defies precise definition, but certain characteristics of early nineteenthcentury romanticism can be clearly identified. It glorified nature and placed greater emphasis on the emotional and spiritual aspects of life than the earlier periods that had emphasized rationality and order, and it glorified the individual over society as a whole. The romantics’ interest in history was focused more on medieval Europe than on ancient Greece and Rome. They were fascinated by the exotic and the unusual and often turned their attention to distant lands and peoples or to imaginary utopias in the future. They looked both forward and back and pined for what was not. Some were revolutionaries, and many found solace in mysticism and religious experience. In painting, romanticism was exemplified by the dramatically beautiful but often rather wild images of the Hudson River School. In music, it inspired the work of composers like Weber, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Wagner. In literature, it could be found in the works of Cooper, Irving, Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville. In architecture, landscape design, and planning, the ideal of romanticism had been popularized in Europe by the

writings of John Ruskin and Violet-le-Duc. The ideas of romanticism were championed in America by a landscape architect named Andrew Jackson Downing. He wrote books and articles condemning the older Federal and Greek Revival styles of architecture and the more formal approach to planning and landscape design that were popular in America up until the 1840s. Downing preferred the style of the English country house (later referred to as Carpenter Gothic) and the Italian villa. His writings were very influential in the two decades immediately before the American Civil War and inspired a shift in American taste away from the classical and in favor of the romantic. As Russell Lynes wrote in The Tastemakers, “No one had a greater influence on the taste of Americans a century ago than [Downing], and no one had a more profound impact on the looks of the countryside” (fig. 2.14).

Downing was a friend of and professional collaborator with Alexander Jackson Davis, the distinguished New York architect and author of the first campus plan for the University of Michigan. In 1849, Downing and Davis collaborated on a plan for the proposed New York Agricultural College. The college was never founded, and the plan was not executed. Later in his career, Downing became associated with Calvert Vaux, an English architect who immigrated to Downing’s hometown of Newburgh, New York, and began to practice with him. Vaux’s career as an architect was not distinguished, but he absorbed many of Downing’s ideas about landscape design and planning. When Downing died in a tragic riverboat accident in 1852, Vaux became associated with the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (also a friend of Downing’s), and the two became responsible for the design and construction of Central Park in New York City in 1856 (fig. 2.15). Olmsted was clearly the genius of the team. He was the founder of the landscape architecture profession in the United States and arguably the finest practitioner of that profession ever to have worked in America. The design of Central Park embodied many of the principals of landscape design that Downing espoused and that Olmsted himself refined even further. In The Tastemakers, Lynes described the park as follows: Page 24 → Central Park was the first head-on attempt to stem the tide that was engulfing every piece of urban land for real-estate speculation and to stave off the increasing misery of city dwellers entirely imprisoned by brick and stone and mortar and pavement. But further than that Olmsted not only fenced off a piece of land; he converted a swampy, barren, and rocky area into a countryside with lakes and green meadows and grottoes, with hills and groves of trees and gardens. And he did it so skillfully that his plans for underpasses and carriage roads, bridle paths and walks have remained almost unchanged for a century from the time he and Vaux laid them out, and they still work in the age of the automobile. Central Park was a triumph. It set the pattern for many of the great urban parks that were created across the country in subsequent years, and it established Olmsted’s reputation as the preeminent landscape architect and planner in the country. In addition, Central Park gave Olmsted the opportunity to apply many of the concepts of romantic landscape design on a large scale to produce an attractive landscape pattern that dealt with multiple building locations, pedestrian and vehicular circulation, service needs, utilities distribution, and so on—all of the same issues that one must deal with in planning for a university campus. Olmsted’s immense talents were widely recognized around the country, and he was asked to participate in the development of campus plans for many universities, including such places as Cornell, Stanford, and the University of California, Berkeley. His plans were typically based on the nature of the land and the natural environment, as one would expect from a landscape architect, but beyond that, he had a definite philosophy about the planning of university campuses. On the question of location, Olmsted argued in favor of sites that were neither in the country (which he felt would lead to the emptiness of “monastic life” if not influenced by “domestic life” and civilization) nor in the midst of the city (with its many distractions). He argued in favor of a planned suburban location. Another idea of his became known as the “cottage plan” and designated that students would live in a series of large domestic houses, as opposed to traditional dormitories (which he referred to as “large barracks”) or rooming in private houses in the town. Olmsted’s plans themselves were informal in nature and sought to produce a domestically scaled community in a parklike setting. In his 1862 plan for the College of California (fig. 2.16)—later the University of

California, Berkeley—he wrote, Page 25 → I would propose to adopt a picturesque, rather than formal and perfectly symmetrical arrangement, for the two reasons that such an arrangement would better harmonize artistically with the general character desired for the neighborhood, and that it would allow any enlargement or modification of the general plan of building. . . . I may observe that in the large Eastern colleges the original design of arranging all the buildings . . . in a symmetrical way has in every case proved impracticable and been given up, while so far as it has been carried out it is a cause of great inconvenience. Olmsted defended his approach on practical, aesthetic, and moral grounds. Olmsted’s philosophy would seem to be ideally suited to American tastes and biases: a love of nature, a distrust of cities, a professed egalitarianism, a rigid moral code, a practical regard for money, and a faith in democracy. But for some reason, this was not the case. Relatively few of Olmsted’s campus plans were actually implemented. At Stanford, his recommendations were constantly overruled by the donors. He ran afoul of the board of trustees at the Massachusetts Agricultural College. The college authorities at Maine refused to adopt his plan, and his suggestion to abandon Ezra Cornell’s plan for a large quadrangle at Cornell University was ignored. In 1866, after his Massachusetts experience, Olmsted published an article in the Nation entitled “How Not to Establish an Agricultural College,” in which he, like Jefferson, attacked the idea of “large, unmanageable, and inappropriate structures” and argued in favor of constructing “small modest buildings, one after another,” as needs became clearly known. This article attracted the attention of many schools around the country—particularly the newly founded land-grant colleges—and Olmsted was retained to prepare plans for such institutions as Gallaudet College, Penn State, and Hampton Institute. Many of the early land-grant institutions were built along the lines of the informal configuration in a parklike setting advocated by Olmsted, although they did not follow his recommendations for smaller buildings or cottage-style housing. Examples include Michigan State, Iowa State, and Kansas State, among others. Olmsted had an impact on the older schools as well, though not as much in terms of the layout of buildings as in terms of landscaping and roads. Many colleges actually redesigned their grounds to reflect the naturalistic approach to landscape design and to create a parklike setting. This happened at places like Hamilton College, the University of Missouri, and Princeton. But fashions change, and many of the same schools that created romantic landscapes in the nineteenth century changed back to formal landscapes in the twentieth century. In a similar manner, many of the campuses that began with informal, naturalistic campus plans moved to more formal building arrangements as growth took place. Despite Olmsted’s claims, the informal plans did not lend themselves easily to large-scale expansion, especially for the larger building types that Olmsted argued against but that the institutions favored. Some examples of romantic plans have survived—at Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, for instance. The older section of Michigan State is another example, although it, too, has suffered from the impact of the automobile and large-scale buildings. Page 26 → The great impact of Olmsted and his approach to planning lies not so much in his actual plans but in the emphasis that he put on landscaping and the creation of a parklike setting. The elevation of landscape to a position of equal importance with architecture in the development of the campus plan is the enduring legacy of Olmsted and the romantic era. The image of a campus that is held by most Americans today is intimately involved with the landscape—the green setting within which the academic buildings are placed. Simply put, in the minds of most Americans, if you do not have lawns and trees, you just do not have a campus. The romantic plan was the last prototype for campus planning to be created. Dramatically different from all the others, it was not widely employed in the long run. But it never completely disappeared. It is still proposed from time to time—usually in circumstances where topography or natural features make more formal plans difficult to implement or where the site can be used to best advantage with a more informal arrangement. As recently as the

1960s, an informal master plan for the University of California, Santa Cruz, was adopted in an effort to make the best use of the forest of mature redwoods in which the campus was located. But by and large, as campus planning evolved, the romantic plan became the exception rather than the rule. The other prototypes, which lent themselves more easily to formal arrangement and to combining with each other, came to dominate. The informal, naturalistic layouts favored by the romantics are not common among the university Page 27 → campuses that exist today, but the essential place of landscape in the image of the American campus is the enduring legacy of Downing, Olmsted, and the romantic movement.

THE VICTORIAN ERA, 1860–1900 Major wars represent landmarks in the history of nations and civilizations because they often usher in significant changes in the societies that engage in them. This was certainly the case with the American Civil War. The nation that entered the war was overwhelmingly agrarian—with some commercial centers, like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, and New Orleans—and at the very early stages of industrial development. The war accelerated the process of industrialization dramatically, particularly in the north, and also began the process of migration from the farms to the cities. Philosophically, this was the time of laissez-faire economics, social Darwinism, the glorification of the individual, and a freewheeling, no-holds-barred type of entrepreneurship. Prominent industrialists, bankers, and speculators amassed great fortunes that they expended both in the building of great palatial houses and other acts of self-glorification and in philanthropic activities such as the support of learning and of educational institutions. The fortunes of families like the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Drews, Stanfords, Carnegies, Cornells, Dukes, and Rices were expended lavishly on higher education, either in founding new institutions or in supporting the expansion of existing campuses. But while the barons of the Gilded Age invested heavily in higher education, both to build more monuments to themselves and because of a genuine faith in the power of education to improve the lot of their fellow citizens and of society as a whole, they did not possess a similar faith in the value of long-range planning. The emphasis was on expediency, on achieving the immediate goal and producing a quick payoff. The idea of working in accordance with a long-range plan, or of sacrificing some short-term advantage in the interest of a greater long-term good, was not widely appreciated or supported. American cities entered a period of rapid and largely uncontrolled expansion. City plans like that of New York, which assisted real estate speculation, were adhered to, but investment in public amenities was often lacking. While New York did invest in the acquisition of Central Park before the Civil War, a number of smaller parks and squares in the more heavily developed southern end of the island were utilized for building development. In Washington, DC, portions of the great mall proposed in L’Enfant’s original plan for the city in 1791 were used for railroad tracks and terminals. When the development of cities such as Philadelphia, Charleston, Washington, and Savannah—which had originally been laid out in accordance with a master plan—reached the limits of their plan layouts, no attempt was made to extend the concepts of the original plans into the newly developing areas. The nature of the new areas was determined largely by the desires of the real estate developers and local (often corrupt) politicians. This process led to the degeneration of our cities and the beginnings of the decline of urban life. It was in reaction to this decline that people began to move to the suburbs. In Europe, where the Industrial Revolution had caused the degeneration of the urban environment even earlier than in America, urban planners and theorists were proposing ways to restore the quality of that environment. Both the Stadtebau movement in Germany and Austria and the Garden Cities movement in England proposed a variety of concepts aimed at improving the quality of urban life, and those ideas slowly made their way to the United States. A handful of architects, planners, theorists, and leaders of the design professions were aware of them and endeavored to spread and gain support for them, but not until the end of the nineteenth century would they gain a broad base of support. In the meantime, unplanned, poorly coordinated development often predominated. In the area of higher education, many similar things were happening, for a number of reasons. One important change was the expansion of higher education to encompass such areas as “agriculture and the mechanic arts.” In pre–Civil War colleges, the classical curriculum reigned supreme. Colleges of that time were intended to train members of the Page 28 → clergy and educated gentlemen, and fields such as agriculture, engineering, and

architecture were then regarded as mere trades, unworthy of inclusion in a college curriculum. But many Americans believed that such fields should be included in the realm of higher education. Prior to the Civil War, a few such institutions were founded—Michigan State and Penn State, for example—but in 1862, the U.S. Congress passed the Land-Grant College Act (or Morrill Act). This law, named in honor of its major proponent, Senator Justin Morrill of Vermont, provided for the establishment of colleges for agricultural and mechanical education in each state. It allotted each state a share of government lands that were to be sold so that the proceeds could be used to establish such colleges. The individual states chose to use their funds in different ways: some gave them to existing public or private institutions; many others chose to found entirely new institutions. Whichever option was chosen, the result was a dramatic expansion of the system of higher education in the United States. The new institutions shared certain basic goals, including promotion of practical education, access to higher education for all social classes, and the freedom of students to choose their course of study. Thus the land-grant colleges served to broaden the base of higher education as well as to increase the number of institutions available to meet the demand. Many of the new institutions adopted a romantic-style plan, often by Olmsted, to guide the initial phase of their development. This type of plan seemed to be consistent with the agricultural and populist nature of the new institutions, since it emphasized the natural landscape setting over formal architectural groupings. It also gave architects the freedom to deal with each new building as an isolated project rather than requiring them to adapt their design to some larger concept of architectural or urban design (fig. 2.17). At the older institutions, too, the Victorian era was a period of growth and expansion. Several factors accounted for this. First was the growing importance of research and the transformation of many institutions from colleges to true universities. Prior to the Civil War, research played a relatively small role in American institutions of higher education. A few individuals who were acquainted with the German universities and the role that research played in them—notably President Tappan of Michigan—attempted to introduce a strong research component into the American university. The observatory and chemical laboratory that were built on the Ann Arbor campus as early as the 1850s were clear evidence of this effort. But not until after the Civil War did this idea become more broadly accepted. New schools such as Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and Chicago made research an important part of their academic mission, and such established institutions as Harvard, Yale, and Michigan gave an increasingly prominent role to research. In addition, the existing institutions began to broaden their range of offerings, and fields such as engineering, architecture, education, and business began to take their place alongside the older disciplines of theology, philosophy, law, and medicine. In the process of making these changes, the schools transformed themselves from small liberal arts colleges into true universities. A second factor fueling the expansion of higher education during the Victorian era was the growing wealth of the country. As mentioned earlier, those who had achieved great wealth often used a part of their fortune in support of higher education, whether by establishing new universities or, more commonly, Page 29 → by funding new buildings or programs for their alma mater. In addition, members of the growing middle class were in a position to send their sons and, in some cases, daughters off to college, and they became increasingly aware of the advantages of doing so. The land-grant colleges often offered a tuition-free education, thus making higher education available to even less-prosperous members of society. Even farmers could allow their children to go off to college during the winter (so long as they were available for planting and harvesting season), and the work of the agricultural extension services operated by the land-grant institutions was effectively demonstrating the value of higher education to the farming community. A final factor influencing the growth of higher education during this period was the growth of the population of the country. Between 1860 and 1900, the population of the United States expanded from 33,443,321 to 75,994,375. Much of this growth was attributable to the massive waves of immigrants arriving in this country each year from Europe and Asia. Regardless of their reasons for leaving their native land, most of these immigrants viewed America as a land of opportunity and dreamed of creating a better life for themselves and especially for their children. Despite the hardships they had to endure, many of these immigrants saw education as a vehicle to provide a better life for their children, and they worked hard and sacrificed much to give their children a college

education, thereby increasing the demand for higher education. As noted earlier, college administrators responded to these societal forces both by founding new institutions and by expanding existing ones. Growth was the order of the day, but the management of this growth so as to create an environment of beauty and order proved to be a more elusive goal. This was not a period in which planning was held in high regard, and there was no general consensus among Americans about the need for master plans to guide the growth of the physical environment. While some enlightened leaders in the field of higher education did endeavor to create and follow master plans, much of the development that took place was carried out on a projectby-project basis, with little or no regard for conformity with an overall plan. This is not to say that no master plans were prepared during this period. Ezra Cornell drew up one for his new campus in Ithaca, New York. His plan called for the buildings to be arranged around a large quadrangle, one thousand feet long on each side. These dimensions ignored some of the topographic realities of the site, and the quadrangle that was eventually developed was reduced to an area of one thousand by seven hundred feet. The idea of the quadrangle, however, proved to be a good one, and as the campus developed well beyond Cornell’s original concept, additional quadrangles were added, resulting in an orderly and visually attractive campus. Many of the other land-grant institutions chose to follow Olmsted’s concept for a romantic campus plan shaped by the natural features of a site, rather than a preconceived form such as a quadrangle, mall, row, or court. Such plans were developed for Michigan State, Iowa State, Kansas State, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Maine, and the University of Missouri, among others. Though they seemed ideally suited to the nature of the schools and the realities of the era, these romantic plans, featuring modest buildings placed informally along meandering roads around a central park, proved to be limited in their ability to grow and tended to promote isolation of one academic unit from another, rather than promoting academic collegiality. Ultimately, many of the schools that had originally developed according to a romantic plan moved to more traditional forms as their campuses grew and developed. The legacy of the first phase of development can often still be found in a core area of romantic landscape that, in its mature form, provides a beautiful green image at the center of a campus. The story was different at the older, established campuses. Many of them had been built in accordance with earlier plans developed for the small liberal arts colleges of the pre–Civil War era. But as the pressures of post–Civil War expansion caused the colleges to build more and more new buildings, they outgrew the limits of their original plans and had to site new buildings and develop new lands beyond the boundaries originally anticipated. At other points in history, the natural thing to do has been simply to update and expand the master plan and then to site buildings in accordance with the revised plan, thereby assuring continuity in Page 30 → the development of the campus and the preservation of the best features of the earlier period of development. Unfortunately, in all too many cases in the post–Civil War era, this did not happen. The vogue for informal naturalistic landscaping, combined with the societal disinterest in long-range planning and preference for pragmatism, led to an era of “planless” growth on many campuses. Buildings were sited based on the needs of the individual project or the availability of space, without reference to an overall design concept or master plan. In many cases, the result was a group of unrelated or poorly related buildings that produced a sense of disorder rather than “naturalness.” The landscape was the saving grace. Many campuses redid their open spaces in a romantic style of landscape, and the resulting green fabric of lawn and trees served to tie the campus together and soften the impact of the disorderly placement of the buildings. But as more and more buildings were added and the density of development increased, even a beautiful landscape treatment could not conceal the disorder that had come to characterize many American campuses. In a 1905 memo to Professor Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard University, the distinguished architect Daniel Burnham described what had happened to the Harvard campus over the course of the preceding fifty years. Fifty years ago Harvard College possessed buildings of simple construction and unpretentious character, built of similar material, of the same style and color, and so located with reference to one another as to present the appearance of a well-ordered group. Harvard College now possesses many buildings of expensive construction but of unrelated architecture and so located with reference to one another as to give an impression of incongruity. Lack of reciprocal arrangement coupled with absence of uniformity in style, color and scale has produced this condition. Each of the buildings erected in recent years has seemed to assert itself and clash with its neighbor, so that, in spite of the architectural

excellence of certain of them individually considered, the total effect is disorderly.

Not every plan produced during the Gilded Age was conceived in the romantic style. Even in the heyday of the romantic movement, a few institutions were still developing master plans designed along classical lines. An interesting case in point was the 1876 plan for Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Trinity was founded in 1823 by members of the Episcopal Church who had been struggling with the dominant Congregational Church to obtain a charter since before the Revolutionary War. The original fourteen-acre site was located on what is now the site of the state capitol and consisted of a fine collegiate row of three buildings in the Federal style. In 1872, the state decided to acquire the college property as a site for the new state capitol, and the college acquired a new, eighty-acre site about one and a half miles southwest of the old one. The eminent English architect William Burges was commissioned to prepare a master plan that would guide the growth of the institution over a long period of years. Trinity president Rev. Dr. Abner Jackson stated that “a well-established literary institution with a long future before it, might well, if it had the opportunity, provide plans for erecting as parts of a harmonious whole all the buildings that it could possibly need for many years.” The plan that finally emerged for Trinity College was based on three tightly enclosed quadrangles of the type that characterize the English university (fig. 2.18). There was to be a large central quadrangle, six hundred by three hundred feet, which was to be flanked by two smaller quadrangles, each three hundred feet square. The architecture was to be “early secular French Gothic.” The large central quadrangle was later divided by a wing with a central tower, yielding a plan based on four quadrangles of approximately equal size. Despite the disciplined nature of the design, it was not expected that the whole plan could be accomplished at once, or indeed, in the time of one generation; but Dr. Jackson felt certain that in a short time the college would be better provided for on its new site than had ever been the case in the old buildings. Page 31 → Unfortunately, the amount of construction required to accomplish this plan was in keeping with the needs of a great university rather than a small (though excellent) liberal arts college, which Trinity remains to this day. Over the years, the college has built a number of projects in accordance with the plan. At other times, it has built on sites totally different from the quadrangular layout proposed by Burges. What has resulted after more than one hundred years of building is the long side of the central quadrangle along Summit Street and the two end walls. The form that has been created is an open court rather than a quadrangle (let alone the four quadrangles proposed by Burges). The Trinity plan illustrates the opposite extreme from the romantic plans, both in form and concept. It was conceived as a visionary, long-term plan to guide the growth of the campus over a period of many decades. Unfortunately, it was not well grounded in the realities of the academic mission or financial capabilities of the institution. The college has worked conscientiously for over one hundred years to implement the plan, but the enclosed quadrangular campus envisioned by Burges has not yet been created. In the example of Trinity, then, we see the fallacies of the Victorian era with regard to planning: on the one hand, the tendency to develop the campus without the benefit of a master plan and, on the other, the tendency to develop unrealistic and overblown “grand visions” that could not be and were not implemented.

THE WHITE CITY AND THE BEAUX ARTS ERA, 1900–1950 The overall result of the post–Civil War era was a dramatic deterioration both in the quality of life that took place in America’s cities and in elements of the built environment. By the last decade of the century, problems were evident and were being documented by the muckrakers and by the writing of people like Jacob Riis. In The Devil in the White City, author Eric Larson offers the following description of Chicago circa 1890: As the firm grew, so did the city. It got bigger, taller, and richer; but it also grew dirtier, darker, and more dangerous. A miasma of cinder-flecked smoke blackened its streets and at times reduced visibility to the distance of a single block, especially in winter, when coal furnaces were in full roar. The ceaseless passage of trains, grip-cars, trolleys, carriages—surreys, landaus, victorias, broughams,

phaetons, and hearses, all with iron-clad wheels that struck the pavement like rolling hammers—produced a constant thunder that did not recede until after midnight and made the openwindow nights of summer unbearable. In poor neighborhoods garbage mounded in alleys and overflowed giant trash boxes that became banquet halls for rats and bluebottle flies. Billions of flies. The corpses of dogs, cats, and horses often remained where they fell. In January they froze into disheartening poses; in August they ballooned and ruptured. Many ended up in the Chicago River, the city’s main commercial artery. During heavy rains, river water flowed in a greasy plume far out into Lake Michigan, to the towers that marked the intake pipes for the city’s drinking water. In rain any street not paved with macadam oozed a fragrant muck of horse manure, mud, and garbage that swelled between granite blocks like pus from a wound. (27–28)

Similar accounts could be written about most large American cities in the latter part of the nineteenth century. What was needed now were solutions and a way to show the American people that a better living environment could be created. In the field of urban planning and city development, the event that served this purpose was the great World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. As early as 1882, the idea of celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World with an international exposition was put Page 32 → forward by Dr. T. W. Zaremba to a group of leading citizens of New York City. Initially, there was not much interest in the idea, but Dr. Zaremba continued to push it, and by the end of the decade, a number of major cities expressed interest. In 1889, Senator Cullom of Illinois introduced a bill to provide for such an exposition, and in February 1890, after much wrangling, Chicago was designated as the site. A national commission was formed, and financial assistance was provided by the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois. The advice of Frederick Law Olmsted was sought in determining the exact location, and after consulting with Daniel Burnham, one of the city’s leading architects, he recommended a site south of the Loop, in the area of Jackson Park. The general planning of the site was entrusted to a group consisting of Olmsted, Burnham, A. Gottlieb (consulting engineer), and Harry Codman (Olmsted’s partner). Olmsted, familiar with the site because he had prepared a plan for Jackson Park several years earlier, understood the problems and potentials it offered, and these site considerations lent themselves to the development of a formal plan. The planners of the Columbian Exposition benefited from the experiences of other international expositions that had taken place over the past two decades. The Philadelphia exposition of 1876 had located the buildings in an almost haphazard manner that failed to produce a sense of order or aesthetic harmony (typical of the time). The planners of the Chicago fair determined to avoid this mistake. The European expositions that took place in Vienna in 1873 and Paris in 1878 and 1889 employed symmetrical plans, with classical-style buildings facing a formal central mall. The result was far superior, and the Chicago planners resolved to adopt this approach. On December 1, 1890, the site plan for the fair was adopted by the commission. Although many of the details remained to be worked out, all the basic elements of the final plan were there: the formal canal, with the Grand Basin and the adjoining court surrounded by the principal buildings; and beyond that, the informal lagoon and island park, which served to separate the major buildings from the numerous minor ones and state exhibits (fig. 2.19). By January 10, 1891, the architects agreed that the classical style should be adopted for the five major buildings. Many of the details were worked out, and the builders agreed on a uniform cornice line. This unified composition of classical buildings grouped around the central court came to be known as the “White City.” In February, preliminary sketches were presented at a meeting that included the noted sculptor Augustus SaintGaudens, who had been asked to advise on sculptural decoration and on the selection of artists to execute the various sculptures and fountains. At the end of the meeting, Burnham said that Saint-Gaudens, who had not said a word during the meeting, “came over to me, and taking both my hands said, ‘Look here, old fellow, do you realize that this is the greatest meeting of artists since the fifteenth century!’”

The fair proved to be a great success, as judged by popular acclaim, local enthusiasm, and national and Page 33 → international publicity. In the introduction to one of the numerous books about the event, Thomas Palmer, the president of the fair commission, wrote these prophetic words: As an educational force and inspiration I believe the buildings, their groupings, and laying out of the grounds will in themselves do more good in a general way than the exhibits themselves, by the exaltation that it will inspire in every man, woman, and child who may have any emotions, and who has none, that may come to view it. In his book The Making of Urban America, John Reps added, Palmer was right. The Chicago Fair of 1893 changed the architectural taste of the nation and led to a new direction in American city planning. The sight of the gleaming white buildings disposed symmetrically around the formal court of honor, with their domes and columns echoing the classic buildings of antiquity, impressed almost every visitor. In comparison, the earlier Philadelphia exposition of 1876 seemed almost crude and unfinished. And in contrast with the dingy industrial cities of late nineteenth-century America, the Fair seemed a vision of some earthly paradise that might yet be created in the coming era. (498) The fair had captured the imagination of America, and this led to a revival of interest in city planning and the benefits it could bring to the urban environment. City after city began to work on the development and implementation of new master plans. In an address to the first great international meeting of city planners held in London in 1910, Daniel Burnham chronicled the progression of work undertaken by his office. The inception of great planning of public buildings and grounds in the United States was in the World’s Fair in Chicago. The beauty of its arrangement and of its building made a profound impression not merely upon the highly educated part of the community, but still more perhaps upon the masses, and this impression has been a lasting one. As a first result of the object lesson the Government took up the torch and proceeded to make a comprehensive plan for the future development of the capital. Since then every considerable town in the country has gone into this study, and there are many hundreds of plan commissions at work at the present time throughout the United States. Then came the plan of Manila. . . . Next came Cleveland, Ohio. . . . Then came San Francisco, where an association of private men undertook to back the work; then Chicago, where the work was undertaken by the Commercial Club, which appointed a committee of fifteen of its members to conduct the enterprise. Burnham was not the only one at work on master plans for American cities. Men such as Nolen, Robinson, Brunner, and the younger Olmsted were all at work creating new master plans for American cities large and small. In 1915, the city of Ann Arbor engaged Olmsted’s firm to prepare a master plan and a parks plan. The University of Michigan provided a portion of the funding required for this undertaking, and recommendations for areas of the campus were included in the effort. A general wave of revived interest in city planning was sweeping across the country and came to be known as the “City Beautiful” movement, and the dominant approach to urban and architectural design that accompanied it was known as the “Beaux Arts” style. It derived its name from the École de Beaux Arts in Paris, where many of the principal designers of the era had received their training and espoused a classical approach to design based on the use of Greco-Roman precedents in architecture and the creation of formal, often symmetrical plazas and open spaces in urban design, all related to one another on the basis of formal, axial relationships.

CAMPUS PLANNING IN THE BEAUX ARTS ERA The general revival of interest in planning in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coincided with a remarkable period in the development of American higher education and led to a renewed interest in campus as well as city planning. The growing population kept expanding the demand for higher

education, and the growing wealth of the country meant that more money than ever became available to America’s colleges and universities. The response on the part of higher education took several different forms. In a number of instances, new campuses were created with the financial backing of the ultrarich. This was the case at Vanderbilt, Stanford, Chicago, Rice, Duke, and elsewhere. In other cases, established institutions chose to relocate their campus from cramped and landlocked parcels in the center of a city to brand-new campuses on the outskirts, as at Penn, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Washington. But the response in most cases was the expansion of the existing campus through the acquisition of adjacent land and the construction of new buildings (fig. 2.20). Michigan employed a combined strategy of expanding the existing campus and relocating some activities to new campuses. Regardless of which strategy was adopted, the development of the campus was now to take place within the context of a comprehensive master plan. The nation’s finest building architects, landscape architects, and planners were engaged to prepare these plans, and they produced a remarkable series of physical plans that usually functioned effectively to guide the growth of the universities throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Page 34 → To be sure, there were exceptions. The most famous was the well-known but ill-fated Bénard plan for the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. Bénard was the winner of the 1899 Phoebe Apperson Hearst Competition for a new campus master plan, but when he refused to leave his native Paris to become university architect and oversee the implementation of his plan, the university was forced to hire someone else for the position: John Galen Howard, another architect who had placed fourth in the competition. Howard immediately discarded the Bénard plan in favor of his own and proceeded to implement it rather than the competition-winning plan—a fate shared by many winning plans of American architectural competitions. But this was the exception when it came to campus master planning. The vast majority of the plans proved to be highly effective tools for guiding the physical growth of the institutions that used them, and a few, such as the plan for Rice University, are still essentially in use today. Page 35 → The approach employed by the Beaux Arts designers utilized the basic forms that had already been established for the American campus (quadrangle, row, court, and mall), but in order to accommodate the demands of a growing campus, they repeated the forms and linked them together by means of a series of axial relationships. Thus one might find a series of linked quadrangles, as at Chicago (fig. 2.21), Columbia (fig. 2.22), or Stanford; quadrangles and courts, as at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; quadrangles and courts grouped along a central axis, as at Illinois, Rice, Reed, or Minnesota; or even a multiaxial plan, as at Johns Hopkins, the University of Washington, LSU, and the University of California, Berkeley (fig. 2.23). Each plan was tailored to the specific conditions of site and climate and to the academic program of the institution it was designed to serve, which accounts for the variety of configurations that were developed. There was a remarkable consistency to the classical axial approach. A few schools, such as Princeton, adhered to the nonsymmetrical, informal relationship of plan elements that characterized the campuses of Oxford and Cambridge. This approach was entirely consistent with the Collegiate Gothic architecture employed in the rebuilding of the Princeton campus in the early twentieth century, and in the case of Princeton, it produced a campus of great beauty and distinction. Interestingly, the Collegiate Gothic style of the Princeton buildings became very popular on American campuses and ultimately came to rival the classical style in popularity. But on most other campuses, even the Gothic buildings were placed in accordance with the Beaux Arts principles of axial organization and spatial order, a tribute to the dominance of this approach to urban design in the early twentieth century. The Beaux Arts approach, which had solved the problem of providing for campus expansion that had proved such an issue for the early plans, produced a number of campuses of great beauty and harmony. But it, too, had its problems, and in the second half of the twentieth century, a new approach to planning would emerge that was more appropriate to the needs of that era. Nevertheless, the Beaux Arts plans left many institutions with a legacy of beauty and harmony that is unmatched by any other period. Page 36 →

The first three decades of the twentieth century in America saw a period of university physical expansion unrivaled in any previous era. A growing and prosperous nation provided funds for campus expansion, which growing enrollments made necessary. The growth that took place was guided by a series of master plans developed in accordance with the prevailing Beaux Arts principles. In the 1920s, a period of great prosperity, many new building projects took place throughout the country, but they mainly took the form of implementing master plans that had been created earlier. Those new plans that were developed followed the Beaux Arts approach and did not introduce any major innovations in the philosophy of campus planning. But with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, the pace of construction slowed to a crawl, and the era of dramatic growth came to Page 37 → an end. To be sure, some building activity did occur during the 1930s, but the projects were few and far between. By the end of the decade, federal programs such as the Works Projects Administration and Public Works Administration were beginning to fund projects on university campuses, but the work that took place did not seem to warrant new master plans or a new approach to planning. Essentially, they were designed and built in conformance with the existing Beaux Arts master plans. World War II brought campus construction to a virtual halt. All of the resources and energy of the nation were focused on winning the war, and private construction was deferred until after the conclusion of hostilities. But despite the lack of construction, some planning did take place during this period. The government was worried that the war might be followed by another depression and that a new public works program might be required. Therefore, universities were asked to prepare plans for facilities expansion that might be implemented quickly, should the need materialize. These plans also tended to follow the Beaux Arts approach to campus design and represented largely an update or expansion of the earlier plans rather than a new direction in campus planning. Thus, for the first half of the twentieth century, the Beaux Arts approach to campus design was the dominant force in American campus planning.

POST–WORLD WAR II: THE MODERNIST MOVEMENT AND THE FRAMEWORK APPROACH TO PLANNING Like the Civil War, World War II marked a major watershed in the development of American civilization and the role of higher education in that civilization. The war had inspired many technological and scientific advances that had often originated from within institutions of higher education and that had to be incorporated into the body of knowledge with which education dealt. New buildings were needed that would incorporate these new technologies and allow researchers to continue their work and apply it to the problems facing society. The kinds of spaces needed to accomplish these objectives were often inconsistent with the traditional size, shapes, and forms of the buildings that characterized the Beaux Arts era of campus development. Attempts to adapt traditional colonial, Gothic, or classical buildings to the needs of sophisticated medical, engineering, or scientific research buildings often led to curious and unattractive results. Something else was needed. At the same time that the needs of the users were changing, the philosophy of the architectural profession itself was changing. Since the beginning of the century, a new approach to architectural design had been growing in Europe. It was known as the “modern” movement, and its members argued that architects and designers should not base their designs on historical precedents such as the Gothic or classical styles but, rather, should develop an entirely new approach to architecture based on the new technologies and materials available to the twentiethcentury designer in the “machine age.” They contended that architecture should celebrate these new technologies and materials and express them on both the interior and exterior of the buildings rather than hiding them beneath a coating of classical or Gothic motifs. Respect for historical continuity declined, and each new project came to be viewed as a “tub on its own bottom,” with little responsibility to relate to the architecture of the existing environment or the design themes of an overall master plan. Lip service was often given to the idea of “context,” but the projects that emerged usually showed little respect for it in their actual designs. Functionality was stressed, and “decoration” of buildings for aesthetic purposes was condemned. The result of this approach is the legacy of modernist buildings of the 1950s through the 1970s, most of which are now held in low esteem. The modernist movement grew steadily in Europe prior to World War II, led by men like Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. In the United States, it found few champions other than Frank Lloyd Wright, and even he did not identify himself with the European movement. After the war, however, developers

and builders discovered that buildings designed along modernist lines could be erected both quickly and economically, and they embraced the movement widely. In addition, many of the leading advocates of the modern movement had Page 38 → immigrated to this country during the war and had gained positions of great influence in the architectural profession. For example, Gropius and Mies van der Rohe were appointed to deanships at Harvard and the Illinois Institute of Technology, respectively. Some of their associates joined the faculties of many institutions of higher education, where they spread the gospel of modernism to both students and practicing architects. The concept of modernism spread quickly, and by the 1950s, it had become the dominant approach to architectural and urban design in the United States. A final major trend that would influence the development of the American campus was the explosion in demand for and access to higher education that followed World War II. At the conclusion of the war, the government passed a piece of legislation known as the GI Bill of Rights. It provided a free or extremely low-cost college education for all veterans of World War II. It was later extended to cover veterans of the Korean War. The overwhelming majority of veterans took advantage of this program, and the result was a dramatic explosion of enrollments in the late 1940s. In Campus: An American Planning Tradition, Paul Venable Turner describes the growth as follows: In 1947, a presidential commission on higher education described the “phenomenal” expansion of enrollments that had already begun, with over two million students in American colleges. By 1951 the increases had leveled off a bit, but in the following decade enrollments jumped to over four million, as greater proportions of the population went to college (from 24 percent in 1951 to 37 percent in 1961). The words “desperate,” “unprecedented,” and “terrifying” were commonly used to describe this “educational explosion,” and projections of future enrollments became a major preoccupation of educators and college planners. By 1962 it was reported that nearly all of the roughly two thousand institutions of higher education in America had plans for expansion and that two hundred entirely new campuses were being planned or were under construction. The following year, an observer called higher education “one of the most spectacular growth industries.” (249–50) Growth now became inevitable. The veterans who were educated under the GI Bill were determined that their children (the baby boomers) would also attend college, and the same was true of the boomers’ expectations for their own children. Growth had become the order of the day in higher education, and as enrollments grew, so did the number of programs and offerings designed to satisfy the interests of an increasingly diverse student body. Of course, this growth led to a demand for the expansion of university facilities. But the challenge of planning for this new “multiversity” campus was becoming much more complex. Not only did the university have to provide traditional elements such as classrooms, laboratories, and dormitories, but now it was called on to provide parking, housing for married students, efficient roadways and transportation systems, and more. The problem of campus planning was no longer the design of an attractive, small academic precinct but, rather, the design of a small city. The first buildings that were sited and designed in the postwar period were usually placed on sites identified in earlier Beaux Arts plans and were often designed in a relatively traditional style, but it soon became apparent that this approach was inadequate for the realities of the postwar university. The demand for space was critical, and in the haste to acquire new space, decisions began to be made on a project-by-project basis. It appeared as though universities were returning to an era of unplanned growth reminiscent of the post–Civil War era. The placement and design of buildings from the 1950s and early 1960s suggest that this was happening. In a few cases, such as the Illinois Institute of Technology (fig. 2.24), the United States Air Force Academy, the Chicago Circle campus of the University of Illinois (fig. 2.25), and Foothill Junior College in California (most of which were new campuses built all at once), effective master plans were created. But a new approach was needed at most of the older schools. Fortunately, the general climate of society at the middle of the twentieth century was very different from that at the middle of the nineteenth. There was widespread interest in and support for planning and improving the quality of the environment in America. Even though it led to some ill-advised programs, such as urban renewal, many sound programs—such as historic preservation; control of air and water pollution; the interstate highway system;

expansion of federal, state, and local park systems; and revitalization of downtown areas—were all coming into being. In academia, too, the need for effective planning was recognized. In the 1950s, the University of California, under the leadership of Clark Kerr, developed a comprehensive planning approach and a set of space-planning standards to apply to the new campuses as well as to the existing ones, which had to be expanded to meet the rapidly growing demand. By the 1960s, most states were planning and building new campuses or expanding existing ones in a significant way, and it was widely recognized that this growth needed to take place within the context of effective master planning. The old Beaux Arts type of planning lacked the flexibility to adapt to the realities of postwar university needs. But a group of individuals from within the universities themselves and from the outside design professions recognized the problem and set about developing a solution. Page 39 → The prewar campus plans had been based on a relatively fixed vision of higher education and the nature of the university. But these time-honored “givens” could no longer be relied on as the basis for a physical plan. Enrollments were becoming difficult to anticipate, and projections were unreliable; curricula were changing rapidly and often moving in unanticipated directions; the nature of the student body was becoming more diverse, with different needs; universities were expanding rapidly into nontraditional areas such as funded research—all these changes were having a profound effect on the nature of the university. The automobile had a major impact on the campus, and traditional building forms were inadequate for meeting the needs of modern technology. Some even asked if there were any consistent elements on which to base a physical plan. The planners responded to this question by accepting that it was no longer appropriate to base a master plan on predetermined building shapes and footprints or to impose a single architectural style on all new buildings. But they continued to believe that it would be possible to create a physical planning framework to guide the growth of the campus, based on other factors. They began to identify a series of enduring elements of campus structure—such as the relationship between the campus and the surrounding community; the transportation network; basic academic organization patterns; walkway patterns; and, most significantly, patterns of open spaces and landscapes—that, if taken together, could provide a long-term framework within which individual siting decisions and building designs could be developed (fig. 2.26). A prominent example of this approach is the University of Michigan’s 1963 Central Campus Planning Study (described more fully in chapter 6). The framework approach was widely employed at established campuses, where the problem was mainly one of filling in or expanding an existing environment. At new campuses, where the issue was more the creation of an entirely new image, a more traditional architectural approach was still appropriate and effective. Places such as the University of Illinois at Chicago, Cleveland State, Simon Frasier, and Stockton State display the strong hand of a master architect. But as these campuses grew beyond the initial phase of development and as architectural and design tastes changed, the framework approach was often adopted for them as well. Page 40 → In the late 1970s and early 1980s, critics began to question some of the fundamental assumptions that had guided modern architecture since World War II. Two influential books, From Bauhaus to Our House by Thomas Wolfe and Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by the respected architect Robert Venturi, began to cast doubts on whether or not modernist buildings and planning were producing the kind of environment that people enjoyed and could relate to. They suggested that the older designers had done a better job in this regard than the modernists and that something could be gained by learning from these earlier periods and incorporating the things they did well into designs for new projects. This led to a movement in architecture known as “postmodernism” and to a movement in planning known as “neo-traditional town planning” or, later, “new urbanism.” This ideological shift, combined with a growing popular interest in issues like historic preservation, environmental protection, and recycling, led many institutions to a new appreciation of their older buildings and a more conscious effort to design in a way that would complement the historic architectural context of a campus rather than ignoring it. This, in turn, placed greater emphasis once again on the architecture of the campus buildings and led to the creation of tools such as campus “design guidelines,” campus historic districts, and the adaptive reuse of existing buildings to assure continuity and compatibility in the architectural design of new buildings and the

renovation of older ones (fig. 2.27). Page 41 → By the final decade of the twentieth century, one additional phenomenon began to impact the design of campuses and their buildings: the growing use of “star” architects. Whether resulting from a genuine desire to upgrade the quality of campus architecture, an effort to enhance the public image of the institution through the use of attention-getting architecture, a personal ego trip on the part of a university president or wealthy donor, or a combination of all three of these factors, universities are increasingly employing the services of big-name architects to design major projects on their campuses. Since these star architects are very much in demand, the university is not in a good position to impose design constraints or guidelines on them, and the campus itself is at the mercy of their individual design philosophies and prejudices. Many of these architects have displayed great sensitivity to the context within which their project is placed and have produced outstanding buildings that have greatly enhanced the overall quality of the campus. But a university employing a star architect risks getting the next step in the architect’s personal design evolution rather than a solution that is well adapted to the individual character and needs of a particular campus. Such unfortunate outcomes have, in fact, occurred. As universities entered the twenty-first century, both architecture and planning became characterized by competing schools of thought. How these competing philosophies resolve their different views will have a significant impact on the nature and appearance of the twenty-first-century campus. Almost four hundred years of architectural design evolution have left an indelible stamp on the appearance of the American campus, and this stamp is likely to be with us for many years to come. But a campus is more than any one building—no matter how distinguished. If a beautiful and harmonious environment is to be produced and maintained, the role of the master plan is absolutely critical. In 1905, after describing the disorder that characterized the Harvard campus at that time, Daniel Burnham observed, That the condition outlined above has arisen in spite of the employment by the university of able and experienced architects is proof enough that no good results can be achieved through building operations uncontrolled by a general plan. Beautiful buildings, if inharmonious, will never constitute a beautiful group; and no beauty of general effect will result from the casual work of architects separately employed in the design of buildings bearing no fixed relation to one another in general scheme. Even a well-meant effort on the part of a thoughtful architect to follow a plan of his own devising for a part of a general scheme, will fail through the employment of an independent successor. Page 42 → One hundred years later, this observation still retains its validity.

CONCLUSION Throughout the course of its almost four-hundred-year evolution, the American university campus has emerged as a unique and widely recognized and admired prototype of urban design. This evolution has witnessed many changes in organization patterns, architectural styles, and approaches to design utilizing open spaces and landscapes. But despite all this change, the three basic building blocks of a well-planned and well-designed campus have remained constant. Buildings not only provide the enclosed space in which the academic and social life of the university takes place but also establish the architectural style and character of the campus. Open spaces and landscapes provide the elements of continuity that bind together the various components of the campus into a single entity, and they soften and humanize the overall campus environment. A discernible pattern of order facilitates the efficient use of campus land and creates a comprehendible and rational campus image.

Without these three elements, you may have a collection of distinguished buildings or a beautiful park, but you do not have a campus. The following chapters will describe the development of the University of Michigan campus at Ann Arbor and the plans that were created to guide that development process so as to incorporate these three fundamental elements. Page 43 →

ANECDOTE: THE PROFESSORS’ MONUMENT It has been said that all great universities are located adjacent to a cemetery. In the case of Michigan, Forest Hill Cemetery adjoins the Central Campus and the Medical Center, and Arborcrest Memorial Park adjoins the North Campus. But in the early days, Michigan went a step further and actually established a cemetery near the center of its forty-acre campus. It was never used and has long since been forgotten, but one remnant of the cemetery remains on the campus today. At the heart of the Central Campus, near the southeast corner of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, stands a little-noticed sculptural element known as the Professors’ Monument. It is a broken column mounted on a classical pedestal bearing the names of four of the first faculty members. The original engraving is barely legible, so the inscriptions have been reproduced on bronze plaques mounted next to the base. The professors memorialized by the broken column (a symbol of a life cut short) are Douglas Houghton, professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology; Samuel Denton, professor of medicine; Joseph Whiting, professor of Greek and Latin; and Charles Fox, the university’s first and only professor of agriculture. (In 1855, an agricultural school was established in East Lansing, thereby eliminating the need for a professor of agriculture at the University of Michigan.) The monument was originally commissioned from William Peters in 1846 to stand in the campus cemetery, which had been established by the regents in 1845 to provide a final resting place for professors who might not have the means to be buried elsewhere. The cemetery was never used and was eliminated in 1856. It was located just east of where the Hatcher library now stands and encompassed approximately one acre. This monument has proved remarkably mobile for a piece of stone. In the years after the cemetery was abolished, it was moved about the campus on six different occasions, to different locations around the central forty acres, until finally arriving at its present site in 1918. An additional move was contemplated in the mid-1990s but was abandoned. Thus the monument seems to have found a permanent home, very close to where it began its wanderings 150 years ago.

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CHAPTER 3 ALEXANDER JACKSON DAVIS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE ANN ARBOR CAMPUS, 1837–1860 On March 18, 1837, the newly created Michigan legislature adopted a comprehensive plan prepared by superintendent for public instruction John D. Pierce. Under this plan, control of the university was delegated to a board of regents, consisting of six ex officio members and twelve regular members appointed by the governor for staggered terms. The board was given a wide range of executive and administrative powers to run the university, including the erection of buildings, but Pierce maintained personal control of the university lands. The actions of the governing board were clearly subject to the approval of the state, which gave Pierce a very influential role in the operation of the university. The first meeting of the new board took place in Ann Arbor on June 5–7, 1837. From the very beginning, questions relating to site selection, planning, and development of the campus were of primary concern. In fact, even prior to the first meeting, several members of the board had made overtures to prominent architects about developing a campus plan and building plans. When the meeting did take place, the main item of business was the selection of a site for the new campus. Two forty-acre parcels had been offered by the Ann Arbor Land Company: one was the Rumsey-Nowland farm, located east of State Street; the other was located to the north of that farm, on more hilly terrain overlooking the Huron River (fig. 3.1). While the latter was clearly more picturesque, it would also be more difficult to develop, due to steep topography, springs, and unreliable soil conditions at the edge of the Huron River valley. The State Street site was flat topography; the soil was good, well-drained sandy gravel; and the land had been cleared of forest trees, having been used as a wheat field, peach orchard, and pasture. The regents chose the State Street site, although most of the northern site eventually came into the university’s possession in the 1970s, as a result of the acquisition of property from the old St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. Page 45 → The financial crisis that engulfed the nation in 1837–38 left the university temporarily without funds to erect buildings or begin the development of the campus. In the spring of 1838, the regents appealed to the state legislature for a loan to operate the university’s six branches and begin the construction of buildings on the Ann Arbor campus. The legislature granted them a loan in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars, which permitted them to begin the development of plans for the new campus. In September 1838, the regents formally retained the services of Alexander Jackson Davis of New York City, one of the nation’s leading architects, to prepare plans for the campus and for a new building (fig. 3.2). The plan that resulted was a classic example of the “building in a park” approach, featuring a magnificent Gothic Revival structure facing State Street, placed slightly to the west of the center of the block. In front of it was a formal lawn along State Street, and to the east was a “public avenue” running from North University Avenue to South University Avenue. On either side of the place where the avenue intersected the boundary streets were four sites labeled “future building.” The eastern half of the campus was primarily devoted to botanical gardens and sites for future buildings. Around the exterior of the campus, Davis’s plan showed a broad belt of landscaping, primarily trees. In his 1965 unpublished manuscript “Building the University of Michigan,” Wells Bennett cited evidence that the idea for a north-south “public avenue” through the center of the campus originated with the board of regents, prior to retaining Davis to prepare the campus plan (29–30). The regents may have pushed for the inclusion of this element, as it appears in both Davis’s 1838 plan and the 1840 plan by Harpin Lum. Fortunately, it was never implemented. The building itself was designed in the Gothic Revival style of which Davis was so fond. It featured Page 46 → a central element with two towers and a large perpendicular window facing State Street. This central element ran

east-west and projected in front of the main building mass, as well as into the courtyard formed by the wings on either side. The main portion of the building was U-shaped, forming an open courtyard on the east side. The building provided space for student rooms, classrooms, a library, and a chapel. The shape of the building could have been expanded into an enclosed quadrangle, similar to what Davis proposed in 1856 for Davidson College. The exterior was sensitively detailed in the Gothic style, and the building, if erected, would have provided a magnificent landmark for the Michigan campus. However, fearing that the project would consume the entire state loan of one hundred thousand dollars, Superintendent Pierce vetoed it, and the building was never built. At this point, Davis appears to have ceased having a direct involvement in the development of the University of Michigan campus. Davis was a brilliant architect. The genius of his design for the original building is widely recognized. But the skill he displayed in arranging the campus plan has rarely been the subject of comment, probably because no written evidence of his intentions with respect to the campus plan survives. A careful examination of the drawings—especially the second version of the campus plan—leads one to infer certain characteristics that were well ahead of Davis’s time with respect to campus planning. In her definitive book on the first campus plan, Julia Truettner points out the difficulty of expanding the campus given the U shape of the proposed first building. I believe that Davis recognized this difficulty and developed a strategy to provide for it. An examination of the 1838 plan (fig. 3.3) shows that Davis drew a grid across the entire forty-acre parcel and positioned all the site elements with respect to this grid. The main building is well defined architecturally, but to the north and south of it are two crosshatched squares labeled “future buildings.” Across the main north-south avenue are two large Lshaped sites also designated for future buildings. In the eastern portion of these sites, Davis showed the locations for several professors’ houses—some completely outlined, some only suggested. This approach is very similar to the framework approach adopted by most campus planners in the second half of the twentieth century but not commonly employed before then. The advantage of this approach is that it provides flexibility to accommodate future buildings for which the exact program and configuration are unknown. Most plans from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attempted to define exact architectural forms for future buildings and, as a result, often failed to provide effective, long-term guidelines for campus growth. The framework approach overcame this shortcoming. Viewed from this perspective, the concept proposed by Davis in 1838, although never adopted by the university, was, in fact, the concept for the organization of the central forty acres that would be realized in the twentieth century. This concept incorporated several key elements that still characterize this part of the campus: a signature academic building facing State Street additional buildings grouped around a central landscaped open space a north-south axis through the center of the campus to provide a link to areas to the north and south an east-west axis leading from the main academic building to the area to the east Page 47 → Figure 3.4 shows a comparison of the Davis concept with later master plans (the Burton plan of 1921, the 1987 Central Campus Plan update, and the campus as it actually existed at the beginning of the twenty-first century). It should be clear from this illustration that although Davis’s concept has been modified over the years in response to changes that took place in academic philosophy, technology, and approaches to planning and architectural design, the legacy of this great architect is still evident in the campus we know today. Davis’s direct involvement in planning the Michigan campus may have ended in 1838, but his ideas have continued to influence the development of the campus right down to the present time. Page 48 →

THE FIRST BUILDINGS The first part of 1839 was focused primarily on financial issues. The state’s efforts were placed on solving the

banking problems that had resulted from the panic of 1837. Superintendent Pierce was intent on collecting the $150,000 due from the sale of university lands. Another issue had developed as a result of squatters who had settled on university lands and wanted to acquire them for $1.25 per acre. The legislature passed a bill that would have allowed them to do so, but Governor Mason, who was still president of the university’s board of regents, vetoed the bill. In April, the regents had to face the issue of closing the branches, which were proving very costly to operate. By the end of the year, the regents were in a position to turn their attention once more to the building program. In late 1839, they authorized the construction and furnishing of four houses for professors, located on the “future building” sites that had been shown on the Davis plan (fig. 3.5). Since the academic buildings were not yet available, one of the houses was designated to accommodate a museum, a library, and laboratory equipment. For the architectural style of the exteriors, it was decided to abandon the elegant but costly Gothic Revival style in favor of the simpler Federal style that had been popular during the first decades of the nineteenth century, with a few Greek Revival touches borrowed from the style that had succeeded it. Davis had designed a number of such houses in New Haven in partnership with Ithiel Town, and the Doric portico that was employed on the professors’ houses is one that Town and Davis employed extensively. Other decorative elements of the professors’ houses, such as the solid balustrade above the cornice line and the Greek key motif, could also be seen on earlier designs by Davis. Thus, though it is clear that he did not actually design the houses, his creative spirit seems to have influenced their design. It was decided to finish the exterior of the new buildings in stucco—a technique that was then in vogue and probably a wise choice in view of the soft, porous character of the local brick. The stucco could be scored to give the appearance of cut stone, thereby enriching the appearance of the buildings without significantly increasing their cost. The houses were completed in March 1840 at a cost of thirty thousand dollars. One of these houses (the southwestern one) survives today as the president’s house. Although it has been remodeled and expanded many times over the years, it maintains the basic character of the 1840 structure. It is the only original Central Campus building that still survives (fig. 3.6). Page 49 → At this point, an interesting question presents itself to a historian of the university’s development: who assumed responsibility for the planning of the campus after Davis departed? With the evidence available today, it is impossible to give a definitive answer. It is even impossible to say that Davis had no further connection with the university, although it seems unlikely. All we can do is make reasonable assumptions based on the evidence we have. There appear to be two logical successors to Davis in Ann Arbor: Isaac Thomson and Harpin Lum. Both were from New Haven, Connecticut, where they had known and worked with Davis, especially in his association with Ithiel Town. Both had come to Ann Arbor at Davis’s suggestion, and all three were familiar with the Yale campus and the plan for a “collegiate row” that had developed there—a prototype that would play an important part in the development of the Michigan campus. From the evidence available, it appears that the three men functioned in a manner similar to a modern design-build approach, with Davis acting as the designer, Thomson being responsible for organizing the construction process, and Lum handling the actual construction of the buildings. With Pierce’s rejection of his Gothic design in 1838, Davis ceased active involvement in planning for the Michigan campus. The delay until 1839 in starting the actual construction appears to have led to Thomson’s dismissal, in July 1839, from any further active involvement, leaving only Lum to carry out the actual development of the campus. For this reason, Lum is generally credited with the design of the first two academic/dormitory buildings and the preparation of the second campus plan. In his Encyclopedic Survey, Wilfred Shaw records, On October 7, 1840, the Regents instructed the Building Committee to employ Mr. Harpin Lum “during the coming winter” when he would not be occupied in superintending the construction of the University Building (Mason Hall) to prepare and draw “such plans and profiles, building drafts, etc., as may be necessary . . . for the full execution of the general plan adopted for the University Buildings.” That Mr. Lum did so is shown by an entry in the minutes of the meeting of April 16, 1841, whereby the drafts and plans for the college buildings which Lum had prepared in accordance

with the vote of October 7, 1840, were accepted and he was directed to have them framed and deposited in the Library. (1606)

No matter who actually drew the plans, it is my opinion that the “spirit of Davis” influenced the work of all three. He was clearly the “master architect” of the group, and many details associated with other buildings by Davis appear on the first buildings at Michigan. It is inconceivable that Thomson and Lum would not have been influenced by their association with one of the great American architects of the century. The problem is that the original drawing of the next version of the master plan is missing. We know that it existed, because university records refer to the siting of later buildings, such as the Law Building (old Haven Hall), in accordance with the master plan “in the library.” In addition, maps drawn by D. A. Pettibone in 1854 and 1856 show the plan quite clearly. The 1854 version even went so far as to show a front view of the campus (from State Street) with an imaginary central building designed in the classical (Greek Revival) style and placed in accordance with the plan, although grossly out of proportion. Since the original drawing of this version of the plan is missing, it is impossible to say for certain who drew it or when it was done. In my opinion, it was probably done in 1840, because the siting of the two original academic buildings facing State Street in a symmetrical pattern consistent with the plan suggests that it was in existence to guide their actual placement. Therefore, it will henceforth be referred to in this book as the “1840 plan.” In examining our evidence of the 1840 plan, one thing is very clear: the design concept had shifted from one magnificent “building in a park” to a series of smaller buildings arranged in a collegiate row (fig. 3.7). The Yale precedent is obvious; the 1792 Trumbull plan for Yale (fig. 2.6) and the 1840 Michigan plan are almost identical. The plan depicted on maps from the 1850s was pretty much the same as the 1840 version, with one exception: the inclusion of the 1850 Medical Building facing East University Avenue. The only other significant building that was added to the forty-acre campus in the pre–Civil War era was a small chemical laboratory that was erected behind the Medical Building in 1856. This location was convenient for the medical students but also accessible to the majority of other students based in the State Street row. The only other university building erected during the pre–Civil War period, the Detroit Observatory, was located “off campus.” It was placed on the outskirts of the city, on a high hill overlooking the Huron River valley, to isolate it from the negative impact on astronomical observations that might be caused by city lights. Page 50 → The concept of the collegiate row that was incorporated into the 1840 plan exerted a powerful influence on the development of the campus throughout the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth. The major buildings added to the campus between 1860 and the mid-1880s (Haven Hall, University Hall, and the Museum) were located in accordance with this concept. Even illustrations done at the beginning of the twentieth century show the academic row along State Street as the dominant visual image of the campus (fig. 4.15).

THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE PRE–CIVIL WAR CAMPUS After the unhappy experience with Davis’s original design, the regents adopted quite a different approach to the design of university buildings. Instead of employing nationally recognized architects like Davis, they came to rely on the design skills of master builders like Lum or local architects. Influential members of the faculty and even the president also seem to have exerted a strong influence on the design of the early buildings. The first two academic /dormitory buildings—Mason Hall, originally called North Wing (1841), and South College (1849)—were built and probably designed by Lum (fig. 3.8). They were designed in the same Federal style (with Greek Revival touches) as the professors’ houses and employed many of the same architectural treatments. The influence of Davis could still be detected, but the buildings themselves were clearly not the work of a talented architect like Davis. The proportions were awkward, there was no central focal element, and the overall impression was somewhat crude and unfinished. Interestingly, when the central element (University Hall) was added in 1872, the wings fit more comfortably into the total composition than they had as freestanding structures. This may well

indicate that they had been conceived as part of an overall composition rather than as permanently freestanding buildings. The original internal plans of the buildings included both academic space and dormitory rooms, but this arrangement was short-lived. When President Tappan assumed the leadership of the university in 1852, he converted the buildings to purely academic use. His experience with the Prussian university system had led him to doubt the value of university-operated dormitories, and the space was desperately needed for academic purposes. Page 51 → The other campus buildings of this era also adhered to the classical vocabulary in exterior design, although there were often functional modifications because they were primarily scientific facilities. The 1850 Medical Building was designed in the Greek Revival style, with an impressive classical portico on the east end, featuring brick columns with cast-iron capitals (fig. 3.9). The most influential individual in the design of this building seems to have been Professor Silas Douglass, although the actual documentation is very sketchy. We do not know the name of the builder or whether or not a professional architect was involved. The Detroit Observatory (1854) was the brainchild of President Tappan. As Patricia Whitesell reports in her book A Creation of His Own (89), Tappan worked in conjunction with Richard Bull on the design of the building (fig. 3.10). The only other building of this era, the chemical laboratory (1856), was designed by architect A. J. Jordan. It was also of classical vernacular, but with numerous modifications as required to meet the functional needs of a science building (fig. 3.11). Page 52 → Page 53 → A painting done by the renowned Hudson River School artist Jasper Francis Cropsey in 1855 shows Michigan’s classical campus as it existed just before the Civil War (fig. 3.12). The view is from the east, with the original Medical Building on East University in the foreground and the two main academic buildings facing State Street in the background. The two professors’ houses facing South University are shown at the extreme left of the painting, and one of the houses facing North University is at the right. A few buildings of the town, particularly the church steeples, are visible at the extreme right. The Professors’ Monument can be seen just to the right of the Medical Building—a location very close to the site it occupies today. The image conveyed is that of a small liberal arts college much like many other college campuses throughout the nation at this time. It looked pleasant and harmonious.

THE CAMPUS LANDSCAPE Buildings and architecture play a major role in establishing the physical image of a campus, yet they are only part of the picture. In the American concept of a “campus,” walkways, landscaping, and open spaces play an equally important role, which seems to have been appreciated from the very outset in the development of the Ann Arbor campus. Davis had suggested generous areas of landscape and open space in his original plan, although that plan was not implemented. The idea that appropriate landscaping should be provided for the campus was not abandoned, but it took some concerted efforts to actually establish the campus landscape. Wilfred Shaw described the process as follows in his Encyclopedic Survey (1604–5): As the campus had originally been a farm, many traces were left of its original use. Ten Brook said: The remains of a peach orchard were upon it, and years afterward some professors’ families were Page 54 → supplied with fruit from these trees; while the whole ground around the buildings, as late as 1845 and 1846, waved with golden harvests of wheat, which the janitor had been allowed to grow, for the . . . purpose of putting the ground in to proper condition to be left as a campus. (1604) Trees were an early problem and remained so for years. Much of the early planting seems to have been unsuccessful. In April 1840, the regents appropriated two hundred dollars to be expended under the direction of Douglass Houghton in planting trees on the university grounds, and it is recorded that fruit trees and shrubbery were furnished for the gardens of the professors’ houses in the 1840s.

Hinsdale mentions that the board urged that trees be planted in the same year, “but its exhortations were not then heeded.” He also speaks of the planting of trees in 1854 by Dr. Edmund Andrews, who was then superintendent of buildings and grounds as well as demonstrator of anatomy in the Medical College. Dr. Andrews laid out the grounds according to a new plan; with the assistance of citizens, professors, and students, he caused the campus to be surrounded by two parallel rows of trees. The citizens set out a row entirely around the campus on the side of the street opposite to the campus; the professors and students provided a similar row on the side of the street next to the campus. One thousand trees were planted within the college grounds. Five hundred were already set out when the plan was made, and the regents were asked to purchase the remaining five hundred (Farrand, 137) (fig. 3.13). Most of these trees died, but a more successful attempt at landscaping was made in 1858. With the coming of the young Andrew D. White, who was appointed professor of history and English literature in 1857, the first effective effort for the improvement of the campus grounds began. In his autobiography, White describes the campus when he arrived as unkempt and wretched. Throughout its whole space there was not more than a score of trees outside the building sites allotted to the professors; unsightly plank walks connected the buildings, and in every direction were meandering paths, which in dry weather were dusty and in wet weather muddy. . . . Without permission from anyone, I began planting trees within the University enclosure; established, on my own account, several avenues; and set out elms to overshadow them. Choosing my trees with care, carefully protecting and watering them during the first two years, and gradually adding to them a considerable number of evergreens, I preached practically the doctrine of adorning the campus. Gradually some of my students joined me; one class after another aided in securing trees and in planting them, others became interested, until, finally, the University authorities made me “superintendent of the grounds,” and appropriated to my work the munificent sum of seventy-five dollars a year. So began the splendid growth which now surrounds those buildings. (1:282–83) Apparently, White’s example was infectious, for the citizens of Ann Arbor resumed their treeplanting efforts around the outside of the campus in the spring of 1858, while a group of sixty trees received as a gift from Messrs. Ellwanger and Barry of Rochester, New York, was set out on the campus. The seniors of 1858 left a memorial of concentric rings of maples around a native oak in the center of the campus, which has since become known as the “Tappan Oak.” The juniors set out another group to the east, and Professor White planted to the south. The maples outside the walk on State Street were also the gift of Professor White and were balanced by a similar row of elms on the inside, given by the faculty of the Literary Department. According to Wilfred Shaw (1604–5), the steward reported in 1864 that there were, in all, 1,370 trees on the campus. Page 55 → Thus, by the combined efforts of A. D. White and his fellow faculty members, the students, the regents, and the citizens of Ann Arbor, the historic pattern, tradition, and role of landscaping and open spaces in creating the image of the Michigan campus was established (fig. 3.14). Landscape is perhaps the most significant element of the fabric that binds the campus together and serves to harmonize a variety of architectural styles, forms, and materials into an image of a coherent and harmonious campus. During some periods, such as the late nineteenth or mid-twentieth centuries, it was almost the only element providing this sense. At all times, it has served as an equal partner with architecture in shaping the image of the campus. But landscape is the more fragile of the two. It is often sacrificed to the need for a new building site or other more utilitarian uses; it does not have the number of influential champions or the donor appeal of a building project. It is a natural living thing, constantly changing and subject to the ravages of climate, pollution, disease, and neglect. Yet its importance to the campus cannot be

overstated. It looms large in the memory of alumni, influences donors, and helps to sway the decisions of faculty and students to make Michigan their home.

It is hard to conceive of a beautiful campus anywhere without an attractive landscape, and that is particularly true of such a densely developed campus as Michigan. Indeed, the presence of strategically placed landscaping and open space has enabled Michigan to develop its campus to the present levels of density without losing the “collegiate” character with which most people associate the Ann Arbor campus. This character was firmly established by the talented and energetic men who planned and built the original campus in the two decades before the Civil War (fig. 3.15). The collegiate row established in the 1840 plan and the campus landscape initiated by Professor White and his associates were the dominant images of the Michigan campus throughout the nineteenth century. A 1907 engraving by Richard Rummel shows this quite clearly (fig. 4.15). Even today, the tradition of an academic row along State Street and a strong pattern of open space and landscape, serving to unify the campus, still endures. The campus has grown much larger than the original forty acres, and the nature of the campus plan is far more complex and integrated than the simple collegiate row of 1840. But the principles and traditions of campus planning in use now grew directly out of the work done in the pre–Civil War era, and this continuity of planning and development has added immeasurably to the richness and beauty that characterize the Michigan campus we see today. Page 56 → Page 57 →

ANECDOTE: BEN FRANKLIN’S VISIT TO MICHIGAN For approximately thirty years in the second half of the nineteenth century, the famous American statesman Benjamin Franklin was a fixture on the University of Michigan campus—albeit a sculptural fixture. A statue of him gifted to the university by the Class of 1870 was placed on the west side of campus, facing in toward campus at the junction of the sidewalks leading to the Law Building (old Haven Hall) and old Mason Hall. Ben’s jacket and breeches could frequently be found painted in the university’s colors of maize and blue. Although the Class of 1870 thought they had purchased a bronze sculpture, it was actually made of pewter. In 1899, a student shoved a beer bottle into Ben’s “pocket,” creating a hole in the hollow statue. To prevent further deterioration, the Plant Department drilled a hole in Ben’s head and filled the statue with cement. As winter approached, the cement froze and expanded, causing one of Ben’s arms to fall off. Further damage of this sort being unavoidable, the statue was taken down and placed on a shelf in the old boiler room. Plant personnel felt that Ben should be kept safe somewhere in case members of the Class of 1870 returned to campus looking for it. Indeed, an alumnus did search for Ben on a return visit to Ann Arbor in 1900 and found him perched in the boiler room. The alumnus reported on Ben’s demise to a former classmate. A ghastly fracture of his personality, in the region of his tenth cervical vertebrae, caused his premature demise at the age of twenty-five, and all the efforts of the University surgeons and copious applications of Portland cement were unavailing, and he now stands shorn of his perennial coat of yellow and blue paint, alone and unnoticed. It is rumored that marauding Boxer students were responsible for his assassination. In the spring of 1907, Ben fell off the shelf and broke into dozens of pieces. His remains were piled onto a cart and given an ignominious burial in the infamous Cat Hole. Thus ended Dr. Franklin’s less-than-glorious tenure at the University of Michigan.

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CHAPTER 4 THE VICTORIAN CAMPUS, 1860–1900 THE 1860S AND 1870S The Civil War marked a major turning point in the history of American society and institutions. The small-scale, agriculturally oriented nation that existed before the war gave way rapidly to the industrialized, urbanizing, business-oriented nation that characterized the latter part of the nineteenth century. A similar change occurred in the area of higher education. The small, liberal arts, church-related colleges that characterized the antebellum period began to give way to the larger, secular universities oriented more toward graduate and professional education and research. This trend was inspired at least partly by the example of the Prussian university system in Europe and was led by a group of extraordinary university presidents who either had studied in Germany or were familiar with the Prussian system and determined to introduce the best aspects of that system to the American university. An early advocate of that system was Henry Philip Tappan, the first president of the University of Michigan (1852–63), but the German system was not widely adopted in the United States until after the Civil War. Leading institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Michigan were in the forefront of this movement, and they were soon joined by newly founded institutions such as Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Chicago. Among the key figures in this movement were Presidents Elliott of Harvard, Porter of Yale, Harper of Chicago, White of Cornell, Gilman of Johns Hopkins, and Angell of Michigan. The second half of the nineteenth century was a time of growth, creativity, dynamism, and increasing sophistication, but it was also a period of rough-and-tumble opportunism—the heyday of laissez-faire, Page 59 → every-man-for-himself capitalism and the great age of the individual. Planning was not held in high regard. Not until the great Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago were Americans reawakened to the potential benefits that a planned environment could bestow on the day-to-day life of the average citizen. Prior to that, some of the most famous urban plans created in the United States were sacrificed to the needs of the moment. The National Mall in Washington, DC, was used for railroad tracks and terminals. Several parks and squares in New York were converted to building sites, and railroad lines and yards separated some of the most beautiful lakes and rivers on the continent from the cities located along their shores. The same thing happened to the American campus. The older plans were outgrown or abandoned, and buildings were located without regard to an overall concept of campus design. New building programs at Yale, Princeton, and Union began to ignore the traditional patterns of campus organization that had guided their development up to that point. In the October 1909 issue of the Architectural Record, architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler described the Harvard campus by saying that the buildings were placed “wherever they would go without any thought whatsoever of their relation to one another. Neither in the ground plan nor in the actual aspect is there anything to be made out but higgledy-piggledy. There is no grouping, there are no vistas.” Even Jefferson’s landmark plan for the University of Virginia was compromised, when the building of Cabell Hall across the end of the lawn blocked the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains that Jefferson had protected in his original plan. After the 1893 Columbian exposition, most major American cities launched aggressive programs of city planning and urban design, which came to be known as the “City Beautiful” movement. Similarly, campus planning regained a position of importance in the minds of the leaders in the field of higher education. Landmark plans for new institutions such as Stanford and Chicago were created by some of the best architects and landscape architects in the country, and the older institutions began similar programs to replan and rebuild their campuses according to the principles outlined by the City Beautiful movement. This momentum in the area of campus planning would carry forward to the middle of the twentieth century. At Michigan, the pattern of campus development proceeded along much the same lines as those of other leading institutions and reflected the prevailing attitudes that characterized the country at this time. Immediately following the Civil War, the campus was still that small college that had been created in the 1840s and 1850s in accordance

with its 1840 plan. But growing enrollments and the need for more and better space made it clear that expansion was necessary. The first two major projects of the post–Civil War era adhered very closely to the 1840 plan. University Hall (1872) served to link North Wing (Mason Hall) and South College in the position shown in the plan, although the footprint was somewhat larger. The Law Building (1863), which had actually been built during the war, was also placed according to the plan, in the location shown for one of the northern buildings that had been proposed as part of the academic row facing State Street. Again the footprint of the new building was somewhat different from that shown in the plan, but this is not surprising, since the 1840 plan had no input as to the programmatic needs that the new buildings would be required to satisfy. At this point, the visual cohesiveness of the campus began to deteriorate, at first not in the area of campus planning but, rather, in the area of architectural style. Davis’s first proposal for the Michigan campus was a magnificent example of the Gothic Revival style, which he believed in passionately and championed for most of his career. It ultimately became a dominant style on the Michigan campus, but not until long after Davis had passed from the scene. In 1839, the Gothic scheme was abandoned for a simpler, multibuilding plan based on “classical” architectural design. The first buildings built on the campus (North Wing, South College, and the professors’ houses) were all designed in a rather austere, “Federal” version of the classical style. The 1850 Medical Building was done in a Greek Revival version of classicism, and even the observatory of 1854 and the chemical laboratory of 1856 were based on classical elements, although modified to fit the rather specific needs of a science building. Fashion in architecture changes rapidly, and this was particularly true during the nineteenth century. The Page 60 → style that was all the rage in one decade was considered hopelessly old-fashioned in the next. Thus, in the course of the century, the Federal style gave way to Greek Revival, which yielded to Italianate and Carpenter Gothic; then came Second Empire, Romanesque Revival, Gothic Revival, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, and, finally, Arts and Crafts. So it is not surprising that the architectural style of the buildings on the Michigan campus also changed from decade to decade. By 1863, when the Law Building (later called Haven Hall) was added to the campus, architectural tastes had changed, and the new building was executed in the Italianate style, with long, narrow, rounded windows and bracketed roof overhangs, although the pedimented central section and the pilasters on the walls did make reference to the older classical buildings (fig. 4.1). University Hall, built in 1872, was designed by Chicago architect Edward S. Jenison in the exuberant Second Empire style derived from Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann’s remodeling of Paris, and it dominated the earlier North Wing and South College (fig. 4.2). Interestingly, as noted by Julia Truettner in her book Aspirations for Excellence (127–29), A. J. Davis appears to have executed designs for this building in the Gothic style in the late 1860s, but they suffered the same fate that his original Gothic scheme endured in the 1840s. The University Hall project did create the signature academic building facing State Street that Davis had proposed in his 1838 concept. The architectural design was not as good as his scheme, but the idea of an iconic building facing State Street was realized with the completion of University Hall, which was superseded by Angell Hall fifty years later (fig. 5.14). In 1871 James Burrill Angell became the third president of the University of Michigan – a position he would hold until 1909. President Angell was a great leader of the University, but was opposed to spending the school’s funds for things like quality architecture or campus appearance. He expressed his views in his inaugural speech when he asked, “How many of our well-meaning countrymen have given their tens of thousands of dollars to the material homes of colleges and universities and have made no adequate provision for securing the most gifted and devoted teachers? When will even good men learn that to endow a university with brains and heart, and not alone with bricks and mortar, is the part of true wisdom?” Throughout the course of his long presidency the cause of orderly campus planning and excellence in architectural design was championed by many members of the faculty, students, and alumni, but not by the president. Page 61 → During the period from 1875 to 1900, a number of buildings were added to the campus in a variety of popular architectural styles. Romanesque Revival was the most common style and was represented by the Heating Plant (1879), the University Museum (1880), the General Library (1883), the Engineering Shops building (1885), the

Anatomical Lab (1889), West Physics (1889), Tappan Hall (1894), and Waterman Gym (1894). Carpenter Gothic was used for the Pavilion Hospital (1876) and the College of Dental Surgery (1879). Thus, by the turn of the century, Michigan had evolved from a small liberal arts campus with buildings in the classical style to a fully developed Victorian campus composed largely of redbrick buildings primarily of the Romanesque Revival style, with a smattering of Gothic, Italianate, and Second Empire structures alongside some of the earlier classical buildings. There was a semblance of architectural coherence, if not unity, to the forty-acre campus, and it made a positive impression on those who visited it. Nevertheless, even at this relatively early stage, it appeared highly unlikely that Michigan would be able to adopt one approach to campus design as utilized by some other schools—a single architectural style for all of the buildings. There was a sense of romantic appeal to campus architecture, but the same could not be said for campus planning. The initial buildings added to the campus in the 1860s and 1870s did adhere to the layout of the 1840 plan: Haven Hall, University Hall, and the University Museum were placed in such a way as to carry out the plan’s concept for an academic row facing State Street. But other aspects of the university’s evolution were unanticipated in the 1840s, and no provision was made for them in the approved plan. As the university grew, so did the need for additional space for academic units, especially those involved in professional training. Since new facilities were not being provided by the state as rapidly as required, existing buildings, often designed for other purposes, were converted to academic uses. The original dormitory rooms in North Wing and South College had been converted to academic use during President Tappan’s administration, and three of the four original professors’ houses quickly followed suit. The northeast house was converted for use as the University Hospital in 1869, and a pavilion wing was added in 1876. The northwest house was given to the dental program in 1875, and a similar addition was erected when it was converted into the Homeopathic Hospital in 1879 (fig. 4.3). The southeast house was converted with an addition in 1879 for the Dental School (fig. 4.4), and a substantial addition absorbed the building when it was adapted for the engineering program in 1891. The conversion of the three professors’ houses for academic use represented major departures from the 1840 plan. The portion of the campus originally designated for residential use was now becoming a part of the academic core. As units grew and required more space, additions were often appended to the original structures and eventually became larger than the buildings to which they were added. This was particularly true of the small chemical laboratory, which received a series of additions between 1861 and 1901 (fig. 4.5). All of these seem to have been done on a project-by-project basis and did not require major siting decisions, since they were additions to existing buildings. The result of all these changes was the migration of academic facilities into portions of the campus that had not been designated for such uses in the 1840 plan. In addition, service buildings such as a Buildings and Grounds facility and a boiler house, which had not been anticipated or provided for in the 1840 plan, were added to the campus during this period. Page 62 → Page 63 → These projects fundamentally changed the character of the campus, from an academic row facing State Street to a forty-acre square almost completely committed to academic use. The decisions that led to this change seem to have been based primarily on the functional requirements of each project, without reference to any overall campus plan. The new Engineering Shops building was located adjacent to the existing Engineering Building (one of the converted professors’ houses), and the new Physics Building was placed near the engineering facilities. The anatomical lab was placed near the Medical Building, the new library was placed at the center of the forty-acre campus, and the new gymnasium was placed on the only remaining large open space, at the northeast corner of the campus (an area that had been traditionally used for playing fields). Each of these decisions was logical and appropriate within the context of the individual project; but because the campus had outgrown the concepts of the 1840 plan and because no other master plan had been developed to take its place, the sum total of all these projects did not combine to produce an overall sense of order and harmony. The only portion of the campus that still presented any sense of order and coherence was the row of buildings facing State Street placed in accordance with the 1840 plan. The rest of the campus, while it may have possessed a certain amount of “romantic charm,” lacked the order and coherence characterizing older institutions like Virginia or Union College and fell far short of that being created at new campuses like Stanford, Chicago, or Columbia.

THE 1880S

After the completion of University Hall in 1872, the campus projects during the remainder of the 1870s took the form of remodeling and additions to existing buildings or the creation of smaller service facilities such as the 1879 heating plant. But in the 1880s, a series of major building projects were completed that dramatically enlarged the university’s academic facilities and, at the same time, marked the end of the 1840 plan’s role in guiding the development of the campus. The first of these projects was the University Museum building of 1880, designed by the distinguished Chicago architect William Le Baron Jenney. Often referred to as the “father of the skyscraper” because of his innovative use of steel-frame construction, Jenney was a member of the University of Michigan faculty from 1876 to 1880 and was the university’s first professor of architecture. The regents decided to make use of his talents to design a new museum building, which stood in the area between Angell Hall and Alumni Memorial Hall until it was demolished in 1958. The placement of this building was done in accordance with the 1840 plan, its position on the south side of University Hall mirroring the position of Haven Hall on the north side. The architectural design of the building honored the concept of the State Street academic row: its main façade faced State Street, and its handsome tower contributed greatly to the aesthetic appeal of that street for many years (fig. 4.6). However, its Romanesque Revival design introduced yet another architectural style to the campus. The second major project of the decade was the construction of the new library of 1883, which marked the abandonment of the 1840 plan and the beginning of the transition from the planning concept of an academic row facing State Street to one in which the entire forty-acre parcel became the academic core, with buildings grouped around a central open space. In the 1870s, the university’s library holdings were located in Haven Hall, along with the Law School. The space was cramped and inadequate, and it was clear that better facilities were desperately needed. Many of the major universities in the country were building separate library buildings, to house their growing collections and to act as a central learning resource for the entire university community. If Michigan was to keep pace, a new library would have to be erected on the campus, and after the completion of University Hall in 1872, a library became a major priority. Funds were sought from the state legislature throughout the decade of the 1870s, but controversy over the Homeopathic Medical School prevented their authorization until 1881. When it was realized that funding would be provided, discussions about the appropriate site began in earnest. Two sites remained available from the original 1840 concept of the academic row: one to the north of Haven Hall, the other to the south of the museum building. Opinion on campus was divided. A group led by Professor Charles Kendall Adams championed the northern site, arguing that the southern site was too small. Another group, led by law professor Thomas McIntyre Cooley, supported the southern site, pointing out that it was just as big as the northern site. They also identified a major drawback to the northern site: its proximity to the Homeopathic Hospital. It seems that the noises coming from the hospital in this era of major epidemics and before the widespread use of anesthesia could be very unsettling to serious scholars attempting to concentrate on their work in the Haven Hall library. It was feared that this atmosphere would be a handicap for a new library erected on the northern site. The site ultimately chosen was neither of these two but a third site suggested by the architect Henry Van Brunt, of the architectural firm Ware and Van Brunt. Page 64 → Ware and Van Brunt was a highly regarded Boston firm that had recently completed Memorial Hall at Harvard and was well respected for its work in library design. Members of the university community who were particularly interested in the library project had done their homework and were in favor of giving the library commission to Ware and Van Brunt. But the regents determined that there should be a competition for the commission. Some expressed apprehension that Edward Jenison might submit an entry. University Hall, designed by Jenison, was held in low esteem, and the university community did not want another building by the architect of that project. The competition was held, and three firms submitted entries. However, this competition seems to have suffered the same fate as so many American architectural competitions—none of the schemes was built. The regents did ultimately hire Ware and Van Brunt, who executed the design for the building that was built. One of the first questions the architects had to grapple with was that of the appropriate site. Neither of the two proposed sites struck the architects as well suited to the building they were designing, and they suggested a third possibility—a site at the core of the campus. After all, if the library was to be the central learning resource of the

university, should it not be placed at the core of the campus—that is, at the center of its forty acres? This represented a major change in thinking about campus planning. Both Davis and Lum had shown the library in the center of the academic row facing State Street, but Ware and Van Brunt (called Van Brunt and Howe by this time) saw the entire forty acres, not merely the State Street row, as the academic campus. This was, in fact, the reality. The only remaining residential building on the campus was the president’s house. All the other buildings were devoted to academic use, whether they faced State Street or East, North, or South University Avenues. The decision to accept Van Brunt and Howe’s recommendation for siting the library was unquestionably the correct one, and the site continues to be appropriate to this day. But this decision marked the end of the 1840 plan’s role as an effective influence in guiding the growth of the campus. From this point on, the campus would grow along different lines from those envisioned in the 1840s. For the next fifteen years, however, there would be no effective plan to guide the campus’s growth. Decisions would be made on an ad hoc basis, with no overall design concept to guide them. As a result, the campus began to lose one of the three basic characteristics of a successful campus—a perceivable sense of order. The new library building was erected at the core of the campus but somewhat south of the exact geographical center. There may have been several reasons for this: a desire to preserve the diagonal walk that had even then become a major feature of the Page 65 → campus, a desire to maintain a reasonable distance from the hospitals so as to avoid the objections that had been raised earlier to the site at State Street and North University, or a desire to maintain an attractive open space at the core of the campus. All of these factors probably contributed to the final site choice. Whatever the reasons, it proved to be a very wise one. To this day, the site of the 1883 library serves as the core of the university’s library resources and provides a landmark on the campus’s main open space, called the “Diag.” This siting decision also marked the beginning of the slow evolution of the open area at the center of the forty acres from a grazing ground for professors’ domestic animals to the university’s central academic quadrangle. The library building itself was designed as a redbrick structure in the Romanesque Revival style (fig. 4.7). The north end was a rounded apsidal form that contained the main reading room. The stacks were located in a rectangular element extending toward South University. Two entrance doors were placed on the north side, next to the reading room. The library was connected via walkways to the other academic buildings on the campus. It also featured two towers, one of which contained bells donated by E. C. Hegeler, J. J. Hagerman, and Andrew Dickson White, the president of Cornell University. The building was demolished in 1918 to make way for the new General Library building erected on the same site in 1920, and the bells were ultimately melted down for military use as part of the war effort in World War II. The old library is long gone, but its imprint on the Michigan campus plan remains to this day. The placement of the 1883 library near the center of the forty-acre campus shifted the intellectual center of gravity of the university to the east. It was no longer a part of the academic row facing State Street but now took a new, independent position at the heart of the central forty acres and, in so doing, related equally well to the professional schools that were developing on the eastern side of the campus and to the Literary College on the west side. Thus the entire forty acres, not merely the State Street row, now became recognized as the academic campus. The placement of the other buildings that followed the library only served to reinforce this idea. But from the standpoint of campus design, no new concept of master planning had been developed to express this idea visually and to bring a sense of order to the development pattern. For the next fifteen years, the placement of new facilities on the campus was done on a pragmatic basis relating to the functional requirements of the specific project or to the academic relationships between the new facility and existing academic concentrations. Therefore, if a new facility for the Literary College were needed, it would be placed on the west side of the campus, near University Hall; facilities for the Medical School were added along East University, near the original Medical Building; engineering facilities were placed at the campus’s southeast corner, near the professor’s house that had been converted for use by the Engineering College (fig. 4.8); science facilities were added nearer the campus’s center, where they could be reasonably accessible to all the units. Barbour Gymnasium and Waterman Gymnasium were simply built on existing outdoor recreation fields (fig. 4.9). Not addressed was the coordination of projects to assure that land was being efficiently used and that each individual project would contribute to the overall goal of producing a cohesive architectural and landscape

composition that would give a sense of beauty and order to the campus. Page 66 → Many projects built during this era could have been positioned in such a way as to carry out objectives such as defining a central open space or creating a unified architectural edge to the campus. But this can only be done if such overall objectives are defined and if each individual project is shaped in a way that carries out these overall objectives as well as meeting the individual functional needs of the users. This process of master planning was absent at Michigan in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The core of the campus became a random assemblage of buildings, and the central open space was a “leftover” element, rather than a focal one that would serve to tie the campus together in a coherent manner (like the Yard at Harvard or the Lawn at Virginia). The situation is illustrated by the following anecdote that appeared in the Chronicle, the student newspaper, on October 25, 1884: Last week a Greek letter student was showing a recent arrival over the university grounds. “There to the north-east,” said the guide, “are the ball grounds; those buildings to the south are the medical and pharmacy departments; the wooden buildings are the hospitals; this magnificent brick structure is our great university library, that little brick pile north of our department is where law and order are taught.” “All these are very fine,” said the freshman, “but where’s the Campus?” An excellent example of the consequences of project-by-project decision making without the benefit of a master plan can be seen in the siting of Tappan Hall (fig. 4.10). It was constructed as a recitation building for the Literary College, which was designed to help meet the chronic shortage of classroom space on campus during the latter part of the nineteenth century. It was built in 1893–94 by Dietrick Brothers after a design by the architectural firm of Spier and Rohns. It is a red brick building with stone trim designed in the Romanesque Revival style. It measures 75 by 111 feet and is located just west of the president’s house. So far, this seems like a fairly typical description of a University of Michigan building from this period. But when one examines its placement on the site, a question arises immediately: why was the building set so far back from State Street? If one were to go back to the 1840 concept of a State Street row, the logical placement would be immediately south of the University Museum building, facing State Street and aligned with the other academic buildings. This would have completed both the row and an impressive architectural facade along State Street. The design of the building suggests that this was the intent of the architect. The front facade, with the main doorway, faces State Street, and the architectural design was clearly compatible with the other buildings of the row. But Tappan Hall was set to the east of the alignment of the other buildings. How did this happen? There is no clear documentation that explains this decision. However, a visual inspection of the site as it existed at the time offers one potential explanation. Old photographs of the area show the existence of a set of tennis courts immediately south of the museum building. It may well be that Tappan Hall was located in its present position to avoid disturbing the tennis courts. This may seem a strange decision—to alter the site of a primary academic building in order to preserve a set of tennis courts—but similar things are done today, such as the siting or repositioning of academic facilities to save a parking lot. The location of Tappan Hall made it highly unlikely that the State Street academic row proposed in the 1840 plan would ever be completed. Actually, that plan had already been abandoned, and the fact that no new one had been created to take its place opened the door to such shortsighted decision making. The tennis courts were gone within a decade, but Tappan Hall still exists on the site that was chosen in the early 1890s. The redevelopment of the Central Campus in the twentieth century served to lessen the impact that the Tappan Hall location had on the campus. But by the end of the nineteenth century, it was becoming clear to many that the absence of a master plan would only open the door to more decisions of this nature and that it was time to create a new master plan, to guide the growth of the campus in the new century. Page 67 → Page 68 →

EXPANSION BEYOND THE ORIGINAL FORTY ACRES

The expansion of facilities in the 1870s and 1880s was beginning to strain the capacity of the original forty-acre campus, and by the latter part of the century, the regents and administration were worried about how they would provide for the future growth of the campus. Important strategic decisions had to be made. Ultimately, a three-part strategy emerged. First, large, land-consuming uses such as hospitals and athletics were to be relocated off the central forty acres. In 1889, the university began acquiring land in the Ann/Catherine area, near the observatory, for the relocation of the hospitals. In 1899, land was acquired across North University Avenue for the Homeopathic Hospital and the Dental School. And in 1890, the university purchased the land for Regents Field on South State Street, to begin the relocation of intercollegiate athletics. The second element of the growth strategy was the acquisition, on a parcel-by-parcel basis, of land surrounding the central forty acres, to provide sites for the growth of the core academic disciplines remaining on Central Campus. This process continues to this day and is sometimes a source of controversy with the city of Ann Arbor. Ultimately, the strategy led to the expansion of the Central Campus from the original forty acres to the approximately two hundred acres that it occupies today. The third and final element of the strategy was the rebuilding of the central forty-acre campus. Over the years, the placement of new buildings had utilized most of the available sites on campus, but because many of the buildings had not been sited in accordance with a well-thought-out master plan, the land had not been used efficiently. There had been much construction aimed at solving specific problems, but all that construction did not result in the development of a campus characterized by an overall sense of beauty and order. By the turn of the century, many of the buildings had also become obsolete, and new facilities were needed. In addition, most of the nineteenthcentury buildings were of nonfireproof construction and were real safety hazards. This situation presented an excellent opportunity to rebuild the campus, but the university was now acutely aware of the need to use its land efficiently in order to maximize the development potential of its scarce land resources. In addition, the impact of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago had reawakened a general interest in master planning as a way to create a more livable environment. All these factors served to highlight the need for a new master plan, to assure that the land would be used efficiently and that the overall outcome of the building program would be a campus that was attractive as well as efficient.

HENRY IVES COBB’S PLAN In 1898, a new master plan for the forty-acre campus was prepared by Henry Ives Cobb, the prominent Chicago architect who had developed the master plan for the University of Chicago in 1893 and who was now at work designing the initial group of buildings to be built for that university in accordance with his plan. In February 1895, the University of Michigan approached Cobb to prepare preliminary architectural concepts for a proposed new art building. The studies were to be used as part of a fund-raising campaign intended to raise the money required to construct the facility. Cobb produced two perspective drawings for the exterior of the building. These renderings illustrate alternative architectural concepts, both in the classical style, using white limestone as the exterior material—a radical departure from the redbrick Romanesque Revival buildings that had come to dominate the campus. Once again, the question of site proved to be problematic. The most important functional relationship between the art building and an academic unit was its relationship to the Literary College buildings on the western side of Page 69 → the campus. The art building’s relationship to the library was also important. It would seem, therefore, that the most desirable location would be at the southwest corner of the central forty-acre campus, with the new building placed in such a way as to complete the southern end of the original academic row (fig. 4.11). However, the construction of Tappan Hall had reduced this site to the point where it could not accommodate the proposed art building unless it was positioned closer to State Street than all the other buildings in the row. In addition, the expansion of the Law Building to the north had reduced the available site at the north end of the row to the extent that it, too, was unusable. In the course of his association with the university, Cobb was also asked to prepare sketches for a recitation building and an expansion of the chemical laboratory. In each case, the question of siting the new facility had to be determined without reference to an overall campus master plan and often became contentious. Cobb felt that determining the appropriate locations for the proposed buildings would require the preparation of such a plan. He was authorized to prepare one, although no specific regental approval for his plan can be found. In November

1897, Professor Francis W. Kelsey wrote to President James B. Angell, who was then serving as minister to Turkey, Early in August Mr. Henry Ives Cobb stopped off as part of a day at Ann Arbor in order to look over the problems connected with the Art Building. After careful consideration of the whole matter, he stated that it would be impossible to design the Art Building unless the location could be settled upon, and that the location would not well be selected unless the whole Campus were taken into consideration. He asked, therefore, for a blue-print of the Campus showing all the present buildings, walks, trees, and grade lines, as well as photographs of the different buildings [fig. 4.12]. The material was forwarded to him, Mr. Cooley making a new survey of the Campus, at the request of Secretary Wade, in order to incorporate the latest changes. Mr. Cobb has lately written me that the matter of laying out the Campus so as to give architectural unity is a most difficult and at the same time interesting problem, and that he begins to see daylight. In the near future we shall receive from him a plan of the Campus with the monumental buildings which are proposed, located as they should be to produce the best architectural effect in relation to one another and to the buildings already on the ground. Cobb worked on the plan throughout 1898 and early 1899. On June 28, 1899, he wrote to President Angell. Page 70 → As you know I have been working over the general re-arrangement of the campus and have worked it out, but hoped to have an interview with you over it before I finished up the drawings. I tried to get hold of you when you were in Washington, but was informed that you were called hurriedly away, so I missed you. I hope we may get together and talk this general plan over as I am sure that it will be of interest. If any of these matters assume any sort of definitive shape, so that you wish to meet me either at Ann Arbor or any other point, I will take pleasure in responding to any call that you make. Cobb’s plan (fig. 4.13) represented a significant departure from the 1840 plan, which had divided the campus roughly into three zones based on land use. The westernmost zone contained the majority of the academic facilities, arranged in a “collegiate row.” The central zone was devoted to faculty housing, with a central open area (now the Diag) to be used for grazing the professors’ domestic animals. The eastern zone contained the Medical School and related facilities, such as the botanical gardens, the chemical laboratory (where work was then heavily oriented toward herbs and pharmaceuticals), and the (never-used) cemetery. Cobb’s plan dealt with the entire forty acres as an academic complex. Buildings erected in accordance with the 1840 plan faced outward toward the surrounding community; Cobb’s plan called for a second, inward-facing orientation of buildings surrounding a loosely formed interior quadrangle. He attempted to define a central open space (today’s Diag) by use of a paved central circulation path, because the architectural edge formed by the surrounding buildings was too ambiguous to define the central open space by itself. He also sought to create a number of secondary spaces by using existing and proposed buildings to define them, but many of the spaces themselves would have been amorphous in shape and difficult to perceive. Another significant idea suggested in Cobb’s plan was the creation of an entry to the central open space (the Diag) from North University Avenue, aligned axially with the library (the same northsouth axis proposed by Davis in his 1838 plan). In 1898, the idea related primarily to the creation of a dignified entrance to the main collegiate space from the surrounding streets, but it ultimately became the organizing element for the northern expansion of the Central Campus around what is today the Ingalls Mall. Page 71 → Cobb’s plan was not officially adopted by the board of regents or university administration and was not actually used in the siting of new buildings. It was still based on the scale of nineteenth-century buildings and seemed to imply that the growth of the campus in the twentieth century would proceed at pretty much the same size and character as it had since the Civil War. This was not to be the case, and while some buildings did come to occupy sites shown by Cobb, others did not. Cobb’s plan also failed to anticipate the demolition of most of the existing

nineteenth-century buildings to make way for new and larger twentieth-century buildings. Nonetheless, his plan was an important milestone in planning at the University of Michigan in that it resurrected the idea of a master plan to guide the overall development of the campus and laid the conceptual framework for much of the planning that took place at the university during the first part of the new century. It showed how the growth of the university required a new way of organizing the campus, based on an inward-oriented quadrangle (or quadrangles) rather than an outward-facing row. It showed that linking spaces as the campus grew would preserve a sense of order and beauty in the context of an expanding institution, and it began to identify the important role that buildings play in the shaping of outdoor space. In so doing, it initiated at Michigan the dialogue between architecture and landscape that is so essential to the development of a successful campus.

CAMPUS LANDSCAPE AND SITE DEVELOPMENT The lack of an effective master plan for the Michigan campus in the latter half of the nineteenth century led to a disorganized and unappealing outcome in terms of urban design. But the situation in terms of the campus landscape was quite different. The major tree-planting initiatives undertaken by A. D. White and others prior to the Civil War were carried out in an orderly manner and defined campus edges and interior pedestrian avenues. As the trees grew and matured during the Victorian era, they produced a majestic canopy overhead and a pattern of stately horticultural elegance at eye level. The beauty of the campus landscape was remarked on by almost everyone who commented on the campus at this time. In fact, it was the landscape, in particular the trees, that provided the unifying element holding the campus together aesthetically in this period (fig. 4.14). The university’s emphasis on landscape during this time was intended to maintain and reinforce the plantings begun in the preceding era of campus development. The only major landscape initiative of the late nineteenth century was the establishment of botanical gardens at the corner of East and South University Avenues in the 1890s by professors Julius Schlotterbeck and Volney Spalding. These gardens did not last long, however, as they were removed in 1902 to make way for a new engineering building (West Hall). It was clearly the legacy of White and his colleagues that held the image of the campus together during the latter part of the nineteenth century. A 1907 engraving by Richard Rummel shows the two most powerful images of the campus at this time: the State Street row of buildings and the trees (fig. 4.15). A final anecdote relating to White and his trees was recorded by Professor Victor Vaughan. Page 72 → In the early morning of a spring day in 1911, I was hurrying along the diagonal walk across the campus, on the way to my laboratory to see how my guinea pigs and rabbits were responding to my treatments, when I saw a man behaving queerly. He seemed to be consulting a sheet of paper which he carried in his left hand; then he went from tree to tree, patting each in a caressing manner with his right hand. Thinking that I had detected a patient escaped from the psychopathic ward, I left the walk and approached the strangely behaving individual. He was standing by a tree and patting it when he heard my approach and turned quickly. In my surprise I cried out: “Mr. White! What does this mean? ” He said: “Yesterday while sitting in my library at Ithaca I happened to think that fifty years ago today the class of 1861 planted these trees under my direction. I had among my papers a plot of the ground, the location of each tree and the name of the student who planted it.” Then he added, with tears in his eyes: “There are more trees alive than boys.” In the area of campus hardscape, the major effort at this time was the construction of walkways to connect the campus buildings or provide paths across the forty-acre campus. Concrete walks replaced the earlier plank walks, and new ones were added as new buildings were erected. The overall pattern was very disorganized. No paved outdoor gathering areas or other special paving was provided. Another new element of the campus in 1900 was the presence of boulevards along the periphery of the campus. North University Avenue is a boulevard today, but Cobb’s 1897 plan, Rummel’s 1907 engraving, and photos from

this time also show South University Avenue as a boulevard. The right-of-way of South University is wide enough to accommodate such a configuration, but the street is not a boulevard today. There are even some drawings that indicated the intention to make State Street into a boulevard. Boulevards can make elegant edge treatments, but their extreme width can also serve as a dividing factor. Therefore, as the campus developed, it was probably for the best that North University remained the only boulevard. It was during Michigan’s Victorian era that efforts to enhance the campus with special features such as public art and memorials began to grow. The first such feature was the Professors’ Monument, installed Page 73 → in 1846. It was soon joined by other memorials, such as the Tappan Oak, which was still growing on campus at the start of the twenty-first century; the Haven Elm, which succumbed to Dutch elm disease (the marker designating its donation by the Class of 1867 still exists at the west end of the Hatcher library addition), the Class of 1862 Boulder (in front of the C. C. Little Building), and the Spanish-American War memorial (along the walk between the Hatcher addition and Haven Hall). Public art also began to appear on campus, in the form of both relief sculpture on university buildings, such as the tympanum over the doorway to the University Museum building (1880), and freestanding pieces, such as the Benjamin Franklin statue gifted to the university by the Class of 1870. Clearly, the students, faculty, and administrators all took a serious interest in the quality of the Michigan campus during this period. They were actively involved in the tree-planting program, and the majority of the memorials and public art on the campus came as a result of class or alumni gifts. This interest in the aesthetics of the campus would continue to grow as the university entered the new century, and it would eventually manifest itself in pressure for a new master plan and a more orderly and harmonious campus. Pride of place was becoming a reality at Michigan.

CONCLUSION As the twentieth century began, the Michigan campus possessed both architecture and landscape but lacked the third vital element of a successful campus: a clearly discernible sense of order. After the creation of the original State Street row, campus growth had taken place without the benefit of an overall master plan to guide the course of development. But by 1900, the university had been reawakened to the need for an effective planning framework designed to create a functionally effective and aesthetically pleasing environment. In the early days of the new century, the university would begin the process of completely transforming the campus, but as the old century came to a close, the Michigan campus consisted of a loosely grouped collection of Victorian buildings amid a pleasantly landscaped forty-acre campus. Little remains of those buildings today, but from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the twentieth century, they were home to one of the greatest universities in the nation. At the close of the nineteenth century, the Michigan campus fell far short of achieving those qualities that characterize the best American campuses. Only in the area of landscaping and site development did it come even close, and this was due primarily to the magnificent tree canopy created a half century earlier through the efforts of A. D. White and his students and colleagues. The ground plane consisted primarily of walks connecting the various buildings. There were no plazas or outdoor gathering places, and there was little in terms of detailed plantings. There were twenty buildings on campus, but most were architecturally undistinguished. A few, such as the library, museum, and engineering shops, possessed some architectural interest, and University Hall had a monumental quality when viewed from a distance. But most were unremarkable. Worst of all, a sense of an orderly arrangement of the campus was almost entirely lacking. Only the State Street row from the 1840 plan gave any sense of design discipline. Clearly, there was much work to be done if the campus was to attain those characteristics that mark the finest American campuses and that would give Michigan a physical setting commensurate with the distinguished academic reputation that the school had already achieved. Page 74 →

ANECDOTE: THE CAT HOLE

One intriguing element of Michigan campus lore in the nineteenth century was a feature known as the “Cat Hole,” a small pond formed by a depression in the drainage way that ran from the area near Geddes Avenue and Observatory Street, across what is now the Dental School block and down the ravine now occupied by Glen Avenue, to the Huron River. It appears in many nineteenth-century engravings, maps, paintings, and photographs of the campus (below). During the nineteenth century, it was located on property that was close to the campus but that was not actually acquired by the university until 1899.

The Cat Hole was never an attractive feature, judging by contemporary descriptions. Early in the history of the city, it became used as a disposal site for unwanted items by both the university students and citizens of the town. There does not seem to be much solid documentary history about it, but stories abound. An 1887 newspaper article contained the following account: In the days when hazing was popular the “cat-hole” was a favorit [sic] ducking pond for the unfortunates who had to suffer an unwilling bath. When there was a crowd to be ducked and not time or facilities for “pumping” them thoroughly [holding them under a pump and drenching them], the lictors [sic] in charge usually received the command “Away with them to the cat-hole.” The cat-hole is a large natural hollow between the hills northeast of the university grounds, and about midway between them and the observatory. This year, for the first time in the cat-hole’s history, it ran dry; in its normal condition it is a pool of water from one to eight or ten feet deep and of a changeable superficial area, averaging usually about 500 feet in diameter. It takes its name from the fact that more dead cats floated around in it than any other species of animal. The measurement of the superficial area of the cat-hole pond used to be one of the tasks given some of the students to practice their ingenuity upon. Usually the student was not aware that any approximate answer was as good as one absolutely correct, for, owing to the continued changes in the area of the pool, whether by showers of rain or other natural causes, the professor could not tell whether the answer was right. Page 75 → One longtime resident reported that medical students would sneak onto the family’s farm near the campus, steal their barn cats for experiments, and dispose of the carcasses in the Cat Hole. It is also reputed to be the final resting place for the ill-fated statue of Benjamin Franklin gifted to the university by the Class of 1870. At about the turn of the century, the university began to develop the block containing the Cat Hole. The Homeopathic Hospital (North Hall) was built in 1900, the Dental Building in 1908. These and earlier university construction projects used the Cat Hole as a dumping ground for excavated dirt. By the early part of the twentieth century, it was only a memory. Today, portions of the University Health Service building, the Dental School, and the Fletcher Street Parking Structure occupy the area that once contained the Cat Hole. But even a century after the actual feature disappeared, the memory of this slightly unsavory campus landmark lingers on.

Page 76 →

CHAPTER 5 THE BEAUX ARTS PERIOD, 1900–1950 MICHIGAN ENTERS THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The dawning of the twentieth century brought with it momentous changes for both the state of Michigan and the University of Michigan. Since its first settlement by the French in the seventeenth century, the state’s economy had been primarily oriented toward the exploitation of its natural resources. Originally, hunting, trapping, and fishing were the major occupations of Michigan’s residents. In the nineteenth century, agriculture, mining, and lumbering took precedence, but fishing, trapping, hunting, and other resource-based occupations, such as ice cutting, still played a part. Toward the end of the century, concentrations of skilled craftsmen began to develop particularly in the southeast portion of the state, and this resource of skilled workers attracted a number of pioneers of the fledgling automobile industry. The first American automobiles were built in various eastern cities, but production gradually came to center in Detroit, which offered several attractions: it had an established carriage industry that could construct automobile bodies, and it was close to supplies of iron ore and lumber. At first, the automobile was regarded as a “plaything of the rich,” because it was very expensive to build, purchase, and maintain. But one of the early auto builders, Henry Ford, had an idea for a method of building cars that would dramatically reduce the cost of the automobile and make it available to a much broader segment of the American population. With the architect Albert Kahn and his brother Julius Kahn, Ford set to work to convert this idea, which came to be known as the assembly line, into concrete reality. The result was Ford Motor Company’s Highland Park plant of 1910. It worked: the assembly line was a reality, Page 77 → and the Kahns had given it architectural form. Ford did not invent the concepts of the assembly line or interchangeable parts, but the Highland Park facility applied them at a scale that was to revolutionize industrial production. As Ford had envisioned, the price of the car dropped dramatically. Sales increased, and the auto industry boomed. In 1914, Ford offered his employees the unprecedented wage of five dollars per day (about $115 today). Workers from all over the country flocked to Michigan to work in the rapidly expanding automobile industry and in other commercial operations that supported it. As a result, the two primary characteristics of the state of Michigan during the first quarter of the twentieth century were a booming economy and a rapidly expanding population. Both of these characteristics would have a direct impact on the University of Michigan and the development of its campus, as would the architect of the Highland Park facility, Albert Kahn.

IMPACT ON THE UNIVERSITY In this environment, pressure on the University of Michigan to expand was inevitable. A growing and relatively affluent population looked to its state university to provide an opportunity for its sons and daughters to pursue their education further than in the past and thereby realize the American dream of a better life than their parents had enjoyed. That the state university in Michigan was highly respected among American universities only increased the desire of the state’s citizens to see their children educated at the institution they already supported with their tax dollars. Enrollments grew from just under thirty-five hundred in 1900 to more than ten thousand by 1923. Fortunately, the state possessed the resources necessary to help the university meet these expectations, and while it was often difficult to convince the legislature to appropriate the money necessary to build the new facilities needed to accommodate the growing enrollments, the prosperous economy of the state was able to supply the funding when the legislature acted. Ultimately, the first quarter of the twentieth century saw one of the great programs of building construction in the history of the university. At the start of the century, however, the great problem was land. Throughout the nineteenth century, virtually all of the university’s facilities were located on the original forty-acre parcel given to the regents in 1837 (actually, it was reduced to approximately thirty-eight acres by the donation of street rights-of-way to the city of Ann Arbor).

The major exception was the observatory, located on a hill on the outskirts of the city to avoid interference at night from the city lights. In 1899, the city of Ann Arbor gave the university a parcel of land on the north side of North University Avenue at the northeast corner of the campus, and it became the site of the new Homeopathic Hospital in 1900. The campus was beginning to expand beyond the boundaries of its original 1837 parcel. The central forty acres was covered by the buildings erected during the course of the nineteenth century. They were relatively low in density (primarily two and three stories high), many were obsolete for the functions they were being asked to perform (particularly the science facilities), they were not made of fireproof construction, and many had been sited in such a way as to severely reduce the buildable area left available. A 1911 article in the Michigan Alumnus described what had happened to the campus and the need for a campus plan. The desirability of having some sort of Campus plan has been evident for years. It was not so evident in the early days of the university, because then there seemed no probability that the buildings would ever crowd the present quarters; there was no such problem as the grouping of buildings used by the same students in order that such students might get from one class to another with as little loss of time as possible; and above all there was not then at Ann Arbor, and Page 78 → probably not in the United States, the feeling which exists at the present time for harmony in architecture. If all these changes could have been foreseen, ample provision might have been made for future growth, and such buildings as became necessary might have been so placed as to add both to the beauty and the conveniences of the Campus. No provision was, however, possible and things went from bad to worse, until, a few years ago the placing of a new building became almost solely a problem of finding enough land to set it on. The result so far as convenience is concerned, may be easily appreciated when one realizes that a literary student may have at three successive hours classes in buildings as far removed from each other as the Chemistry Building, West Hall and Physics Building; or he may have to go in the five minutes allotted to him between classes from the fourth floor of the South Wing of University Hall to the fourth floor of the North Wing, a feat impossible of accomplishment if the corridors were crowded. So far as beauty is concerned, the result of our lack of foresight is equally evident; there is no uniformity of material and no uniformity of architecture. The most notable example of this sort of incongruity is the juxtaposition of the Memorial Building, Tappan Hall and the Museum. The present Campus has neither beauty nor convenience. The first new buildings of the twentieth century—the 1903 West Medical Building (fig. 5.1; now the S. T. Dana Building), the 1902 Barbour Gymnasium, the 1904 West Engineering Building (fig. 5.2), and the 1910 Alumni Memorial Hall (fig. 5.3)—had consumed the last remaining large buildable open sites on the central forty acres. Fortunately, the regents had developed a strategy to deal with this issue in the preceding decade. It consisted of three major elements: relocating noncentral, land-consuming uses—such as intercollegiate athletics, clinical facilities, and the botanical gardens—off the central forty expanding the landholdings around the central forty rebuilding the central forty All three elements were underway as the new century began. The relocation process had begun with the construction of the Catherine Street hospitals and the acquisition of Regents Field in the 1890s. At the turn of the century, the botanical gardens were relocated from the corner of East and South University Avenues to make way for West Engineering (now West Hall). Land acquisition beyond the central forty was beginning; it proceeded rather slowly at first due to the lack of necessary funds, but funding was now starting to become available to acquire land and erect the new buildings required. What was lacking was a master plan to guide the process of rebuilding, to assure that the mistakes of the previous phase of development would not be repeated. Page 79 → The need for a plan was recognized by many within the university, and after Henry Ives Cobb’s plan of 1898 came to naught, they continued to press for the creation of a master plan to guide future growth. Particularly

prominent among those pushing for a plan were Dean Mortimer Cooley of the College of Engineering and Professor Francis Kelsey of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, but others within the university community also championed the cause of a master plan. In a May 1906 article in the Michigan Alumnus, the author (probably Wilfred Shaw) noted,

We need to do what many other Universities are doing. We must plan our buildings for fifty years ahead, and follow some fixed scheme that will consider the architecture of the buildings themselves as designed for academic purposes, and also have well in mind their relations to one another. Never has there been a better time than the present to inaugurate such a comprehensive plan at Michigan. We are about to establish a new school of architecture, and have called here as its head, a man who has a wide reputation as an architect. It is to be hoped he will turn his attention to this question; it is surely one that well might interest any man of his profession. Then we are to have the new Memorial Building, for which the money has been raised within the last year. It is to be built on the campus, and well might be the keystone of such a scheme of architectural adornment. The Union, it is hoped, will follow soon with a new building, and this should also be a part of the general harmony. And though we now hardly know where the money is coming from, if we are to continue to grow as we have the last few years, there is not a doubt but that new buildings will have to come in many departments, so the chances to put some such broad design in effective operation may not seem so visionary as they might be considered on first thought. We must stand architecturally as well as educationally with the other great American Universities. Page 80 → In a letter written in June 1907, Professor Kelsey restated his views on the condition of the campus. Our Campus now presents an aggregation of architectural effects which are incongruous, in part monstrous. Recently the Board of Regents has asked a Committee to study the subject of Campus arrangement with the purpose of devising a plan of development which shall not only minimize the effect of past blunders but make possible future expansion along artistic lines. A good beginning has been made but I do not believe it possible to arrive at the best solution without a good deal more study; and for a University only the best solution should be adopted.

THE 1907 LORCH CAMPUS PLAN On May 8, 1907, the regents appointed a special committee “to make a study of the arrangement of the campus and the placing of new buildings” and to prepare a plan to be submitted to the board of regents. This was not long after Emil Lorch, professor of architecture, came to the university and became one of the driving forces behind the planning effort. One of the principal motivating factors that caused the regents to act was the planning underway for Alumni Memorial Hall. There was great concern not only for the placement of the building but for its design and the whole issue of the architectural incongruity of the campus buildings. Professors Cooley and Kelsey were appointed to the committee, but Lorch was not, although he acted as secretary and executed the work. He had begun work on the plan before the committee actually met and had completed it that spring. The plan was presented to the Committee on Location of Buildings on May 23, 1907. However, it was not presented to the regents or adopted in any way at that time, and it was not then officially made public. It was leaked to the press sometime in 1908, resulting in one or more misleading articles that stirred things up. Lorch subsequently asked for permission to have the plan published, perhaps in the widely read Michigan Alumnus, as a means of clearing up some of the misconceptions made in the newspaper articles. He was told that since the plan had not been adopted by the regents, he could not publish it as an official document. The regents allowed that he could publish it under the guise of “personal opinion” if he wished. To Lorch, such a guise would seem to defeat the purpose of publishing the plan, so it was not published at this time. It remained unpublished until three years later. The plan itself (figs. 5.4 and 5.5) appears to be a well-conceived effort to bring order and harmony to the design of the campus in the context of the future development that could be anticipated at that time. The full extent of

Marion LeRoy Burton’s building boom of the 1920s could not be anticipated in 1907, but several projects in planning in the first decade of the century were incorporated into the plan, and it appears that there may even have been some discussions between Lorch and the individual building architects on projects such as the Chemistry Building and the Natural Science Building. Lorch also suggested some building placements for future projects that would help to create the sense of order he was trying to develop. These included expansion of the 1883 Library, West Engineering, and West Physics, as well as new buildings near the northeast corner of State Street and North University and along East and South University Avenues. One of the South University sites eventually became the location of the Clements Library. Of perhaps even greater importance than building placement was the idea of campus form and organization as presented in Lorch’s plan. Several major planning concepts were defined by Lorch and have been incorporated into every campus plan prepared since: 1. The importance of the diagonal walk. The plan made clear the importance of this walk from both historic and functional points of view and stated that it must not be interfered with. It recommended the planting of trees along the walk. 2. The creation of a new mall. A mall would extend from the front of the library to North University Avenue, with the new Chemistry Building and Natural Science Building facing onto it. At one point, Lorch proposed extending the mall across North University and placing Hill Auditorium at its northern terminus, in a location between the present-day Burton Tower and the Michigan League building. The relocation of Hill Auditorium did not occur, but the mall concept was eventually implemented as part of the Ingalls Mall. 3. The creation of a central square. The plan suggested the creation of a shady square in the center of the campus that could become a campus gathering place. However, the role of this central square as a focal campus “place” like Harvard Yard or the Virginia Lawn was yet to emerge. In Lorch’s plan, it was surrounded by a service drive that entered from North University and provided access to the “backs” of the buildings surrounding it. It would take a while before people would begin to think in terms of the “fronts” of buildings as facing on the central open space. Lorch’s plan was a good concept for the central forty acres and laid the foundation for all the planning that would come after him with respect to the central forty. The basic structure of this part of the campus as it exists today owes much to the concepts and ideas put forward in Lorch’s plan of 1907. The major shortcoming of the plan was that it dealt primarily with the central forty and had little to say about the areas outside the original campus. With Burton’s building boom ahead, it soon became clear that a more extensive blueprint for campus development would be needed. But when such plans were developed in the early 1920s, they chose to build on and expand Lorch’s ideas rather than discard them—a testimonial to the pioneering work done by Lorch and his colleagues in 1907. Page 81 → Page 82 → As the 1907 plan was being developed, Dean Cooley was formulating the idea of a committee that would be in charge of architectural design on campus. He envisioned this committee as consisting of regents, faculty, and architects and having the duty of reviewing designs for proposed buildings to ensure architectural consistency throughout the campus. He wanted Emil Lorch to be a part of the committee but thought that architects competing for jobs on the campus would be uncomfortable with the idea of Lorch, a practicing architect himself, critiquing their work. Cooley wrote to a number of prominent architects—including Charles Follen McKim; Daniel Burnham; Ralph A. Cram; John M. Carrere; and Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge—to get their opinion on this issue. Several wrote back, mostly supportive of having Lorch involved, some also giving their opinion on the importance of campus planning in general. Nothing officially happened with Lorch’s plan until 1911. At that time, Hill Auditorium was under design, and there was some debate over where it should be placed. The initial decision had been to place it on the site of the Winchell octagon house (which the university already owned), across North University Avenue from the proposed site of the Natural Science Building. However, Lorch was promoting another site, which was reflected in his 1907

plan. He wanted to place the auditorium in the middle of South Ingalls Street, facing North University and thus serving as the northern terminus of the mall he envisioned in his plan (fig. 5.6). Lorch’s objection to the octagon site was that he did not think a building of suitable size to balance the auditorium was likely to be built on the other side of the mall. One objection raised to Lorch’s plan was that if the auditorium was placed in the middle of South Ingalls, it would preclude the possibility of extending the mall further north at some future time. In addition, it was felt that there would be no problem building a future structure that could balance the auditorium. But one of the prime reasons for supporting the octagon site was that it was already owned by the university, which was trying to execute the auditorium within the budget of the funds bequeathed by Arthur Hill and could not afford to buy the large amount of land needed if the auditorium were to be centrally placed at the head of the mall (fig. 5.7). Because of these issues with Hill Auditorium, Lorch’s plan of 1907 was not presented to the board of regents until October 1911. It was not adopted or supported officially by the regents in any way, although they did vote to create a committee to consider the future architectural development of the campus. Subsequently appointed at the November 1911 meeting, this committee is never mentioned again in the Proceedings of the Board of Regents, and there is no surviving evidence that it did much of anything as a committee (although some of its members were individually very active in building issues, especially Regent William Clements, Professor Kelsey, and Professor Lorch). Page 83 → Although Lorch’s plan was never formally adopted by the regents, at least two buildings, the Chemistry Building and the Natural Science Building, were placed in accordance with the plan. Essentially, the regents gave two reasons why they did not officially adopt Lorch’s recommendations. First, his plan called for the demolition of several buildings, including the president’s residence, and the regents did not wish to feel obligated to accomplish this in any set amount of time. Second, the plan would have required the acquisition of a significant amount of land, especially north of the central forty, and the financial situation at the time did not allow for the planning of such purchases in the near future. The legacy of Lorch’s plan is still visible on the Michigan campus today, in the preservation and enhancement of the Diag and in the development of the Ingalls Mall (fig. 5.8). Even in 1921, when the Comprehensive Building Program was underway, Lorch’s plan was still being referred to, and it was recommended that the conclusions made in Lorch’s plan “ought not hastily to be thrust aside” but, rather, should be considered in light of the new building program and the need to site several buildings. In fact, this did happen in the 1921 Comprehensive Building Program and the plans that helped to direct the Burton building boom of the 1920s. Page 84 → Page 85 → In 1909, Harry Burns Hutchins succeeded James B. Angell as president of the university, and though the regents failed to adopt Lorch’s plan, growth and rebuilding continued on the Ann Arbor campus, both on the original forty acres and outside of it. Major projects such as Hill Auditorium (1913), the heating plant (1914), Martha Cook Residence (1915), Helen Newberry Residence (1915), the Betsy Barbour Residence (1920), and the Michigan Union (1919; fig. 5.9) were all being built outside the central forty, and planning for a huge new university hospital at Ann and Observatory Streets was underway. On the central forty, a new Natural Science Building (Kraus, completed in 1915) was under construction, and plans were underway for a new library (completed in 1920; fig. 5.10). Many within the university community continued to push for a master plan, especially now that so much new construction was going on outside the original forty-acre campus. An opportunity to make another effort to develop such a plan presented itself in 1915.

THE OLMSTED BROTHERS PLANS FOR ANN ARBOR AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN (1916/1922) In June 1915, in a joint effort concerning city planning, the university and the city of Ann Arbor entered into an agreement with Olmsted Brothers of Brookline, Massachusetts, to prepare a plan to guide development at the

university and in the city. The city was represented by the Civic Association of Ann Arbor, and the landscape firm was represented by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. The university’s involvement in this project was approved by the regents on June 22, 1915, at which time the university agreed to pay Olmsted fifteen hundred dollars, and the city agreed to pay an equal amount. The terms of the agreement stipulated that Olmsted was to prepare preliminary plans and a report for guidance in the development and improvement of the university and the city. The firm was paid half their fee from the university ($750) in October 1916, with the balance to be paid when the project was finished. Olmsted’s final report to the city and university was not completed until 1922. Professor John Shepard was appointed by university president Harry Hutchins to act as the university’s liaison with Olmsted. Shepard was to work with Regents Beal and Clements, whom the Regents had constituted as a committee for this purpose. Although the main report was not completed until 1922, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. did, in the meantime, provide another plan to the university, concerning the northeast side of campus (the Cat Hole area) and the connections between Central Campus, the Palmer Field area, and the Catherine Street hospitals group. Executed at the behest of President Hutchins, Olmsted’s “Preliminary Report upon the Development of the Northeast Portion of the University Property” was completed in August 1916. This eight-page report (plus illustrations) resulted partly from the university’s plan to place a laundry building in the area known as the Cat Hole and from concerns that the proposed placement might block a future corridor leading northeast from Central Campus to the Catherine Street hospitals. In the report, Olmsted focused on the street system in this area and made recommendations for dramatic changes. The two most notable proposals were, first, to extend Glen Avenue southward from Huron Street to the juncture of North University and Washtenaw (which would have run the street right through the proposed location of the laundry building) and, second, to create a diagonal street from the intersection of Huron and Glen, running northeast across Observatory Street and into School Girls’ Glen. Both these suggestions would have required substantial changes in the road system in the area and would have affected a number of existing and planned structures. This 1916 report also addressed the specific issue of the Cat Hole site, beyond the concern about the placement of the laundry building. “For the central portion of the cathole,” wrote Olmsted, “we have studied somewhat carefully the feasibility of securing Page 86 → at moderate cost what has often been suggested in general terms, namely a large outdoor auditorium or theater. . . . [W]e have estimated that such a theater, with the capacity for an audience of about 10,000 people, can be formed here in turf.” Thus the on-again, off-again idea for an outdoor Greek theater found concrete expression. Such a theater was a pet dream of Latin professor Francis W. Kelsey, who had also been very concerned about what could be done to clean up the Cat Hole site and put it to more appropriate use. Much of this discussion about using the site for a theater followed a years-long discussion on whether or not to place a power plant in that general location, which was ultimately done in 1914. With the attending coal yard, the shops of the Buildings and Grounds Department, and the laundry building, this two-block site was becoming something of an unattractive service area. In time, the idea for the Greek theater evolved into a plan for a theater building, to be placed about where the University Health Service building now stands, with an outdoor theater-in-the-round attached to its back, or east, side. The whole issue of a theater building became tied up with the issue of whether there should be an academic theater department, even though President Hutchins and others stressed that the construction of the building need not be connected to a proposed department. Page 87 → The overall plan presented in Olmsted’s report (fig. 5.11) is considerably less persuasive than Lorch’s plan of 1907. It appears to be based primarily on the idea of creating a strong sense of symmetry about the north-south axis proposed originally by Davis and later by Lorch. To accomplish this, however, Olmsted Brothers resorted to the recommendation for a substantial number of new buildings employing highly arbitrary shapes and forms. With little basis in the academic programs of the university, these shapes seem more related to producing the desired symmetry than to meeting real academic needs. In addition, the other two principles of Lorch’s plan were seriously compromised. The diagonal walk would have been blocked by several proposed buildings, and the central open space would have been significantly reduced in size by the two wings of proposed buildings that would have occupied the northern third of the open space.

On the positive side, the Olmsted Brothers plan clearly treats the central open space as a “focal” element. The service drive that Lorch had proposed has been eliminated, and the open space is given over entirely to pedestrian use. In addition, the placement of the proposed buildings clearly implies that they would “front” on the open space, rather than regarding the interior elevations as the back side. Finally, one concern raised in the 1916 report, the connection between the Central Campus and the Medical Center, would prove to be a concern addressed by subsequent plans throughout the course of the century. The solution proposed by Olmsted was not implemented, but the idea of providing an appropriate connection was addressed in later years by Pitkin and Mott; Johnson, Johnson, and Roy; and Venturi, Scott Brown, and Associates. One final virtue of the Olmsted plan was that it encompassed a much larger area than the central forty acres. By including the entire area from the Medical Center on the north to Division Street on the west and Monroe Street on the south, the Olmsted Brothers plan recognized the expanding landholdings of the university and attempted to integrate these new areas with the original fortyacre campus. The Olmsted Brothers plan was not presented to the regents in 1916 or acted on in any way at that time. Between 1916 and 1919, there is a pronounced silence in the records in regard to campus plans in general and the Olmsted Brothers plan in particular, no doubt due to the university’s preoccupation with the war effort. In February 1919, the regents addressed the issue of whether or not to allow continued dumping of cinders and waste in the Cat Hole and ordered discontinuation of this practice. The regents’ action prompted discussion of the Cat Hole’s condition, in a number of different venues. In fact, the regents’ interest in the situation at the Cat Hole was instigated by Professor Kelsey, who had written on this issue to President Hutchins on January 6, 1919, bringing back to light the proposed Greek theater. Yesterday for the first time in two years I chanced to go by the Cat-hole. I was distressed to find that it is rapidly being filled up. I was the more surprised because not long ago when you and I talked with Mr. Russell about the Campus plan I laid emphasis upon the ultimate transformation of the Cat-hole into a Greek theater, and the suggestion appealed to him—and you said nothing to indicate the contrary. . . . Will you . . . very kindly ask the Executive Committee of the Regents to stop further filling until the friends of the “campus beautiful”—and I am sure that all the Regents may be included in the number—have opportunity to take up the matter? . . . [A]s I have never known any difference of opinion in regard to the desirability of the carrying out the suggestion, perhaps the following procedure would save time: First, to ask the Regents to have Mr. Olmstead [sic] prepare immediately specifications for the Greek theatre which is outlined upon the third plate accompanying his Report of 1916 dealing with the north-east portion of the Campus; and Second, after this report has been received, and approved by an expert on acoustics, to have the outline staked off, and gradually to fill in the trees and shrubbery at the outer edges which would be required to mask the buildings in the vicinity, so as to start the growth as soon as possible; and Third, to take such steps as may be expedient to Page 88 → shape the excavation according to Mr. Olmstead’s [sic] specifications, with the understanding that the sides are to be in turf, laid at such an angle that concrete seats can be built at any time in the future at a minimum expense. It is quite unnecessary to emphasize the need of such an open-air auditorium for pageants and for exercises at Commencement season which will occasion attendance too great for the Hill Auditorium. Such has been the enthusiasm of alumni to whom I have shown Mr. Olmstead’s [sic] plan or mentioned this matter that I am sure there would be no difficulty in securing a gift of funds required to execute this project. Professor Kelsey followed his letter to the president with one to Dean Alfred Lloyd on February 19, there also pressing the issue of the Cat Hole and a Greek theater. For some fifteen years effort has been put forth whenever circumstances were favorable, to secure the

conservation of the Cathole as a most valuable asset to the University on the aesthetic side, in order ultimately to transform it into an open air auditorium; the location is every whit as favorable for such a project as that of the University of California, except in respect to vegetation. I thought the problem was solved when the Regents accepted the report of Mr. Olmsted, and I gave the matter no further attention. I was simply disheartened on discovering, early last month, that the filling of the Cathole had been resumed and had been carried on so rapidly that now its transformation into a Greek theatre will be much more difficult and more costly. Heretofore the campaign has been carried on without publicity, which would have forced a decision and undoubtedly have made the consummation of the ideal plan impossible. The Committee of the Regents on Buildings and Grounds has provisionally ordered the dumping discontinued and I am not without hope that action favorable to the project may be taken at the next meeting of the Board of Regents. If it is not, I shall take the liberty of asking you and four or five other friends of the “campus beautiful” to meet immediately thereafter in informal conference to take counsel together as to the best procedure. The regents did subsequently order that dumping in the Cat Hole be discontinued, but contrary to what Kelsey wrote, the regents did not adopt or endorse the Olmsted plan, and they seemed reluctant to address the issue of the outdoor theater and the much-debated topic of a theater department as an academic unit (the debate would continue on through the 1921 Comprehensive Building Program). When the regents’ decision about dumping was made in February 1919, the whole topic of the Cat Hole and possible plans for the site were brought before the public eye. In particular, this consisted of two articles published in the Michigan Alumnus: “Proposed Transformation of the ‘Cat-hole’” (May 1919) and “The Extension of the ‘Campus Beautiful’” (June 1919), both written by Francis Kelsey. Quoting extensively from Olmsted’s 1916 report, Kelsey described the proposal for a Greek theater at the Cat Hole site and the need for better connecting roads between Central Campus and the proposed new hospital. Kelsey also referred to the plan worked out by Emil Lorch in 1907 and to how, although not officially adopted, it successfully influenced the development of what is now the Ingalls Mall. No action was taken by the regents pertaining to these suggestions derived from Olmsted’s report, and a further three years would pass before Olmsted would complete his final report to the city and the university. This report was made public, and although the university had moved on to other things and was not particularly interested in the report, the city did find merit in some of its suggestions, especially in regard to parks. Olmsted also made extensive proposals concerning the street system, calling for many changes to the streets and the opening of new streets. An article summarizing the report was published in the Michigan Alumnus in March 1922. In September 1922, the regents authorized the final payment to Olmsted of the fee established under the agreement between the university, the city, and him. At that time, it was noted that copies of Olmsted’s report were in the hands of Professor Shepard. Apparently, the Olmsted Brothers plan was not formally presented to the regents, nor was any action taken by them in reference to that plan. By the time Olmsted’s report was completed in 1922, the university had embarked on its Comprehensive Page 89 → Building Program, which was fueled by a large state appropriation in 1921. In that year, the “Committee of Five” in charge of the program had already drawn up plans showing the buildings that were to be built under the appropriation. Olmsted’s plan was too little and too late, and its emphasis on street layouts was not of particular interest to the university. When the building program was kicking off in early 1921, Regent Clements indicated to university president Marion Burton that Albert Kahn, supervising architect to the university and one of the Committee of Five, was to obtain a copy of Olmsted’s report for study. “As I remember the report,” wrote Clements, “it was quite an impracticable one for the University to carry out. However, it is to be carefully considered.” Burton seemed to sum up the general impression of the plan in a letter to Professor Shepard, by remarking that “it really contributes nothing whatever to the solution of our problem [placement of new buildings] beyond what we have already worked out. I am glad to observe that they have given up the idea of a diagonal street running northeast from the campus. Frankly the whole thing seems to me to be very superficial. It may be because we have spent so much time upon it ourselves, but I do not see that there is anything here which alters our

problem or needs further consideration.” As a consequence of both the implementation of the Comprehensive Building Program and the seeming irrelevance of the Olmsted plan to the university’s projects, none of Olmsted’s suggestions for the university were implemented, and the report was consigned to the dustbin of history.

THE NICHOLS ARBORETUM During this era, one of the more popular places on the Michigan campus came into existence. The Nichols Arboretum, more popularly known as “the Arb,” has served many generations of Michigan students as a place for both recreation and serious study of the natural environment. The original campus plan drawn by A. J. Davis in 1838 showed sites for botanical gardens on the eastern edge of the campus, on the west side of what is now the East University Walkway. By the late nineteenth century, such a garden did exist in the southeast quadrant of the central forty acres, but that garden was removed at the turn of the century to make way for the West Engineering Building (1904). For the next few years, the university functioned without a botanical garden or arboretum. In 1906, the Arboretum was established with a gift of 27.5 acres of farmland from Dr. Walter H. and Esther Conner Nichols, both University of Michigan graduates. The need for a botanical garden and arboretum and the usefulness of the Nichols farm were outlined by Professor Frederick C. Newcombe in a letter to the University of Michigan regents dated July 1906. In this University we have been able to work without a botanic garden, because we have been able to use the whole surrounding country for our field of study. But one can foresee that in twenty-five years the farmers’ woodlots will be put under cultivation for timber, the bogs will be drained, and no land will be left where vegetation can be studied in natural conditions. The land of the proposed donation is ideal for the purpose of bringing together in a small area all the vegetation of this climate, giving each plant society its characteristic conditions. The tract is made up of hills, ravines, level low land, a bog, and a rivulet. The northern part is sand, and the southern heavy clay. In his efforts to establish a botanic garden and arboretum, Newcombe was joined by Professor George P. Burns, park commissioner for the city of Ann Arbor and a fellow botanist. Professor Burns proposed a joint operating agreement between the city and the university to develop city land along the river and the Nichols farm, as one piece. They envisioned the University of Michigan and city schools being the primary users. The university regents and the Ann Arbor City Council renewed this agreement every three years until 1917, when they agreed to continue it indefinitely. Much of the land that now makes up Nichols Arboretum was first granted to Harvey Austin in a warranty deed dated November 14, 1831. The land changed hands many times during the nineteenth century until John Woodmansee acquired and farmed it during the late 1800s. His widow sold it to Forest Hill Cemetery and the Nichols family. In 1906, the farm Page 90 → that would become Nichols Arboretum was platted by Ossian Cole Simonds, a civil engineer educated at the University of Michigan and a notable landscape gardener with his own firm in Chicago. Simonds (1855–1931) was a pioneer in the field of landscape architecture. He was one of the founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1899 and helped to establish a regional style of landscaping based on native plants arranged in naturalistic groupings—an approach that harkened back to the tradition of eighteenthcentury English landscape gardening and was promoted in the late nineteenth century by William Robison. Simonds’s practice in Chicago undoubtedly brought him into contact with the design philosophies of such leaders in the design and planning fields as Frederick Law Olmsted, Jens Jensen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, and Daniel Burnham, all of whom were active in Chicago at this time. His distinctive prairie style of design, which incorporated naturalistic sweeps of hardy trees and shrubs arranged in an informal style that complimented the natural character of the site, undoubtedly benefited from his location in the midst of this dynamic design environment. He is best remembered today for designing the Nichols Arboretum and the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, as well as many residential and estate gardens. Simonds is credited with laying out the basic design of the Arboretum, with its hill-hugging roads, broad expanses

of lawn, and scenic views, as well as his concept of “rooms within a landscape” (fig. 5.12). A caretaker’s cottage was built with an attached greenhouse, and roads were developed. The city land was included in the plans so that all the parklands of Ann Arbor would be connected. The botanic garden/arboretum was managed by professors in the botany department until 1916, when Aubrey Tealdi, the first professor of landscape architecture at the university, was named director. Tealdi was responsible for the detailed development of the Simonds plan, which was somewhat general in nature. By 1923, the botanical gardens were completely removed to a new location near Packard Road and Iroquois Street, where there was a more suitable site for experimental gardens. The Geddes Road site was then renamed the Nichols Arboretum. Page 91 → As with any living thing, changes take place over time as trees grow and some die and have to be removed, but the basic concept developed by Simonds for the Arboretum has been respected over the years. The peony garden was added in 1927 (a gift of the Dr. W. E. Upjohn family of Kalamazoo), and the Reader Environmental Interpretive Center was created in 1998, when the 1837 Burnham house was relocated to the Arboretum from its original site on Wall Street. A gateway garden for the area around the Burnham house was designed by another of the outstanding landscape architects of the twentieth century, James van Sweden (also a University of Michigan alumnus). Basically, though, the Arboretum that people know and love today is a faithful expression of the concepts and designs first developed by Simonds at the beginning of the twentieth century (fig. 5.13). The efforts of the garden’s management in recent years have been to preserve and restore the original character of the Arboretum so that future generations of Michigan students and community residents will be able to enjoy the work of Ossian C. Simonds, one of the great landscape architects of the twentieth century. The Arboretum is a unique part of the university campus. It is located adjacent to the Central Campus, the Medical Center, and the North Campus, but it is different from each of them. It is not subject to the forces that normally trigger the need for major revisions to a master plan. Its boundaries are relatively fixed by the developed areas of both the university campus and the surrounding community, and it is not the location for new building projects, with their consequent demands for vehicular access, parking, utility extensions, and so forth. Therefore, the approach to planning for the Arboretum was also different. Simonds’s original plan was well conceived and succeeded in creating a beautiful and functional environment for public enjoyment and education as well as study of the natural world. It remains valid today and, barring some major change in the overall role and mission of the Arb, is likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. The task for planners working with the Arboretum, then, is to adapt and refine the basic plan to meet the changing characteristics of the natural and man-made world as they are constantly evolving and to implement a variety of specific projects to carry out the overall mission of the Arboretum. Over the years, the Arb’s management and university planners have done a good job of implementing its detailed projects. At first, the emphasis was on creating the environment proposed in the Simonds plan. From time to time, it has been necessary to resist proposals to use the Arb in inappropriate ways, such as the idea (proposed in the 1920s) to flood the lower area to create a winter ice-skating area or the idea (put forward in the early 1960s) to connect the Central Campus and the North Campus with a road running through the Arb. Even the site for the Reader Environmental Interpretive Center, the only building added to the Arb in the second half of the twentieth century, was chosen (moved from its original proposed location on Geddes Road to its present site at the end of Washington Heights) as a result of community concerns. Recent projects have focused on such issues as erosion control in the area of School Girls’ Glen, bank stabilization along the Huron River, control of invasive species such as buckthorn and honeysuckle, promoting the installation of native plant materials, and the appropriate response to various plant and tree diseases. Enhancements to the public enjoyment of the Arb have also been carried out. The walking trails have been improved, benches and trash receptacles have been installed, an amphitheater for the use of summer performances and other events was constructed, an ornamental metal fence (a gift of Dennis Dahlman) and a new entryway were erected at the Geddes Avenue entrance, and improvements were made to the landscaping at the Washington Heights entrance,

including entry plantings, new gardens adjacent to the Reader Center, and enhancements in the area of the peony gardens. These projects have all served to carry forward, refine, and update the original vision of the Simonds plan, and it is at this detailed project level, rather than at the level of revision according to a major master plan, that planning for the Nichols Arboretum is likely to take place in the foreseeable future. Page 92 →

PRESIDENT HUTCHINS AND THE REBUILDING OF THE CENTRAL CAMPUS The administration of President Harry Burns Hutchins (1909–20) was a productive period in terms of the physical development of the campus, as President Marion L. Burton acknowledged in his annual report for 1920–21. President Harry Burns Hutchins in the eleven years of his administration secured results which will only be fully appreciated with the coming of the years. It must be remembered that during his administration the following buildings were added to the equipment of the University: (a) Chemistry Building, (b) Natural Science Building, (c) Hill Auditorium, (d) Martha Cook Building, (e) Helen Newberry Residence, (f) Betsy Barbour House, (g) Alumnae House [purchased], and (h) the Michigan Union. The new hospital was fully planned and construction begun before he retired. I desire, therefore, in no formal or conventional manner to pay high tribute to the administrative skill which has produced the tangible and intangible values which now go to give such fascinating reality to the University of Michigan. The projects of the Hutchins era not only served to meet the functional space needs of the university but also began the process of restoring a sense of visual order to the campus. Along North and East University Avenues, the new buildings created a strong architectural edge similar to what existed along State Street. But despite this improvement, two major challenges remained. First, the central part of the campus was still a disorganized and unsightly collection of buildings. Second, no design concept for the growth of the campus beyond the original forty-acre land parcel had been created. The latter challenge was becoming critical as several of the new buildings had already been erected on parcels outside the central forty. Although great progress had been made during the Hutchins era, the needs of the university for more and better space continued to grow, fueled by a number of factors. The most important of these were a growing enrollment and increasing pressure to expand even more; the functional obsolescence of many university buildings; and the fact that the nineteenth-century structures, despite solid masonry facades, were not of fireproof construction. Plans to approach the state for an appropriation to address this problem had begun during President Hutchins’s term, but the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917 put a hold on all major construction projects that were not directly related to the war effort. In 1919, after the cessation of hostilities, planning began anew. A drawing prepared in that year by E. C. Pardon and the Buildings and Grounds Department showed suggested lines of development and proposed locations of new buildings. This plan reflected discussions that had taken place over the preceding decade, as well as some ideas from Olmsted Brothers, such as the placement of an outdoor theater in the Cat Hole. Although not much funding was sought from the 1919 legislature aside from that for the University Hospital, the plan took into account many of the projects that would be addressed in the upcoming 1921 legislative request. At this point, President Hutchins announced that he planned to step down as president, and his successor, Marion LeRoy Burton, was selected by the regents. It would fall to Burton to carry out the work of expanding the campus to meet the serious needs of the state university, and he did so with great success. Writing in the Michigan Alumnus in March 1921, President Burton described the needs of the university, as well as his own philosophy with respect to the place of public universities in a democratic society. In a word, we are face to face, with the fundamental question of our standing as a university. Relatively speaking we have been losing ground. Several other state universities have forged ahead rapidly. Unless our present requests are granted we shall be forced frankly to concede that in

equipment and buildings we have receded into fourth or fifth place among tax supported institutions. We face a real crisis. . . . Beyond all of these considerations, lies the extremely vital truth that democracy simply must solve wisely its educational problems, and that real excellence and quality in higher education must not be limited to endowed universities. Unless we can provide just as Page 93 → good facilities in state institutions as are secured in private institutions then our faith in democracy must be weak. Why should not the leadership in higher education in America be exercised by tax supported institutions which are close to the people and deserve their unqualified confidence and support?

THE COMPREHENSIVE BUILDING PROGRAM, THE COMMITTEE OF FIVE, AND THE BURTON BUILDING BOOM In the summer of 1920, Marion LeRoy Burton arrived in Ann Arbor to assume the university presidency recently vacated by Harry Hutchins, who had taken over after the retirement of James B. Angell in 1909. President Burton was a remarkable man whose impact on the university was great despite a relatively short tenure. (He died prematurely in February 1925.) He was a dynamic, charismatic individual, not afraid of change and innovation, but at the same time able to implement his ideas without arousing the opposition or resentment of the faculty, students, or community in general. His reforms extended into almost every aspect of university life, including such areas as administration, student life, faculty salaries, finance, and curricular development. But he is probably best remembered for his impact on the physical development of the campus. Burton was very clear about the reason for undertaking a massive development program. When the University of Michigan succumbs to megalomania her vitality will begin to diminish. All of our statements about brick and mortar, all of our descriptions of the expansion of the campus and the development of shops and laboratories are of value just in proportion as they bear, not upon the means, but upon the ends of a true institution of higher learning. My sole concern is that Michigan shall meet the real tests of a university. (Steneck and Steneck, 159) But while it was clear that President Burton was not interested in building monuments to himself, he understood that the University of Michigan needed significant improvements in both the quantity and the quality of its physical facilities if it was to carry out its mission as a state university. In his first annual report, Burton noted, A state university must accept happily the conclusion that it is destined to be large. If its state grows and prospers it will naturally reflect those conditions. Consequently, we are liable to continue to grow as the population of Michigan increases and as the high schools increase the number of their graduates. . . . The uncritical mind simply assumes that a small institution ipso facto does excellent work and that a large university must maintain mediocre educational standards. I insist that excellence does not inhere in size. (Steneck and Steneck, 156) This vision of a large state university embodying the highest standards of academic excellence underlay Burton’s program for the physical expansion of the campus. In April 1920, prior to Burton’s arrival in Ann Arbor, the regents had appointed a special committee of three of their body to make a survey of the university’s physical needs, with the goal of recommending a building program to the state legislature of 1921. The special committee consisted of Regents William Clements, Lucius Hubbard, and Benjamin Hanchett, with Clements taking the leading role. In July 1920, the regents asked Clements and the newly arrived President Burton to present, at their next meeting, a recommendation for the provision of a suitable, far-reaching plan for the development of university grounds and buildings. The committee put together a comprehensive list of all needs, which concluded that nineteen million dollars would be needed to fulfill its goals. The amount was brought down to $8,690,000 through great effort and much debate. An extant campus plan drawn by the Buildings and Grounds Department in 1920 was prepared while these discussions were in process, and although adapted from the earlier 1919 plan, it more accurately represents the plan for the building boom of the

1920s. On behalf of the committee, Burton and Clements made their report to the regents in October 1920. This report was the launching point for the building boom and the Page 94 → Comprehensive Building Program. Important in that it suggested the manner in which the program should be managed, the committee’s report stated, in part, It seems essential to your committee to deal with the building situation in an entirely new way. If we are to meet our present problem with wisdom and foresight, we must think in new and larger terms. . . . This Board faces a clearly defined alternative: Either a comprehensive plan dealing with the entire problem must be adopted, or the enrollment of students must be limited. As the latter alternative seems unwise, if not impossible, for a state institution, we propose for your adoption the following plan to be known officially as the “Comprehensive Building Plan of the University of Michigan.” (1) We recommend that the Board of Regents officially adopt the plan of developing the so-called “Mall System,” the general outline and plan of which has been heretofore considered and approved by the Board of Regents. This Mall to extend to the north from the new central Library and that within this area, such land as may be necessary for the carrying out of this plan be purchased. . . . We recommend that the Board retain the Olmsted Brothers of Boston, Mass. as consulting Landscape Architects and Mr. Albert Kahn of Detroit, Mich. as the official consulting Architect of the University, it being assumed that these parties will study our building and grounds problem and submit comprehensive plans for the development of the entire campus. Following the report from the regents’ committee, the legislative request was finalized for the fiscal years 1921–22 and 1922–23 and approved by the regents in November 1920. The total requested amount for buildings and land was $8,690,000, which was earmarked for six new buildings, additions to the Dental School and the chemical lab, new facilities for the biological station (located on Douglas Lake in northern lower Michigan), the purchase of land, and the completion of the University Hospital. (The original appropriation for the University Hospital had been made in 1917, with construction begun in 1919. Due to lack of adequate funds, the partially finished structure was boarded up in 1921 and not completed until a substantial appropriation was made in 1923.) The six new buildings to be funded were the first unit of a major new literary building, a museum building, a building for the engineering shops and laboratory, a physics laboratory, a new building for the Medical School, and the so-called model high school, which was a training school for teachers and the first section of the proposed School of Education. Ultimately, the legislature of 1921 appropriated $4.8 million, plus $300,000 that had been promised in 1919 for the model high school but not paid out; the total represented only 59 percent of the requested funds but was still a great deal for bricks and mortar. Of the $5.1 million appropriated, only the $300,000 for the high school and another $300,000 for some outstanding contracts on the partially completed hospital were specifically designated. The allocation of the remainder was left to the discretion of the regents. The appropriation of 1921 kicked off the now officially named Comprehensive Building Program.

THE BURTON PLANS In April 1921, President Burton reported to the regents on the proposed organization and management of the building program. The report’s major recommendations were (a) the establishment of the position of consulting architect and the appointment of Albert Kahn, noted architect of Detroit and designer of several landmark buildings at the university; (b) the establishment of the position of supervisor of plans and the appointment of Professor John Shepard (making him the first “university planner”); (c) the establishment of a “Committee of Five” to be placed in direct and full charge of the development of the plans and to be made up of the chairman of the Buildings and Grounds Committee (Regent Clements), the president of the university (Burton), the secretary of the university (Shirley Smith), the supervisor of plans (Shepard), and the consulting architect (Kahn); and (d) the establishment of a separate subcommittee for each new building, to include the dean of the school or college concerned. The Committee of Five was appointed as recommended. In June 1921, it presented a proposal on Page 95 → how

to spend the appropriation of $5.1 million, and the proposal was adopted by the regents. The new buildings to be funded were a model high school, a building for the engineering shops and labs (East Engineering Building), the first unit of a literary building (Angell Hall; fig. 5.14), the first unit of a physics building (Randall Lab), and the new East Medical Building (now the C. C. Little Science Building; fig. 5.15). In addition, funds were allotted for outstanding hospital contracts, substantial land acquisition, and an addition to the Dental School. The majority of the funds designated for the medical building were subsequently used for land purchases, primarily for the site for the Law School, and so the medical building was not completed under the 1921 appropriation. At this time, architects were also appointed for the design of the new buildings, with Albert Kahn obtaining the commission for three of the structures—the literary building, the physics lab, and the medical building.

Professor Shepard, the supervisor of plans, then presented a memorandum embodying the general objectives that he believed the Committee of Five should bear in mind in adopting a layout of buildings and a plan of order for construction. After studying Shepard’s report, Regent Clements wrote to President Burton: I have carefully read over Dr. Shepard’s report on campus groupings. I am not sure that he is correct, neither am I sure that any suggestions I might make would be correct. We are so likely to disregard conclusions of other committees made but a short time ago. A conclusion reached not ten years ago was for a growth to the North for academic buildings and the mall scheme extending to Huron Street was developed. We are now proposing just the opposite with a development to the South for the same type of building. Possibly this matter has been given such careful consideration by the Committee that the southward development is best notwithstanding all that has been done, if so, then let us proceed and forget the past. Burton responded, saying, You have raised a second very important question in your letter, namely, the problem of the location of the buildings and the campus groupings. I am not at all sure that we have arrived at satisfactory conclusions in regard to this large problem, and this is one of the subjects which ought to receive the most careful consideration of our Committee and of the Board of Regents. I am not at all clear in my mind that we have sufficient evidence at the present moment to decide finally where these buildings are to be located, and I believe your suggestion, that conclusions reached some ten years ago [Emil Lorch’s plan of 1907] ought not hastily to be thrust aside, is eminently sound. In his annual report, dated June 1921, President Burton reported on the building program and planning Page 96 → issues. Referring to the plans that had so far been drafted, he wrote, Those plans, however, are tentative and will doubtless be modified in the actual development of the campus. In general, it may be said that the Regents have actually determined that the humanities, law, and related subjects shall be located on the west and south sides of the campus and that the sciences, pure and applied, and medicine with the hospitals shall go on the north and east sides. . . . Furthermore, it may be said that in general men’s interests will center south and west of the campus where the Michigan Union and Ferry Field are determining factors, while new buildings for women will go to the north of the campus in close proximity to Palmer Field and the Barbour Gymnasium. The projected Michigan League Building will be located on the east side of the Mall just north of North University Avenue and east of Hill Auditorium. Page 97 → The issue of building placement and campus planning in general occupied the attention of the Committee of Five during the summer of 1921, with a more up-to-date plan drawn by the Buildings and Grounds Department in August 1921, under the direction of Professor Shepard. When the regents requested drawings showing the proposed location of the new buildings (those funded through gifts as well as the state appropriation), two colored maps were prepared and presented to the them in September 1921 (fig. 5.16). The regents approved the plans,

in so far as they indicated a general location of the “humanities” in the south and west portions of the campus with its expected extensions, and of the “sciences” in the east and north portions, including the different locations indicated on the plan for the buildings designed for education, physics, medicine, engineering shops and laboratories, dental college, literary college, and the Clements Library, but without any definite commitment as to law buildings, gymnasiums, women’s building, and an administration building. Although the plans developed in the 1919–21 period bear the attribution of the Department of Buildings and Grounds, the design concepts, architectural forms, planning principles and site developments depicted in these drawings are too sophisticated and forward-looking to represent solely the work of that department. The input of a trained professional is clearly evident in these plans. Only two men were in a position to provide that input: Emil Lorch and Albert Kahn. Of the two, Kahn seems to be the more likely candidate. He was highly regarded and trusted by the members of the board of regents, particularly Regent Clements. Kahn had designed several highly regarded buildings at the university—not to mention Clements’s own home in Bay City—and was a member of the Committee of Five. By comparison, Lorch had previously clashed with the regents on the issue of siting Hill Auditorium, and the board had shown concerns about a conflict of interest that might result from commissioning Lorch, a member of the faculty, to design a university building. Therefore, in my opinion, Albert Kahn should be given credit for his involvement in the development of the campus plans of the early 1920s as well as for his widely recognized influence on the architecture of the campus.

THE QUESTION OF ARCHITECTURAL STYLE AND CAMPUS HARMONY The new building program of the Burton era afforded an opportunity to dramatically change the physical expression of the university, as was noted by many and voiced in the Michigan Alumnus in October 1921. It must be acknowledged that whatever Michigan may boast in the university world, architectural distinction has not been her strongest point. We have many useful buildings and a few that are beautiful as well, but we need more that are both. The two requirements are by no means antagonistic. In the new buildings which are soon to be erected on the Campus in accordance with the [legislative] programme . . . Michigan has a marvelous opportunity to change, almost overnight, its whole architectural setting. Moreover some of the relics of an older and less worthy era, architecturally speaking, are bound to go in the near future. The University must make sure that those that replace them shall fittingly represent Michigan in this period of extensive building in our colleges and Universities. In the case of some of our buildings that have not been entirely successful from the architectural view, we have had the excuse of insufficient appropriations in the face of an enrollment invariably surpassing expectations. It is to be hoped that this element henceforth will not have to enter so largely into the calculations. Not that we are asking for an extravagant outlay for mere externals, that is not necessary. But beauty, dignity, and serviceability can be combined to make, not only the buildings, but the group of buildings express truly the purpose for which they are designed, with a touch of that high idealism and sentiment we associate with our college life. Thus we can give our Campus a new charm, and make it a place to which our graduates will return with a new pride and love. Despite the interest in improving the quality of campus Page 98 → architecture expressed in the Alumnus article here cited, the so-called battle of styles that became a major issue in campus development at many American universities was more of a skirmish at Michigan than a full-scale battle. As George Thomas noted in his history of the University of Pennsylvania campus, As important as the selection of the architects of the campus was the choice of its style. Now, at the close of the twentieth century, the battle of the styles between classical and Gothic design for campus buildings is largely forgotten, but at the time when Beaux-Arts training was beginning to dominate architectural education it was the first order of business.

The attempt to determine a single architectural style for all the buildings on a campus was a common theme at the beginning of the twentieth century. When developing the plans for Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1899, Walter Cope of Cope and Stewardson, one the country’s leading architectural firms, argued in favor of the Gothic style in the following terms: Broadly speaking—the architecture of today may be divided into two styles: the Gothic and the Classic. With the former we would, for the purposes of this discussion, include such modifications of pure Gothic as were introduced during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries, without material change in Gothic principles of construction or composition. By Classic, we mean the purer type of that style, which has come to be known as “Monumental,” such architecture as we are familiar with in our great government buildings, or in those of the World’s Fair in Chicago. It is useless to discuss which of these two styles is the most beautiful. We assume that their claims in this respect, broadly speaking are equal—but it is proper to compare those qualities which each bear directly on the question before you—the choice of the most appropriate style for an American University. The Greeks rejected the arch because they said it never rests, and this feeling of the Greeks is the key note of every classic building. Classic architecture expresses completion, finality, perfection; Gothic architecture expresses aspiration, growth, development. To the beholder, the Classic says: This is the sum—Here is perfection—Do not aspire further. The Gothic says to him: Reach higher—Spread outward and upward—There are no limitations. Now when we consider what a University is, can there be any doubt which of these two styles better answers its idea? Equally fervent arguments in favor of the classical style were advanced by its champions. At Michigan, though, this debate never reached the fevered pitch that it did at many other schools. Perhaps this had to do with the existence of the variety of styles already in evidence on the campus, with the unpopularity of the dominant Romanesque Revival style (disparagingly referred to as “firehouse architecture”), or with the lack of funds required to execute buildings in the more elegant styles. Unquestionably, it had a great deal to do with the philosophy of the university’s supervising architect, Albert Kahn. Kahn’s major emphasis in building design seems to have been on issues such as function, structure, and cost, rather than on becoming an advocate for one aesthetic style. In fact, his own work demonstrates that he was comfortable designing in a variety of different styles. He employed an early modernist approach to his designs for factories and office buildings and utilized colonial Georgian and Gothic approaches in his residential work. At the university, he showed a clear preference for classical designs for the academic buildings, as evidenced by the Hatcher Graduate Library, Angell Hall, the C. C. Little Science Building, Randall Lab, and the Ruthven Museums Building, among others, but he also employed a more modernist approach in projects such as the Kraus Natural Science Building, Hill Auditorium, and the University Hospital. There is no evidence that Kahn raised any serious objections to the use of Gothic designs for projects such as Martha Cook Residence, the Michigan Union, the Law Quadrangle, the School of Education, and Lorch Hall or to the use of Romanesque Revival style on the buildings designed for the Athletic Department, such as Yost Field House or the Intramural Sports Building. As a result of Kahn’s stylistic flexibility, the buildings erected on the Michigan campus in the Page 99 → twentieth century continued to express the evolving design philosophy of the architectural profession, as opposed to the imposition of a single “official” style on all the buildings on the campus. This approach has the potential to create a more vibrant and exciting environment if well done but can easily lead to architectural chaos if poorly done. That the university could not rely on a uniform architectural style or a uniform set of building materials to produce campus harmony meant that greater emphasis had to be placed on other elements, such as the siting of buildings in an orderly pattern, building massing, building height, the site development and landscaping of campus open spaces, and the creation of a well-ordered system of pedestrian walks to produce a harmoniously designed and beautiful campus. It also meant that greater responsibility was placed on the architects of each new building to develop a design that would harmonize with the rest of the campus.

IMPLEMENTING THE BUILDING PROGRAM

The question of style, however, was not the most pressing issue facing Michigan’s building program in the early 1920s. The issue of cost containment now threatened to impose serious limitations on the extent and content of the program. As the committee continued to struggle with limitations on available funds and with significantly higher bids than anticipated, drastic reductions in the scope and size of the new buildings had to be made. The physics, literary, engineering, and education (model high school) buildings were executed in modified form, with the physics lab, for example, ending up in an L shape rather than the originally designed quadrangle. The literary building, meant to be a major visual landmark, was also modified, but with the anticipation that it would be completed under the next major appropriation—which did not, in fact, come to fruition (fig. 5.17). With these construction projects underway in 1922, the regents were already preparing their legislative request for 1923, which totaled $7,277,000 and included funds for the new medical building, a journalism/press building, a nurses’ home, completion of the hospital, a field house for women, the second unit of the literary building, and other items. The legislature finally appropriated $3.8 million, a little over half of what had been requested. The funds were specifically designated for completion of the hospital, the new medical building (East Medical, now called C. C. Little), an addition to the power plant, and extension of the tunnels and sewers. With major buildings now funded through the 1921 and 1923 appropriations and with several buildings funded through gifts, the campus development was making a significant visual impact (fig. 5.18). In a Michigan Alumnus article dated December 14, 1922, and entitled “An Exposition of the Campus Plan,” Professor John F. Shepard wrote about the campus planning effort. Page 100 → In laying out a larger University plan, we have attempted at all times to give due consideration to such points as the following: (1) Position of existing fireproof buildings. . . . (2) Development of an academic unity, one element of which is physical continuity. This means that departments are placed with some reference to their interrelations and at such distances that the time required in passing from one class to another shall not be too great—it is, in fact, already beyond the desirable limit. . . . (3) Provision for each building of a ground plan that will give the best possible lighting conditions, internal arrangements, etc., for the special kind of work to be done in the building. . . . (4) Continuity of building construction. In the first place, so far as possible, buildings needed now should not wait too long because of the necessity of completing other buildings to make them physically possible; in the second place there must be proper space for future expansion without loss or injury to what has been done and in a form that will function best. (5) Certain departments, such as Physics, should be so far as possible isolated from vibration. (6) Architectural unity and beauty combined with efficiency for present purposes and ease of adaptation in the future. Uniformity of material will contribute much. Extensive use of a modern type of architecture is necessary for effective work and is, as a rule, all that can be provided with the funds that can be expected from the State. But this can be combined with classic forms in such a way as to make a dignified and pleasing group of buildings which in their bold masses, refined detail and general restraint will express the purposes for which they are built. It is an architecture which “fuses the spirit of classic and conservatism of the East with the freedom of ideas which becomes the new West.” On the south side will be developed a distinct group with Gothic elements, including the Martha Cook Building, the Law group and the University High School. (7) Improvement of the traffic situation around the University. . . . (8) Relation of the power plant and tunnel system. (9) Location and design of buildings to take advantage of local conditions, such as gravel beds under the main Campus, the depression of the old “cat-hole,” the situation of the residence section from which students for the University High School will mainly come. (10) Both physical and moral tone are helped by proper physical exercise. But the facilities for physical development will be freely used only when so placed as to be near the center of student social life and constantly an invitation to the student. This must be a factor in locating gymnasia and dormitories. In general, the Languages, Philosophy, Mathematics, Economics, History, Political Science, and allied subjects such as Law, Business Administration, Journalism are grouped on the South and West. Physics, Chemistry, Natural Sciences and the applied Sciences [the Schools of Engineering, Medicine, and Dentistry] are grouped at the North and East. North of the old Campus is to be a group

of semi-public, semi-academic buildings—Hill Auditorium, the Museum, University Theatre, Woman’s League, etc. Still further North, will be dormitories for Women, which, together with several of the semi-public buildings, we hope to receive by gift in the future. On the Northeast will be a group connected with the Hospitals. In order to carry out the plan and attain the objects set forth above and for the safety of students passing from class to class, it will be necessary to close certain streets, including East University and Church from South University to Washtenaw, Oakland and Haven from South University to Monroe, and College Street. It has been agreed with the City of Ann Arbor that this is to be done when the University has bought all the land on both sides of the streets concerned. It has also been agreed that the University is to continue Forest Avenue into Fourteenth Street [present Washtenaw].

Throughout the early 1920s, during the Comprehensive Building Program, President Burton continued to champion other causes that he hoped would be funded by the state or privately. These included buildings for the central administration, the Business School, and the Economics Department; a nurses’ residence; a field house for women; a memorial campanile (dedicated to war veterans); and the Michigan League, a women’s building to complement the men’s Michigan Union. Private funds ultimately provided for the nurses’ home (Couzens Hall), the Michigan League, the Law Quad, a medical research facility (Simpson Memorial), and the memorial Page 101 → campanile. The campanile did not come to fruition until the 1930s and was then erected as a memorial to President Burton rather than to war veterans.

THE IMPACT OF THE BURTON PLANS The post–World War I era represented a fundamental change in the attitude toward planning at the University of Michigan. To begin with, master planning became an officially recognized function of the university, and the master plans were formally adopted by the board of regents, thereby conferring on them the authority of the institution’s governing body. While it is true that A. J. Davis’s original plan of 1838 was also formally adopted, subsequent efforts such as Cobb’s plan of 1898, Lorch’s plan of 1907, and Olmsted’s plans of 1916/1922 were never adopted by the board. While some of these efforts, particularly Lorch’s plan, did influence the siting of new buildings and other elements of campus development, they lacked the official sanction of the governing board and were often ignored in the decision-making process. Beginning in 1919, however, master planning was undertaken as part of the Comprehensive Building Program, for which state funds were being sought and, therefore, regental approval was necessary to assure the governor and legislature that the program being requested represented the official position of the university and its governing board. These approvals were granted by the regents, with the result that the master plans of the early 1920s became truly effective tools in determining the siting of new buildings and the overall development of the campus. The master plan adopted by the regents in September 1921 was the first officially adopted master plan for the campus since the 1840 plan. Of course, there were still arguments over the siting of individual buildings, particularly donor-funded Page 102 → projects, and over other details of the campus design. But, by and large, the plans developed in conjunction with the Comprehensive Building Program proved to be truly influential tools in determining the character and form of Michigan’s campus in the twentieth century. Even the placement of buildings such as the Modern Languages Building in the 1960s, the Alumni Center in the 1970s, and the Dow Chemistry Laboratory in the 1980s conform very closely to the footprints indicated in the plans of the early 1920s. Other elements of campus design, such as the Ingalls Mall and East University Walkway, which were features of the 1920s plans, were also implemented by subsequent generations. From a design standpoint, the plans developed during this era show the full impact of the Beaux Arts approach on the planning of the Michigan campus. The earlier plans of Lorch and Olmsted had incorporated some Beaux Arts elements, such as a well-defined central space (the Diag) and a north-south axis (the Ingalls Mall). But prior to the 1920s, these concepts had been applied only to the original central forty-acre parcel. The 1920s plans incorporated a much larger area surrounding the central forty and extended and strengthened the axial concepts and carried

them even further by emphasizing secondary axes along the line of the original northwest-southeast diagonal walkway and along a new southwest-northeast cross axis. Some plans even extended this axis so far as to link with the Medical Center, an idea that was finally implemented at the beginning of the twenty-first century. All of these axes crossed at the center of the Diag, thereby emphasizing its central “focal” importance from a design point of view as well as a functional one. Some studies even explored the creation of an east-west axis through the center of the Diag, but this proved unworkable and was eventually abandoned. Other ideas, such as enhancing the pedestrian circulation and landscape character of the campus by closing some streets and converting them to landscaped walkways, were elements of the 1920s plans, but the full impact of the automobile was yet to be understood. There were relatively few automobiles in Ann Arbor then, and the plans showed concepts such as a few small parking lots tucked discreetly into the edges of the campus or the notion of an attractively landscaped boulevard between Hill Auditorium and the Michigan League. These design concepts seemed perfectly reasonable in the 1920s and 1930s, but when confronted with the full impact of the post–World War II, auto-oriented world, they proved inadequate.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF IN-HOUSE PROFESSIONAL CAPABILITIES During the Burton building period, the university also began to develop the administrative structure necessary to support the development and implementation of effective master planning. The position of superintendent of buildings and grounds dated back to President Tappan’s day. In the early 1920s, it was occupied by Edward C. Pardon, but to deal with the Comprehensive Building Program, two new positions had been created. Professor John Shepard had been appointed supervisor of plans, and Albert Kahn had been named supervising architect. In 1930, the position of director of plant extension was created to coordinate the work of those involved in the area of campus development. In the 1940s, Lynn Fry filled the position of university architect after the death of Albert Kahn, and the position was changed from a consulting one to an in-house staff position. After World War II, this structure would be expanded even further, but the significance of the prewar structure was to create an in-house group of trained professionals who could act as an effective link between, on the one hand, the university and its user groups and, on the other, retained outside professional service providers (architects, landscape architects, engineers, planners, etc.). In addition, this staff provided long-term continuity in the area of campus development, transcending the tenure of any given administration and, in so doing, providing the consistency necessary for effective long-term planning and implementation in the development of the campus. It was designed to assure that planning would be a true ongoing university function and not merely the reflection of the whims and prejudices of a particular administration, no matter how well informed or solidly based these might be. Page 103 →

THE CAMPUS LANDSCAPE AND SITE DEVELOPMENT President Burton was keenly aware of the importance of the landscape as well as architecture in establishing the character of the campus. He observed, The acquisition of so much new land and the erection of so many new buildings, all in a short time, give rise to another large problem, that of landscaping. Without the adjuncts of trees, shrubs, and flowers a university campus is a sorry thing indeed. The nobility of growing things, the massive trunks and arching branches of trees, screens of foliage, the bloom of springtime, and the rich colors of autumn all furnish a setting peculiarly appropriate to the scholars’ pursuits. Andrew D. White’s love of trees, and his feeling, when he was a professor here, that Michigan needed a tree-clad campus, led to our possession of the aisles and avenues of elms which have inspired every Michigan student and teacher [figs. 5.19 and 5.20). Similarly our enlarged campus requires the beauty which trees and shrubs and well-kept lawns will give it, and both practical and aesthetic considerations demand that their arrangement, and the disposition of drives and walks in connection with them, shall tend to unify the whole. We have recognized both the practical and the psychological aspect of this problem—the need of unity in the campus, and the effect of beauty of environment upon men and women—and have sought competent aid in attaining the best results.

In 1923, the firm of Pitkin and Mott, landscape architects from Cleveland, Ohio, were retained to prepare landscape plans for the Clements Library and other buildings being added to the campus and to give general advice on matters of campus planning. Most of the new buildings had already been sited in accordance with the master plan of 1921, but other questions remained to be resolved. One planning issue that concerned Pitkin and Mott was the provision of an appropriate link between the Central Campus, the Medical Center, and the area of the women’s playing field (Palmer Field) lying to the east of Fourteenth Street (now Washtenaw Avenue). At first, they proposed a diagonal axis running from the northeast corner of the Diag to the northern end of the playing field and thence to University Hospital (fig. 5.21). (It was reminiscent of the vehicular axis proposed by the Olmsted plan a few years earlier.) That proposal was rejected because of the necessity of demolishing several existing buildings to accommodate it. An earlier idea of connecting the Central Campus and Medical Center along the axis of Ann Street by closing the street and acquiring all the property along it had also been rejected, because of its extremely high costs and limited benefits. In its place, Pitkin and Mott proposed to extend the axis of North University Avenue eastward to the women’s playing field area and to surround the recreation field with a series of academic and residential buildings. A somewhat modified form of this latter concept was implemented and exists today, although it took a number of years to accomplish. Page 104 → Another idea suggested during this era was the rerouting of the state highway between Detroit and points west, which then followed Washtenaw Avenue into North University, through the heart of the campus. The heavy through traffic imposed a barrier between the central forty and the land to the north and east of it, causing problems for the future development of these areas. The planners suggested rerouting this traffic via Fourteenth Street (present Washtenaw) to Huron and then west on Huron to Jackson Road. This is exactly what was done, but not until the late 1960s, when the full impact of the automobile on the Central Campus was clearly evident. Page 105 → A final concept put forth during the Burton era was the closing of some of the campus streets and their conversion to pedestrian ways with landscaping. The planners suggested closing East University Avenue and Church Street between North and South University Avenues, as well as College Street between East University and Church. A formal agreement with the city was signed in June 1922 to accomplish these closings when the university became owner of all the land on both sides of the streets. Since it took quite a while to acquire the land, the closings did not take place until after World War II. College Street was closed in the early 1960s, to provide a site for the Dennison Building (Physics and Astronomy), and East University was closed in the late 1960s, as part of a program to reroute the through traffic around the campus core, as originally proposed in Burton’s time. The university still does not own all the land on the east side of Church Street, and its closing at this point in time would not be practical in terms of city circulation. One last aspect of the Burton-era street revision plans that did take place was the idea of extending Forest Avenue north to connect with Fourteenth Street (present Washtenaw). This concept was modified somewhat in the 1960s by extending the connection from Fourteenth Street to Observatory Street. This extension was implemented in the early 1970s and is in use today. The landscape designs of Pitkin and Mott had an impact on the look of the campus prior to World War II, but little of this work remains today (fig. 5.22). Landscapes tend to be less permanent than buildings, roads, and plazas and can be seriously impacted by things such as Dutch elm and other plant diseases, programs to reduce maintenance costs, and changing tastes in planting design and selection of plant materials, as well as the impact of new building placements and changing patterns of movement on campus. While it may be possible to discern some traces of the landscape design work of Pitkin and Mott in the grounds of such buildings as the Clements Library, the Rackham Building, and the Barbour and Newberry residence halls, this aspect of their work at Michigan has, by and large, disappeared. One element of site development that began to appear at Michigan during the first quarter of the twentieth century was the provision of paved outdoor spaces for assembly and interaction. In the nineteenth century, the campus

hardscape consisted almost entirely of walks connecting the buildings or crossing the campus. Plazas and courtyards did not exist. The man who brought about the change was Albert Kahn. He had studied in Europe during 1891–92 and spent a great deal of time in Italy, where he had ample opportunity to observe the richly designed piazzas and campos common in that country, such as Michelangelo’s Piazza di Campidoglio in Rome, the Piazza San Pietro in Rome, the Piazza San Marco in Venice, and the Campo in Sienna. When, in 1912, he received the commission for Hill Auditorium, a large hall that required an outdoor assembly area as well as an interior lobby, he responded with the design of the first exterior plaza on the Michigan campus. It featured concrete and patterned brickwork, which created a handsome foreground for one of the university’s landmark buildings. He followed this by locating a plaza in front of the new library (1920), at the main crossroads of the campus, and it immediately became the campus’s principal interactive exterior space. He created another entrance plaza at the Clements Library (1925), and Pond and Pond incorporated one in the design of the Michigan Union (1919). Thus a new design element, the paved plaza, was added to the urban design vocabulary of the University of Michigan. It was an element that would be used many times in the future development of the campus. Page 106 →

THE POST-BURTON ERA AND C. C. LITTLE President Marion LeRoy Burton suffered a heart attack in late October 1924 and died on February 18, 1925. His loss to the university was overwhelming, not only in terms of planning and construction, but also in the areas of academics, public relations, and student life. Alfred H. Lloyd, then dean of the Graduate School, was named interim president and served from February to October 1925, when a new president was appointed. Lloyd presided over the completion of the projects initiated as part of the Comprehensive Building Program. On September 24, 1925, the Committee of Five, which had directed that program, was discharged by the regents. From that point on, new buildings would be addressed on a project-by-project basis rather than as part of a major comprehensive program. A request to the legislature for additional building funds had been prepared under President Burton’s direction and made ready for presentation by the fall of 1924 (fig. 5.23). Because of his illness, however, the president could not make the presentation himself. Instead, President Emeritus Hutchins, Secretary Smith, and Regents Clements, Beal, and Stone were given this responsibility. The legislative request for 1925 amounted to $3,192,700 and included new buildings for the administration, the museum, the observatory, and the architecture school. The state subsequently appropriated $1.8 million, which was designated for the museum building (Ruthven), the architecture building (Lorch Hall), and land acquisition. But without President Burton, the building boom began to wind down. Of course, the momentum of the construction program carried it forward, and new projects, particularly donor-funded projects such as the Law Quad, the Michigan League, and the Simpson Memorial Institute, were initiated. But after Burton’s death very little new master planning took place. Pitkin and Mott continued to work on landscape designs for new buildings and on general campus improvements in terms of walks and plantings. But the basic master plan for campus development was now in place and would not experience a major revision until the early 1960s. A new president was appointed in October 1925. He was Clarence Cook Little, the thirty-six-year-old president of the University of Maine. Little was a distinguished researcher, an educational innovator, and an experienced university administrator; however, he lacked the diplomatic skills that had served President Burton so well. His efforts to institute a “University College” and his focus on reforming the curriculum and enhancing alumni relations rather than on improving the physical facilities brought him into direct conflict with the faculty. He also alienated others in the legislature and the general community, and his tenure was marked by controversy and conflict. There were problems with student discipline, and an unpopular ban on student cars was instituted in 1927–28. The president was also experiencing problems in his personal life, and he submitted his resignation in January 1929. He returned to biological research, where he had a long and distinguished career. Page 107 →

Despite the fact that President Little was primarily engaged in efforts to reform the curriculum and improve relations with the alumni, new construction projects continued to be initiated during his administration. The Board in Control of Intercollegiate Athletics dramatically improved the university’s sports facilities, financed primarily out of the income of the football program. A new field house (named for football coach Fielding Yost) was added in 1924, as well as a new football stadium in 1927, the Intramural Sports Building in 1928, and the Women’s Athletic Building adjacent to the women’s athletic field (Palmer Field), also in 1928. The state-funded Ruthven Museums Building and architecture buildings were added in 1928. Major donor-funded buildings were added as well, including Couzens Hall (the nurses’ residence) in 1925, the Simpson Memorial Institute in 1927, and the Michigan (Women’s) League in 1929. The most significant project of this era, however, was the development of the Law Quadrangle. It was a landmark project from many points of view: it gave Michigan the finest facilities for legal instruction in the country, represented a significant improvement in the architectural context of the Michigan campus, and marked a shift in planning emphasis from comprehensive master planning to the more detailed area of precinct (or subarea) planning.

THE LAW QUADRANGLE The project to build a set of new facilities for the Law School was unique in many ways. It spanned the administration of four university presidents. The key decisions with respect to architecture and planning were made in New York by the donor and his architect, with very little direct input from the university staff in Ann Arbor. It brought a new architectural expression (stone Collegiate Gothic) and introduced a new planning concept (the enclosed English quadrangle). The discussions that would ultimately lead to the creation of the Law Quadrangle, between the donor, William W. Cook, and the university, began during the administration of President Harry Hutchins, a former dean of the Law School. Cook, a Michigan alumnus (an 1880 and 1882 graduate of the Law School), was a successful lawyer in New York City and had originally planned to endow a professorship in corporate law, but in the course of discussions, Page 108 → this idea was expanded to encompass the entirety of what is now the Law Quadrangle. The concept developed in stages, beginning, in the latter part of Hutchins’s administration, with a commitment to build a dormitory for freshman students. The donor acquired land for this purpose on Washtenaw Avenue near Geddes, where the Ruthven Museums Building now stands. By 1921, the plan had evolved into a dorm for law students and a lawyers’ club, and after President Hutchins explained to Cook the Law School’s needs for new facilities and equipment, the donor became interested in an even larger project. In 1920, the Law School presented to Cook a program for a new Law School building (to include a library and dormitory), as well as an endowment for legal research and graduate work. Cook agreed to support this program, which was first planned to go on the site on Washtenaw that was originally designated for the dormitory. After more careful examination, however, it became obvious that this site was too small to accommodate the expanded concept. In 1920, Cook, Law School dean Henry Bates, and the architects York and Sawyer agreed on a four-building complex that included almost all of the features of the plan that was eventually built. The problem now became the acquisition of an adequate site to accommodate the proposed law complex. Several options were considered. At first, Cook favored expanding the Washtenaw/Geddes site to accommodate the larger project. Another site was suggested, immediately east of Hill Auditorium, but that proposal did not elicit much support. Finally, Hutchins suggested a location on the south side of South University Avenue, immediately west of the Martha Cook women’s residence, which William Cook had donated in 1915 in honor of his mother. Hutchins pointed out the convenience of this site to libraries, literary school classes attended by law students, the Michigan Union, Alumni Memorial Hall, and the soon-to-be-built Clements Library of Americana. At first, Cook resisted the change, but by the fall of 1921, Hutchins had won him over. The regents had already begun purchasing land in this block for future university expansion, and Cook told Hutchins that if the university could set aside for the project the two blocks bounded by State Street, South University Avenue, and Tappan and Monroe Streets, he would consent to changing the site. Cook had asked his architects, Edward Palmer York and Philip Sawyer, to evaluate the proposed new site, and they, too, were supportive. York went so far as to describe it as “the finest in Ann Arbor” (Forsyth, 27). By this point, Cook’s idea had evolved into a four-building complex consisting of two dormitories (one combined with a lawyers’ club and dining hall), a law library, and an academic

building. These buildings would be grouped around a central court and would become a true quadrangle. By midSeptember, Cook presented a formal offer to the university, stipulating that Cook would pay to erect the buildings provided that the site would be furnished by the university. On September 30, 1921, the regents acted favorably with respect to his offer. On September 21, Cook wrote to Hutchins that he was having the architects do some sketches and that they were preparing “something wonderful.” It now fell to the university to acquire the required land. Most of the parcels in the two blocks were occupied by aging rooming houses that were relatively easy to acquire, but several parcels were a bit more difficult. Three fraternity houses were located along State Street just north of Monroe. Alumni of two of them were influential individuals who did not want to see the houses destroyed. Dean Bates suggested to Cook that these houses be allowed to remain, but Cook would not hear of it. Ultimately, the problem was solved by Hutchins, who arranged to have one of the houses relocated across State Street. In addition, Oakland Street (formerly South Thayer) had to be closed between South University and Monroe. This was accomplished just before the first construction contracts were actually let. One final property, that occupied by the Memorial Christian Church on South University near Oakland, was made available only after the university agreed to relocate the church to its present site, on Hill Street just west of Tappan. A number of the parcels had to be acquired by eminent domain, but by the summer of 1923, the necessary land had been assembled to permit the letting of contracts for phase I of the project: the Lawyers’ Club and Dormitory. Funding for the land acquisition was provided by the state, primarily from the 1921 appropriation. (The state’s funds were not Page 109 → specifically earmarked for land acquisition for the Law Quad; the bulk of the 1921 appropriation was designated simply for buildings and land.) The concept for the form of the Law School group—an enclosed quadrangle—was described by Cook as early as 1921, and we know that he had authorized the architects to begin the work of translating his idea into a specific plan by September 1921. The university master plan of 1921 shows buildings on the site presently occupied by the Law Quad, but the footprints shown have little to do with the actual plan that was constructed, even though the regents and the top administration were clearly aware of the Cook gift. The site for the Lawyers’ Club and dormitories seems to have been agreed on early on, for it appears on university plans as early as 1922. But the placement of the Legal Research Building (law library) and the academic law building (Hutchins Hall) took longer to resolve. Dean Bates favored placing them, especially the library, at the center of the quadrangle, surrounded by dormitories. This configuration is shown on a plan by Pitkin and Mott dated September 18, 1924. The Lawyers’ Club and Dormitory was completed in 1924, and the second dormitory unit, named the John P. Cook Dorm for the donor’s father, was finished in 1930. York opposed locating the library building at the center of the quadrangle and convinced Cook that it should be placed on the south side of the quad, with dormitories on either side, as shown in a 1924 drawing. Cook wanted the library to have an impressive facade and main entry facing the quad. He was very concerned with creating a large, impressive reading room and less concerned with the stacks, but Dean Bates was very concerned about adequate stack space. The architect resolved the conflict by moving the library northwest to accommodate a stack building on the south (Monroe Street) side. This met the objectives of both men. Cook also specified a generous setback from the street so as to provide an attractive landscape framework for his new buildings. The interior landscaping is a classic composition of lawn and trees. In the early days, hedges were placed along the walks, but these were removed later in an effort to reduce maintenance costs. Their elimination does not seem to detract from the basic quality of the space. The landscape design work was done by Pitkin and Mott (fig. 5.24). The final revision to the plan of the original Law Quad came as a result of the decision to separate the academic building into two parts—a legal research building and a classroom/office building. The William W. Cook Legal Research Building (law library) remained on the site shown in the 1924 drawing, and the classroom/office building (Hutchins Hall) was placed on the site at State and Monroe Streets shown as a “future dormitory” in 1924. The final addition to the quadrangle, the Allan and Alene Smith Law Library (1981), occupied the other “future dormitory” site at Tappan and Monroe Streets and assumed a footprint very similar to Hutchins Hall but with one major exception—it was below grade. Thus, from a planning point of view, it served to extend the open space of the Law Quad and link it with other elements of the university, such as the Business School and Lorch Hall, rather than completing the enclosure of the quadrangle and walling it off from the rest of the university.

The last major issue that needed to be resolved with respect to the Law School buildings was that of architectural style. In its final evolution, the nineteenth-century campus had come to be dominated by buildings in the Romanesque Revival style popularized by H. H. Richardson. But by the early twentieth century, that style had fallen into disfavor, and many on campus considered the older buildings to be very unattractive. The new buildings of the twentieth century began Page 110 → to introduce other styles. Donaldson and Meier had reintroduced the classical style in Alumni Memorial Hall (1910), Albert Kahn had used Georgian at Newberry Residence (1915) and Barbour Residence (1920), and Pond and Pond had employed Collegiate Gothic at the Michigan Union (1919). York and Sawyer had also used Collegiate Gothic in the design of Martha Cook Residence (1915). On the question of style, Cook had definite feelings, and they were very influential in the choice of Collegiate Gothic for the law buildings. Cook’s preference seems to have stemmed from a variety of sources: his family’s English heritage and his fondness for Oxford and Cambridge; the association of the Inns of Court in London with the evolution of the Anglo-American legal system; his familiarity with the new buildings being erected at Yale and Princeton; his admiration for the new Gothic buildings at the University of Chicago; and his own somewhat monastic preference for quiet, contemplative research and writing. Whatever the reasons, Cook was clearly committed to the Gothic Revival style, and all those associated with the project seemed quite comfortable with this decision. As the project evolved, Cook and the architects continued to discuss specific details, such as building heights, choice of stone, and the use of gates. But the fundamental choice of the Gothic style was made early on and was never questioned throughout the entire process of constructing the quadrangle. The question of architectural style did become an issue in the second half of the century. In 1955, an addition was made to the stack portion of the Legal Research Building. It was a vertical expansion that had been anticipated in the original design. However, architectural tastes had changed once again. Modernism was the dominant mode, and historical styles were out of favor. The university went back to York and Sawyer to design the addition, hoping for a compatible scheme. But by this point, York, Sawyer, and the other architects who had worked on the original buildings had passed from the scene. The firm was now committed to the modernist approach. The design they produced was a glass and metal curtain-wall configuration that did reflect some elements of the original building but was essentially an incompatible scheme. In the opinion of most observers, it was one of the ugliest designs the university had ever constructed, and it was imposed on one of its most beautiful buildings. When the distinguished architect Renzo Piano saw the addition, he told me, “That’s what happens when architects think too much.” The metal curtain-wall was replaced with stone as part of a construction project in 2010 (fig. 5.25). Ever since the 1955 addition was completed, it was an object of scorn and derision by the Law School alumni, architectural critics, and the community in general. Therefore, when an expansion of the Legal Research Building was being planned in the 1970s, great concern was expressed about designing the new building in such a way as to respect the integrity of the original architectural style. After several aboveground options were proposed, a final decision was made to employ a below-grade scheme. The design that the architect Gunnar Birkerts developed succeeded in producing a very attractive and workable expansion of the library facilities in a way that respects and enhances the quality of the original quadrangle. It has been widely praised by almost everyone who has seen it (fig. 5.26). Page 111 → The Law Quadrangle was an amazing project. It covered a span of fifteen years, between 1919 and the opening of Hutchins Hall in 1933. It contributed the finest architectural grouping ever built on the Michigan campus, as well as the most well-defined open space and the only example of the enclosed English quadrangle. To this day, the Law Quad represents one of the major icons of the Michigan campus. It appears prominently in picture books and on postcards of the campus and represents a must-see stop on any campus tour and a major destination for visitors. It was the physical expression of one man’s dream of the importance of law in civilized society and his desire to enhance the physical environment of his alma mater. Yet despite his great generosity and his intense personal involvement in the design and detailing of the project, William Cook, who died on June 4, 1930, never saw the actual project that represented the realization of his dream and on which he had lavished so much time and money (fig. 5.27).

PROJECTS OF THE LATER TWENTIES The other buildings erected in the late 1920s conformed pretty much to the organizational concepts developed during the Burton years. The Ruthven Museums Building was located on the site at Washtenaw and Geddes originally acquired by William Cook for the proposed Law School dormitory project. It was shifted slightly to the north when the city vacated Volland Street and extended North University Avenue to the east to replace it. The basic footprint shown on the 1921 plan is clearly what was built. The Michigan (Women’s) League was built in 1929 on the site across the mall from Hill Auditorium, which is shown on the 1921 plan as the museum site; again, though the use changed, the building footprint remained nearly the same, thereby preserving the integrity of the design structure adopted in Burton’s time. The architecture building (now Lorch Hall), built in 1928, was not shown on the 1921 plan but appeared on the revision dating to 1922 and was built in accordance with that plan. The same was true of the elementary wing of the School of Education Building in 1930. The effects of the Depression can be seen in this project. In an effort to reduce costs, one floor was omitted, and many of the architectural details were either eliminated or cheapened. Even placement of the Mosher-Jordan residence hall in 1930 was done in accordance with Pitkin and Mott’s 1926 concept for enclosing Palmer Field with dormitory buildings. Page 112 → Taken as a group, these projects represent the implementation of plans from the Burton era rather than any new initiatives in the area of campus master planning. This was entirely appropriate, since the Burton plans had been well done and created a solid blueprint for the development of the campus. It takes time to implement a plan, and if it is to be truly effective in guiding the growth of a physical environment, it must hold up over time and influence the development of a series of major projects, not just a single building. The Burton-era plans most assuredly did that. In fact, they continued to determine the physical pattern of the development of the Central Campus until after World War II, when the realities of higher education, planning, and architecture changed so radically as to require a whole new approach. But judged by any standard, the plans from the Burton era were overwhelmingly successful. The character of the Central Campus as it exists almost one hundred years later owes much to the Burton-era planners, and some of the concepts that originated during that period are still being applied in the development of the Michigan campus.

THE RUTHVEN ERA: THE DEPRESSION AND WORLD WAR II When President Little stepped down in October 1929, the regents named Professor Alexander Grant Ruthven as the new president. Ruthven was well known at the university: he started in 1903 as a graduate student and worked his way up to professor of zoology and director of the museum. During the Little administration, he served as a valued assistant to the president and was given the title dean of administration. His duties included presenting the budget request to the legislature as well as cultivating potential donors. In the process of preparing for budget presentations, Ruthven had become very familiar with the problems facing the various academic units. He was well thought of both inside and outside the university. Unfortunately, the majority of Ruthven’s tenure encompassed the two most difficult periods in the history of twentieth-century America—the Great Depression and World War II. The Depression was a period of severe economic crisis, resulting in a serious reduction in the funds available to the university for operation and, particularly, for capital projects. Of course, some projects begun before the stock market crash of 1929, such as the Legal Research Building, the John P. Cook Dormitory, Mosher-Jordan Hall, Hutchins Hall, and the university elementary school, were carried through to completion, but the prospect of obtaining funding for new construction projects, especially from the state, seemed quite remote. In view of this situation, there seemed little need for further initiatives in master planning. The planning concepts developed in Burton’s time were still working quite well, and there was little reason to update them. Planning that did take place during the 1930s was done at the scale of individual precincts within the campus rather than on a campuswide scale.

While construction during the 1930s was severely curtailed, it would be incorrect to say that no expansion at all took place. In 1932, the Student Publications Building, funded by profits from various student publications, was added on Maynard Street, across from the Barbour and Newberry residence halls. Its location at the western edge of campus seemed a bit remote from the central academic core at the time, but it would ultimately stand in the midst of the western subcampus area of the Central Campus. A somewhat more central facility came into the university’s possession in 1937, with the acquisition of Newberry Page 113 → Hall from the Students’ Christian Association (SCA). The SCA had built it in 1890–91, in the Romanesque Revival style then popular on campus. Its fieldstone construction gave it a more architecturally interesting quality than many of the other campus buildings of the same style, and it came closer in spirit to the work of H. H. Richardson, the leading exponent of the style. After 1905, it was used by the YMCA, and beginning in the early 1920s, it was rented by the university for classroom space. In 1937, the building was deeded to the university by the SCA, and since 1953, it has housed the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Two other construction projects from this era had a more significant impact on the planning of the Central Campus and the character of the area to the north of North University Avenue. These were the Burton Memorial Tower and the Horace H. Rackham Building. Burton Memorial Tower The presence of bell towers and clock towers on nineteenth-century American campuses had become something of a given. They served a very useful function for the students and faculty in the era before the wristwatch, reminding them of the time and helping them to get to class with punctuality. At Michigan, a bell and clock tower was incorporated into the design of the 1883 library. The bells were donated by E. C. Hegeler, J. J. Hagerman, and President Andrew Dickson White of Cornell University. When the old library was demolished in 1918, the bells and clock were moved to the tower of the old Engineering Shops building, and in the early 1930s, when plans for Burton Tower were firmly underway, the old bells were removed and ultimately donated as part of a scrap metal drive for World War II. An editorial in the May 1919 Michigan Alumnus described their removal: “The writer lamented the necessity of removing the clock and chimes from the tower of the old Library Building to the Engineering Shops Building where, he feared, the bells could no longer be heard for any distance. He expressed the hope that eventually a new clock tower might be ‘set high in the center of the Campus, to be at once a landmark and a thing of beauty.’” When President Burton arrived on campus in 1920, the question of a new bell tower was a topic of popular interest. The new president clearly felt that this concept should be implemented; his papers contain many references to the need for a bell tower (or campanile) on campus. As Wilfred Shaw notes in his Encyclopedic Survey, In his Commencement address of 1921, [Burton] gave further life to this idea by suggesting the erection of a tower to serve as a memorial to the 236 University of Michigan men who had lost their lives in World War I. He envisioned a campanile tall enough to be seen for miles, suggesting that it stand at the approximate center of an enlarged campus as evidence of the idealism and loyalty of the alumni. (1590) Throughout his administration, Burton championed the idea, and at one point, a bell tower was incorporated into the design for Angell Hall. At various times, sites were suggested on the axis of the mall, both north and south of Huron Street, and at the intersection of North and East University Avenues. But despite all of the president’s efforts during his administration, the project never succeeded in attracting the financial support necessary to carry it out. Shortly after President Burton’s death in 1925, university secretary Shirley Smith suggested that the bell tower would be a fitting memorial to the man who had campaigned to raise the funds necessary to construct it. Smith’s suggestion became a ten-year campaign, interrupted by the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. It came to life again in 1935, when Charles Baird offered to provide the funds for the carillon of bells. By incorporating classroom space for the music school, the university was able to utilize some available gift funds, and the University of Michigan Club of Ann Arbor undertook to raise the remaining twenty-five thousand dollars required to build the tower. In 1935–36, the construction finally took place.

The planning for this project dates from the late 1920s and was carried out by one of the most prominent architects of the early modernist movement, Eliel Saarinen, who had come to this country from Finland as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. In 1924, he had agreed to direct the programs of the Page 114 → Cranbrook Institute of Arts in Birmingham, Michigan, after being suggested for this position by Albert Kahn. Subsequently, a working relationship had been established between the Kahn firm and Saarinen, and when Kahn was asked to prepare a design for the memorial, he brought in Saarinen to assist in the design of the project. In the master plans of the early 1920s, a potential location for the campanile was shown on the axis of the mall, north of Huron Street, between Huron and Ann. In those days, the plan called for linking the Central Campus with the Medical Center by extending the axis of the mall as far north as Catherine Street and using Ann Street as a linkage. A campanile at the intersection of the mall and Ann would serve as a landmark for both the Central Campus and the Medical Center and, therefore, seemed a most appropriate site. By the later 1920s, however, this idea had been dropped, and the university had not acquired any land in the area north of Huron and west of Glen. Another location would have to be identified. The desire to position the tower on the axis of the mall was still strong, but a more southerly location would be necessary. Two projects then in planning would influence the site plan that Saarinen eventually proposed: the Michigan League and the proposed music building to be located north of Hill Auditorium, the site now occupied by the Modern Languages Building (fig. 5.28). Saarinen’s proposed plan would have positioned the tower on the axis of the mall and just south of Washington Street. It would have been connected, physically, to a northward expansion of the Michigan League building on the east and, by means of an open colonnade, to the music building on the west (fig. 5.29). By the time the final design was prepared, Saarinen had withdrawn from active participation in the project, and the final drawings were executed by Albert Kahn and Associates. The architectural design of the tower as built is clearly derived from Saarinen’s original concept, which drew heavily on his highly acclaimed entry into the Chicago Tribune Tower competition of 1922 (fig. 5.30). But the realities of economic life forced several changes to the scheme. To begin with, there was insufficient funding to build the tower to the full height proposed by Saarinen, so the tower was shortened by removing a portion of the top section and expanding the remainder to fit on the base (fig. 5.31). Secondly, the tower had to be repositioned. The western portion of South Ingalls Street, which ran between the Michigan League and Hill Auditorium, was a city street. The city had agreed to vacate campus streets, but only after the university had acquired all the land on both sides of the street. The area north of Hill Auditorium was then occupied by a number of privately owned rooming houses, and the university did not have the financial resources to acquire them. In addition, the time involved in acquiring the property and vacating the street would have caused a significant delay. Therefore, a different course of action was chosen. The site for the tower was changed to the northeast corner of Hill Auditorium, on land already owned by the university. Another advantage of this site was the close proximity to the proposed School of Music building (not constructed), since funds that had been earmarked for that building had been used to build the tower, in exchange for the incorporation of music classrooms into the project. The result of this site decision was an off-axis, asymmetrical placement of the tower, quite consistent with the placement of the campaniles on many of the great Italian piazzas that served as the prototype for it, which ultimately proved to work extremely well in the overall urban design context of the mall (fig. 5.32). Another important planning issue, however, remained unresolved: the northern terminus of the mall axis. Page 115 → Page 116 → The Rackham Building The question of the northern terminus did not remain unanswered for long. In 1935, the trustees of the Horace H. and Mary A. Rackham Fund provided the university with money to erect a new building to house the general activities of the graduate school, along with a generous endowment. The funding covered land acquisition as well as building construction, which gave the university the flexibility to site the structure in the appropriate location without being constrained by existing landholdings. It was clear that a project of this nature deserved a very prominent site, both because of the great importance of graduate education to the university and in recognition of a most generous and significant gift on the part of the donors. The site that was chosen consisted of two city blocks, bounded by Huron, Fletcher, Washington, and Thayer Streets and containing thirty buildings that had to be

removed before construction could begin. The removal of these buildings made it possible to site the graduate school building between Washington and Huron on the axis of the mall at its northern terminus. In addition the City of Ann Arbor vacated one block of South Ingalls Street in order to complete the parcel.

The building itself was designed by the Detroit architectural firm of Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls, in the Art Deco style that was popular at the time, and the landscape design was done by Pitkin and Mott. The scale and design of the building, although different from other university buildings, was appropriate for a grand focal building at the end of the mall and has served this purpose very effectively over the years. In addition, it has worked well with the other buildings that have been built around it in more recent times and has fit quite gracefully into the urban design framework of the university. When the project was completed in 1938, it immediately became one of the landmarks of the Michigan campus (fig. 5.33). Page 117 → The PWA and the Federally Funded Projects of the Late 1930s The Great Depression was the most serious economic crisis this country has ever faced. Stock prices plummeted, banks failed, companies went bankrupt, and there was widespread unemployment. At first, the federal government was reluctant to become too deeply involved in creating solutions to these problems. It believed that the workings of the economic system would solve the problem without government intervention. Also, the Republican politicians in power felt that welfare was the responsibility of the states and that the federal government should not intrude into this area. By the early 1930s, however, it became apparent that this approach was not producing an effective solution, and in the election of 1932, the Democratic Party was swept into power on the basis of its promise to deal with the economic crisis through aggressive action, which became the New Deal. The new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, set about quickly dealing with a variety of issues. Reforms to the banking and securities systems came about relatively quickly, but his efforts to create jobs and put people back to work progressed more slowly, due to a series of legal challenges that led ultimately to the overturning of several programs by the Supreme Court. Ultimately, more solidly based programs were created that produced a number of very important capital-improvement projects throughout the country, including those on the campuses of colleges and universities. The most famous of the early programs was the Works Progress Administration, or WPA. This program was aimed primarily at putting unemployed workers back to work as quickly as possible and providing them with incomes to support themselves and their families. Since many of these people were unskilled workers or people from professions of low demand, such as artists and entertainers, most of the jobs were geared to relatively immediate tasks, such as health services, road building, construction of water and sewer lines, and parks maintenance. (At the University of Michigan, WPA workers were used for painting and decoration and for some walkway construction.) However, there were exceptions. One of these was the Federal Arts Program, which employed out-of-work artists to decorate public buildings or produce works for public enjoyment in parks, public buildings, and on campuses. One example of this work is Clivia Calder’s small fountain, entitled Sea Nymph, in the courtyard of the Michigan League. But this is one of the few traces of the WPA that can be seen on the campus. A federal program from the New Deal era that had a much greater impact on the campus was the Public Works Administration, or PWA. This program was aimed at constructing major public works projects around the country that would not only put people back to work but also result in major improvements to the nation’s physical environment. The PWA built dams, utilities, roads, bridges, stadia, and buildings all across the country, including major projects on college and university campuses. These higher education projects had the added feature that the federal government required matching funds from the institution, thereby stretching the federal dollars even further. At Michigan, PWA projects were financed 45 percent by federal dollars and 55 percent from institutional funds.

This tended to work in favor of projects for which a donor could be found for the institutional share or projects that would produce an income stream sufficient to cover the local share. PWA projects at Michigan included the Victor Vaughan House (medical men’s dormitory), the Health Service Page 118 → Building, the Interns’ Residence, the Kellogg Institute for Dentistry, the East Quadrangle (men’s dormitory), the West Quadrangle (men’s dormitory), Stockwell Hall (women’s dormitory), and the Central Power Plant (addition). The institutional funding for the Kellogg dental research building was provided by a grant from the Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek. The housing and health service buildings were financed by bonds to be paid off from future revenues. Taken together, these projects made a significant improvement to the quality of student life at Michigan and served to expand the boundaries of the campus somewhat, but they did not trigger any major changes in the master plan concept that had been developed in the 1920s. The master planning of the Burton era had anticipated the development of additional housing to serve university students. Men’s housing was to be built at the southwest corner of the campus, near the Michigan Union. Women’s housing was to go at the northeast corner, near the Michigan League. At first, the women’s housing was proposed to go north of Huron, in the vicinity of Ann Street. By the mid-1920s, this idea was replaced by the concept of building women’s housing around the periphery of the women’s athletics field (Palmer Field). Couzens Hall, built in 1925, was the beginning of this development, and Mosher-Jordan Hall (1930) continued the pattern. Stockwell Hall, built in 1940, was also placed in accordance with this plan and continued the implementation of the concept. The West Quadrangle group began the implementation of the men’s housing area near the Union, and although it occupied a site that was not specifically shown in the plans from the Burton era, it was designed to appear as an addition to the Union and therefore proved very compatible with the overall pattern of the campus. The same could be said of the other PWA projects. By and large, they occupied sites that had not been anticipated in the plans of the 1920s, but the architects understood the character of the campus and the philosophy of the master plan and were sympathetic to them. The result was that these buildings took their place on campus in a relatively harmonious manner. There were a few changes. The Health Service Building took the site originally proposed for a theater, but its position was very similar to that shown on the Burton plans. East Quadrangle introduced men’s housing into a sector of the campus where it had not been previously proposed, but, again, it took its place in a relatively harmonious manner. All and all, these projects worked themselves into the campus fabric rather well. But for the first time, the campus was beginning to outgrow the boundaries anticipated by the Burton plans. It was reaching the point where an update of the master plan was needed.

THE 1943 POSTWAR PUBLIC WORKS PROGRAM AND PLAN UPDATE The entry of the United States into World War II in 1941 marked the end of the Great Depression, but it also brought an abrupt halt to virtually all civilian construction that was not related to the war. All of the nation’s resources were focused on the war effort, and no major construction projects were initiated at the university between 1941 and 1945. This hiatus gave the university time to reflect on its needs and make plans for meeting them in the postwar era. Since 1930, the state had not been in a financial position to fund capital improvements on the university campus. The improvements to facilities that had taken place in the 1930s were funded by philanthropy, self-liquidating funds, or federal grants. The only project funded by the state at this time was the Neuropsychiatric Institute addition to the University Hospital. The projects of the 1930s had made significant improvements to the university’s physical plant but not in the area of core academic facilities, such as classrooms, laboratories, and administrative space (fig. 5.34). The dramatic improvements to the nation’s economy that had resulted from the war led people to begin to think again about state-funded projects to meet the university’s capital needs. At the same time, there were many who feared that the economy would take another downturn after the war ended and that the state should prepare a public works program that could be activated on relatively short notice. In early 1943, the state asked the university to prepare a program that would meet its most pressing needs and to submit it to Lansing. During the summer, a program was put together by a committee led by Lewis Gram, director of plant extension; John Christensen, controller and assistant secretary of the university; and Walter Roth, assistant superintendent of buildings and groundsApproved by the regents at their September meeting, the program was submitted to Governor Kelley on October 1, 1943. It included fifty-seven projects, grouped into three categories: present needs

(nineteen projects), postwar needs (eighteen projects), and long-range needs (twenty projects). Page 119 → The program was very ambitious. Some of the projects were incorporated into the actual postwar building program of the late 1940s and early 1950s, others took much longer to accomplish, and still others were never implemented. To identify the sites for the proposed structures, a plan was prepared and incorporated into the report (fig. 5.35). In fact, the university had been giving consideration to its future building needs prior to 1943, and as part of this thinking, an earlier plan (dated 1941) had also been prepared. Both of these plans represented updates of the Burton plans and did not represent any significant change in the basic planning approach. (The plans were fundamentally in the Beaux Arts style.) The 1943 plan provided the basis for siting many of the postwar building projects, such as the administration building (called the General Services Building then and the Literature, Science, and the Arts Building now), the chemistry addition, the East Engineering addition, phase II of the East Quadrangle, and the addition to Angell Hall (Haven and Mason Halls). For other postwar projects, such as the new Business Administration Building, South Quadrangle, and Markley Hall, it failed to show a site at all. In some cases, it showed projects in locations where the university did not expand, such as the area north of Huron Street and west of Glen Avenue, the South University frontage between East University Avenue and Forest Avenue, or the area south of North University Court and west of Observatory Street. Also, the building shapes shown on the plan tended to differ significantly from the footprints of the buildings that were actually built. Cases where a site was shown on the plan but where the fundamental land uses or building shape and footprint was significantly altered include the Church Street Parking Structure, the Undergraduate Library, and the Pharmacy Building. Page 120 →

THE POSTWAR BUILDING PROGRAM With the end of hostilities in 1945, the university could once again turn its attention to its primary academic mission. But the facilities problems were still there. No progress had been made during the war years, and technological advances made during the war and the onslaught of returning veterans whose college education was financed by the GI Bill placed even greater strains on the university campus. Fortunately, one by-product of the war effort was the return of relative prosperity to the state of Michigan, and by the late 1940s, the state was once again in a position to fund university facilities. The university also resumed construction of residential facilities for its rapidly growing enrollments. The state provided funding for the expansion of the Chemistry Building (1947), East Engineering (1947), a new administration building (1948; fig. 5.36), and a new School of Business Administration (1948). University-financed projects included phase II of the East Quadrangle (1947), University Terrace (1946–47, since demolished), a food stores facility (1948, since demolished), and Lloyd Hall (1949). The plans of the early 1940s were essentially updates of the Burton-era plans and those of Pitkin and Mott. They built on the historic planning traditions of the Michigan campus and utilized the classical Beaux Arts approach as it had been applied to campus planning in the first half of the twentieth century. As such, they continued, at the level of the master plan, to guide the projects of the late 1940s and even some into the 1950s. But the context within which the program of renewed campus development was taking place had changed significantly since the creation of the Burton plan and the construction boom of the 1920s. Almost every aspect of American life had been altered by the war, and many of these changes had a direct impact on the growth of the university campus. Elements such as the economy, technology, transportation, the university curriculum, and changes in the philosophy of architecture and urban planning all contributed to a significant change in the approach to campus planning that would take place in the coming years. An excellent example of what was happening can be seen in the Alice Lloyd Hall project. The decision to put a dormitory on the Palmer Field site was entirely consistent with the older master plan and the concept of creating a residential complex adjacent to Palmer Field, but the actual configuration of the building on the site was another matter. All of the existing dormitories facing Palmer Field were designed with their long side facing the street and with a small court, formed

by two projecting wings, facing Palmer Field. Both the 1941 and 1943 plans had shown a new dorm on Palmer Field in exactly this configuration. (It was placed on the observatory site.) But the architect for Lloyd Hall chose to reverse this pattern, placing the court on Observatory Street and the long side facing Palmer Field (fig. 5.37). This may have benefited the building itself, but its impact on the overall Palmer Field complex was unfortunate. The architect, Clair Ditchy, an adherent of the modernist school, chose to regard this project as “a ship on its own bottom,” with little or no responsibility to the overall character of the surrounding area. The result was a major disruption of the rhythm and order of the Palmer Field dormitory complex. The architectural design of the building also made little effort to relate to its neighbors. The modernists regarded the earlier historical styles as decadent and ugly and hoped to see such buildings demolished. Therefore, it seemed pointless to them to try to relate to these older buildings. The result was that architecture began to play a less significant role in the effort to create continuity and harmony on the campus. The new buildings may or may not have been beautiful in their own right, but they did not relate harmoniously to the existing campus. Other elements would have to be utilized to achieve this goal. It is ironic that we who contemplate the campus architecture today regard the older buildings as the “treasures” of the Palmer Field complex and consider Lloyd Hall the unattractive one. Page 121 → To produce effective plans, the Beaux Arts approach relied on certain key determinants: reliable enrollment projections that could be used to determine the amount of building space that would be required a clear and relatively fixed academic program that would determine the kind of space required a consistent architectural style that would impart aesthetic harmony to the campus formal landscaping and site development that would complement the established architectural style a campus organization pattern based on primary and subordinate axes and formal building placements and groupings Page 122 → In the postwar era, however, many of these foundations began to crumble. The enrollment surge from the GI Bill had blown enrollment projections out of the water, and fluctuating enrollments in the following decades cast serious doubts on the reliability of such projections, especially at public institutions that are expected to meet the demand for higher education. The many changes that occurred to academic programs made it hard to predict very far in advance the kind of space that would be required, which, in turn, made it difficult to predict the precise size and shape of future buildings. Modernist architects refused to accept the concept of a single unifying style and preferred to make each building a “statement” of their own personal creativity. Landscape architects and planners refused to be bound by the rules of strict formality and sought to develop more natural and environmentally sensitive solutions. In the face of all these changes, the Beaux Arts approach fell into decline. In the 1950s, a period of unplanned or poorly planned growth set in, as universities all across the country struggled to keep up with exploding enrollments and the consequent need for new buildings and facilities. Ultimately, a new planning approach would emerge that was better suited to the realities of the second half of the twentieth century (fig. 5.38).

CONCLUSION By the mid-1900s, the quality of the Michigan campus had improved significantly since the dawn of the twentieth century. The overall architectural design of the buildings had been upgraded, due largely to the efforts of Albert Kahn, and the campus now boasted a number of buildings that were recognized as being among the first rank of American architecture. These included Kahn’s Hill Auditorium and Natural Science Building (E. H. Kraus); York and Sawyer’s Law Quadrangle; Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls’s Rackham Building; and Saarinen and Kahn’s Burton Tower. Of even greater impact was the fact that the design quality of the average university building was upgraded to the point where Michigan was beginning to develop a level of campus architecture comparable to

many of the nation’s foremost universities. In the area of landscape and site development, the tradition of campus trees was protected and extended into newly developed areas of the campus. Plazas and gathering areas were being created, and detailed landscaping was cultivated throughout the campus. The planning efforts of Lorch, Burton, and Pitkin and Mott had established a disciplined pattern of order for the development of the campus, and these plans were being followed and implemented with each new building project. Page 123 → But despite the real progress that had been made, there was much more that needed to be done. The campus was far from being a unified, quality design environment. It was divided up by roads, service drives, and parking lots; many unattractive and obsolete buildings remained; open space and pedestrian systems were fragmented and incomplete. In general, the image the campus presented was not yet that of a first-rate institution. The challenge for the second half of the twentieth century, therefore, would be to adapt the planning approach to adjust to the realities of the postwar American university and then to develop a program to implement the plan and produce the desired outcome: a quality physical environment for the University of Michigan campus. Page 124 →

ANECDOTE: BURIED TREASURE The nineteenth-century Michigan campus has almost completely disappeared. But now and then, reminders of it suddenly appear in the most unexpected ways. For example, in 1997, when the Diag renovation project was underway, the contractor who was demolishing the old walks and preparing the subbase for the new ones came across a pocket of ashes in the area just east of Mason Hall. He was mystified by this, as was the project manager for the university, Julianne Chard. But if one remembers that the first campus heating plant (above right) was located in this area in the late nineteenth century, then the concentration of ashes seems quite logical. A somewhat more macabre discovery was made while excavating the lower level of the Randall Laboratory addition in 1993. At the southern end of the excavation, human body parts were found in the soil being removed. The police were summoned, and it was initially feared that a crime scene might have been uncovered. But upon examining the historic plans, it was discovered that the anatomical laboratory (below right) and the original Medical School building were located on this site from the 1850s to the early twentieth century. Apparently, the people responsible for the operation of the lab had not been as scrupulous in the disposal of cadavers as they were supposed to be. Perhaps the strangest discovery of all occurred during the construction of the Power Center for the Performing Arts. Over the years, the site had been used for a variety of purposes. In 1832, it was originally laid out as a cemetery. When this use was discontinued in 1890, the people who had been buried there were disinterred and reburied in other cemeteries. The site was then laid out for a residential development called Park Terrace, and three houses facing Felch Park and two more facing Huron Street were built there. The construction of the new heating plant at Huron and Washtenaw in 1914, with its attendant coal yard, gantry, and railroad siding, lessened the attractiveness of the area for residential use, and the university acquired the houses over time and demolished them. In the mid-1960s, the heating plant was converted to gas, and the coal piles, gantry, and railroad siding were removed, making the site more attractive for building purposes. Then it was chosen as the location for the new performing arts facility. Page 125 → When the excavations for the building began in 1969, several caskets were unearthed. Apparently again, the people responsible for removing the bodies from the old cemetery were not as thorough as they should have been. One of the unearthed caskets was that of Judge Fletcher, the first chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, a regent of the university, and the man for whom Fletcher Street is named. Judge Fletcher was buried in a manner

sometimes used in the nineteenth century: the coffin was lined to make it watertight and filled with alcohol. In Judge Fletcher’s case, there was even a viewing window on the coffin, according to the workers who unearthed it. Since there was already a grave in Forest Hill Cemetery that was marked for Judge Fletcher and his wife, James Brinkerhoff (then director of plant extension) ordered Judge Fletcher reburied in the grave that bore his name. However, when the cemetery workers opened the grave, they reported that there were already two coffins in it. After some discussion, it was decided to add Judge Fletcher’s casket to the two already in the grave, so now there are three people buried in that grave: Judge Fletcher, Mrs. Fletcher, and someone else—no one really seems to know who. Discoveries of this nature will continue to occur as long as construction takes place on campus. The excavation for the art museum addition unearthed some traces of the old university museum (later called the Romance Languages Building) that was demolished in 1958. Fragments of other nineteenth-century structures, such as Haven Hall, West Physics, and the original chemistry laboratory, may also come to light at some point in the future. It is clear, therefore, that as the campus grows and changes over the decades and centuries, buildings may come and go, but the legacy of history is always with us.

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CHAPTER 6 THE CAMPUS OF A RESEARCH UNIVERSITY, 1950–2000 The second half of the twentieth century was a time of momentous change in American higher education and in the physical facilities required to support its operation. As the university evolved from a primarily teaching institution into one with a greatly expanded research mission and expanded responsibilities in a variety of other areas, changes to almost every part of the university’s operations were required. These changes would touch every sector of the university, from the top level of the administration down to the organization for and approach to campus planning and development. From the very beginning at Michigan, responsibility for campus planning and the design and construction of university facilities had rested with the board of regents and the administration. The university’s first architect and planner, A. J. Davis, was hired directly by the regents, and throughout the course of the nineteenth century, retained professionals reported to the president and the regents. At the beginning of the twentieth century, one attempt was made to create a campus plan in-house, relying primarily on the expertise of the faculty (Emil Lorch’s plan of 1907), but that plan was not accepted by the regents. Following World War I, when a major building program was created, President Burton took personal control of the program, but he began to assemble a group of advisors to assist him in carrying it out. This included the university’s first director of buildings and grounds, E. C. Pardon; its first supervisor of plans, Professor John Shepard; and architect Albert Kahn. The regents continued to play an active role by means of the Committee of Five. During the 1930s and 1940s, the administrative team was augmented by the creation of the position of director of plant extension and by the transformation of the position of supervising architect Page 127 → into the full-time staff position of university architect. But effectively managing the extensive building program that would characterize the post–World War II era would require a far more sophisticated organization. The creation of this organization would be the task of a new administration.

PRESIDENT HATCHER AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE MODERN UNIVERSITY In 1951, President Ruthven retired as the chief executive officer of the university, after serving the second longest tenure of any Michigan president. At about the same time, the university’s vice president for business and finance, Robert Briggs, resigned to take a position in private industry; he was replaced by his assistant, Wilbur K. Pierpont. Provost Adams also resigned, leaving his position open for the new president to fill. As a result, the incoming president was given the opportunity to create a whole new administrative team to run the university. The man the regents chose as the new president was Harlan H. Hatcher, a former professor and dean at Michigan, who was then serving as vice president for faculty and curriculum at Ohio State University. President Hatcher enjoyed a reputation for administrative skill at Ohio State and would now have the opportunity to reshape the administrative structure of the University of Michigan. In their 1994 edition of Howard Peckham’s The Making of the University of Michigan, Margaret and Nicholas Steneck describe the new administrative organization Hatcher created as follows: As he became familiar with operations, Hatcher undertook some administrative reorganization. He made Marvin Niehuss vice president and dean of faculties, eliminating the vacant position of provost. Niehuss was made responsible, in addition, for seeing the University’s appropriation request through the legislature, and Robert L. William was named assistant dean of faculties. Arthur L. Brandon inherited part of Niehuss’ former duties and was made director of University relations. Upon the retirement of Frank E. Robbins as assistant to the president in 1953, Erich Walter was given the position. His old position as dean of students was elevated to a vice presidency for student affairs, and

Professor James A. Lewis, director of the Bureau of School Services, was appointed to it. Under him were placed the deans of men and of women, the Health Service, registrar, the International Center, Lane Hall, Bureau of Appointments, and Bureau of School Services. In 1957, William E. Stirton, vice president of Wayne State University, was appointed to a new vice presidency for liaison with industry, business, and professional groups. With Wilbur K. Pierpont continuing as vice president for business and finance, this was the new team that shaped the early years of Hatcher’s regime. (245–46)

The most significant changes with respect to campus planning and design were made by Vice President Pierpont, who created a solid base of in-house professionals who were able to both coordinate the work of retained consultants and perform a limited amount of professional work themselves. The Plant Extension organization had been in existence at the university since the 1930s, and the University Architect’s Office was created in the 1940s. But Pierpont enlarged the base of professional expertise in areas such as landscape architecture and interior design in the 1950s and created the University Planner’s Office in the early 1960s. The Engineering Services Department, which also dated back to the early part of the century, was expanded to the point where it became a small in-house architecture and engineering firm handling a variety of remodeling and renovation projects as well as smaller new construction projects. At the time of Pierpont’s retirement, President Emeritus Hatcher credited him with developing the finest and most professional administrative team of any university in the country. Even as late as 1998, the university’s newly retained planning consultants, Venturi, Scott Brown, and Associates (VSBA), described Michigan’s in-house professional staff as one of the most expert academic facilities planning and operating offices in the United States. Pierpont’s vision was sound, for this high-caliber staff would come to play a crucial role Page 128 → in the new approach to campus planning that would be developed to respond to the changing nature of higher education in the second half of the twentieth century.

CAMPUS NOMENCLATURE It was during the postwar era that the concept of separate names for each of the campuses began to emerge. Up until then the central forty acres and the Michigan land adjacent to it were referred to simply as “the Campus.” When athletic and clinical activities were moved off campus at the end of the nineteenth century the terms Athletic Plant and Hospital Area were used to refer to them, but the term Campus or Main Campus was still used in reference to the area around the Diag. After the war, however, the university began to develop the health campus, and the Medical and Nursing Schools and School of Public Health joined the clinical facilities in the area around Catherine and Observatory Streets. As a result separate campus names started to be applied to each of the major geographic areas. In the regents’ proceedings the first reference to a “Medical Center” appears in 1946; North Campus in 1952, and Central Campus in 1955. By the early sixties these names were in common usage throughout the university.

THE DECLINE OF THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the traditional approach to campus planning that had worked so well for the first half of the century was proving to have serious shortcomings. This traditional approach began with the university administration’s projections for the size of the student enrollment over a specified period of time as well as the academic program these students would be pursuing (the so-called academic plan). An architect /planner was then brought on board to translate these calculations into the types and amounts of spaces required to carry out this academic plan. These would be grouped into building blocks based on such things as academic relationships, technological requirements, potential funding sources, and so forth. At the same time, the architect /planner would assess the land and/or building resources available to accommodate the academic facilities in terms of the natural and man-made environment. These would include issues such as topography, soils, drainage, vegetation, transportation and parking, utilities, surrounding community relationships, and good and bad views. When this information was assembled, the architect/planner would meet with the administration to review questions of operating philosophy, such as how much parking will be provided for students, faculty, and staff;

attitudes toward historic preservation and preservation of natural features; acceptable building heights and coverage of ground area; and attitudes toward architectural styles. Armed with all this information, the architect /planner would apply his own experience and creativity to the development of a plan that would place the appropriate building masses on the land in the most effective and attractive composition and that would allow for the appropriate positioning of supporting elements such as plazas, walkways, landscaped areas, roads, parking lots, and utility systems. At this point, plan options or variations on the main theme were often presented and reviewed, and a final plan concept was agreed on. Finally, an implementation strategy would be developed that would provide for a phased implementation of the overall plan in relation to such factors as enrollment growth and funding potential. This logical and orderly approach had resulted in the creation of many of the country’s most famous and beautiful campuses. But in the second half of the twentieth century, it was no longer adequate to deal with the realities of campus growth and development, because of the fundamental changes taking place both in the area of higher education and in American society as a whole.

THE CHANGED ENVIRONMENT WITHIN HIGHER EDUCATION In the area of higher education, two of the fundamental bases on which the traditional campus plan rested were becoming less and less stable. Beginning with the GI Bill and the enrollment crush that followed, the whole area of enrollment projections became less and Page 129 → less reliable. Enrollments fell back in the early 1950s, started to grow again in the late 1950s, exploded in the 1960s, and leveled off in the later 1970s. Institutions, particularly public ones, lost control of their ability to manage enrollment growth. Political pressure to admit more students was intense, and even as strong a system as the University of California failed in its attempt to limit the size of its major campuses to twenty-eight thousand. Ultimately, academic administrators lost faith in enrollment projections, and some schools even refused to make them. Those that were required to make the projections often did so with tongue in cheek. At the same time, academic programs were starting to change in a more rapid and dramatic way than ever before. Up until World War II, the basic academic programs of colleges and universities were relatively agreed on and subject to slow change over a long period of time. The elective system had been introduced in the late nineteenth century, and required Greek was dropped in the 1920s, but the basic curriculum remained fairly constant. World War II, however, had led to a dramatic increase in knowledge and often employed nontraditional combinations of skills to solve pressing problems. After the war, these new areas of knowledge and new ways of working found their way into the university system, and traditional ideas of the curriculum began to give way to new courses, programs, and academic configurations. New research institutes sprang up everywhere, and interdisciplinary programs began to grow. New majors were created in both new and established departments, and students began defining their own programs and areas of concentration rather than simply following predetermined programs. The idea of developing an academic plan on which to base a physical plan was becoming extremely difficult; in fact, very few useful ones were actually done. Other changes within the institution, such as the need to accommodate a rapidly changing technological environment and the growing importance of research, were also impacting the area of campus planning. Facilities to accommodate linear accelerators, wind tunnels, cyclotrons, CAT and NMR facilities, and so on required new building types that were often incompatible with traditional campus architecture. The kinds of spaces within the buildings were also changing, as institutions attempted to meet the needs of engineers who wanted to perform failure tests on structural beams, physicists who needed a vibration-free environment, sculptors who wanted to work with thirty-foot-high materials, or medical researchers who needed lead-shielded radiology suites. Then there was the impact of the microchip and the computer. Another characteristic of this era was the growth of physical facilities that are not directly related to enrollment size. The most significant area stimulating such growth was research. Independent research was the most dramatic growth area in the top fifty or sixty universities in the country and, in turn, accounted for a tremendous growth in physical facilities. Other areas such as hospitals, performing arts venues, museums, sports venues, archives, and libraries, which supported the basic academic mission of the university but were not directly determined by enrollment, also saw dramatic growth. The net result of these and the aforementioned changes was that projecting

enrollment and developing an academic plan—the starting points for the traditional campus plan—were becoming increasingly difficult and, if done, often proved unreliable.

CHANGES IN FACTORS INFLUENCING CAMPUS DESIGN Changes taking place outside the university were also having a profound effect on the nature of campus planning in the postwar era. The first of these was the triumph of the modernist movement in architecture. Before World War II, most buildings in the United States were designed in historically based revival styles. The styles most popular with colleges and universities were Collegiate Gothic, Colonial (or Georgian) Revival, and Classical Revival. The earlier architects who designed the new buildings understood that they had a responsibility not only to the individual building they were hired to design but also to the overall architectural environment of the campus. They were comfortable working within the guidelines of adopted master plans and in the established architectural style. But after Page 130 → the war, the modernist school of architecture became dominant, for both economic and philosophical reasons. The new style of architecture was cheaper and easier to build and was therefore popular with developers, business executives, and financial people. It was also championed by architectural philosophers and academicians as the only “honest” representation of the new industrial /technological age of the twentieth century, thereby giving it moral as well as economic support. It soon became the only accepted style in which to design. The modernist architects were inspired by the early leaders of the movement, such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. These men rejected all historical styles and denied the architect’s responsibility to anything greater than the project they were hired to design. When asked what should be done about the city of Pittsburgh, Wright is reputed to have said, “Tear it down!” This attitude spread to almost all architects, whether or not they possessed the great talents of a Wright, Saarinen, or Le Corbusier. Adherence to master plans became suspect, and each project became a “ship on its own bottom”—a vehicle for the unique creativity of the architect chosen to design it, but with no real responsibility to the buildings around it or the campus as a whole. Most campuses abandoned their efforts to maintain a unifying architectural style. A few architects gave lip service to the idea of context, but the buildings they designed showed little evidence of it. On those rare occasions when an architect did try to relate to context, such as Eero Saarinen’s Stiles and Morse Colleges at Yale or Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building in New York, he was roundly criticized by his professional colleagues and the architectural press. As new buildings went up embodying the modernist aesthetic, campuses became dotted with individualistic buildings that were often unrelated to the ones around them in site placement, scale, materials, or architectural style. Richard Dober described the situation as follows: “A justifiable criticism of some contemporary architecture is its assertive, if not arrogant, siting; particularly those monumental conceits which, however powerfully expressed in their own terms, stand alone in the campus landscape, and contribute very little to defining or accenting a sense of place, except as a possible landmark. The simplicity of the modern idioms is deceiving, as extraordinary care must be given to construct a visually unifying addition.” The sense of order that was a hallmark of the American campus in the first half of the century began to disintegrate. The old core areas sometimes maintained the integrity and character that had developed over a long period of time, but the newer areas were often characterized by a sense of disorder and absence of harmony. They were the least attractive areas of a campus. Architecture could no longer be relied on to provide a campus with a sense of harmony and unity.

THE AUTOMOBILE AND ITS IMPACT ON THE MICHIGAN CAMPUS Another major factor contributing to the visual deterioration of the American campus during this era was the impact of the automobile. Prior to World War II, automobile ownership in this country was limited. Business and professional people often owned cars, but few working-class people did. The dominant means of transportation were the railroads, streetcars, interurbans, buses, and taxis. Student automobile ownership was further limited, and even among faculty and staff, cars were not owned by all. Movement patterns could still be accommodated on the streets built in the horse-and-buggy era, and parking could be provided either on-street or in small lots, mainly on the periphery of the campus.

After the war, all this changed. Vehicle ownership increased rapidly during the late 1940s and 1950s, and the vast majority of American families owned at least one car by the 1960s. The impact of this on American society and patterns of urban development was profound and has been described in detail in many books and articles. The impact on the American campus was equally profound. Faculty and staff came to rely on the automobile as the means to get to and from work, and once they arrived, they needed a place to leave their cars. Students now came to campus by car rather than by train, reorienting the main entry points to many campuses. The students, too, desired Page 131 → a place to park their cars, and in many cases, the universities felt obliged to provide one. The result was increased congestion of city and university streets and pressures to widen existing streets and build new ones. To meet parking demands, the universities began to build surface lots, which consumed large amounts of university land and, in many cases, acted to undermine the unity and coherence of the campus by creating large, asphalt no-man’s-lands between the campus buildings and between the campus and the surrounding community. At the larger institutions, the demand could not be satisfied by lots alone, and the universities were forced to construct parking structures. Regardless of which solutions were chosen, transportation and parking began consuming significant amounts of the university’s financial and land resources and breaking down the functional and aesthetic unity of the campus. These changes directly impacted the Michigan campus. For example, prior to the war, students, faculty, and visitors came mainly by railroad. They got off the train at the Michigan Central Depot (now the Gandy Dancer Restaurant) or the Ann Arbor Railroad Station off William Street, west of downtown. They proceeded on foot or by cab down State or William Streets and entered the campus at the corner of State Street and North University Avenue. Old photos of the campus show gates and other symbolic entrance features at this location (fig. 3.15). After the war, people came by car along the highways entering Ann Arbor from a variety of directions, then arrived at the edge of campus via the local street system. They entered the campus at a number of different points, but normally not by the old entry at State and North University. The limited amount of land in the core area made it impossible to meet the demand for parking by the expansion of close-in surface lots. A number of visually disruptive lots were created at the core of the campus, such as the one between the Chemistry Building and the Natural Science Building or the one facing the Diag behind old University Hall. Ultimately, many of these lots would be needed as sites for new building projects. A significant expansion of landholdings adjacent to the Central Campus and the Medical Center would involve financial and social costs that were clearly unacceptable. The faculty and staff were unwilling to travel to a system of remote parking where land was available (North Campus and the stadium area) and then bus to their workplace. The only remaining option was structured parking. In the mid-1950s, the faculty agreed to the imposition of a yearly parking fee of twenty-five dollars, which would be used to begin a system of structures to serve the Central Campus and the Medical Center. The parking structure on Church Street was completed first, in 1957, and was followed immediately by the structures built on Catherine Street in 1959 and Thayer Street in 1962.

CAMPUS GROWTH IN THE 1950S The decade of the 1950s was one of accelerating growth of physical facilities. During this period, thirty-three new buildings were added to the campus, providing additional space for teaching, student housing, research, athletics and recreation, medical care, student activities, parking, and units of university services. The university was responding to societal and educational changes, but the responses were beginning to exceed the scope of the 1943 plan. The growth that was taking place was no longer effectively guided by a university master plan. Major new projects such as South Quadrangle, Mary Markley Hall, and the School of Business Administration were located on sites that had never been identified in any master plan. As in the late nineteenth century, decisions were being made without reference to an overall planning strategy. Many of them were sound, but some decisions made without reference to a master plan turned out to be truly unfortunate. An excellent example of this was the siting of a new residence hall (Mary Markley) in the mid-1950s. The 1943 plan had called for locating new residential facilities south of Stockwell Hall, on the west side of Observatory Street, between North University and Geddes Avenues, where they would have become a natural extension of the Hill Area dorm complex. The administration supported this position, but political pressure from the local real estate community convinced the regents to move

the site to the present location east of the School of Public Health (according to W. K. Pierpont). In the long run, Page 132 → this proved to be one of the worst siting decisions in the history of the campus. The new site was isolated from the main centers of student life and occupied land that would eventually be needed for the expansion of the Medical Center. It was, however, indicative of what was happening to planning at Michigan in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The 1943 plan had ceased to function as an effective guideline for university growth, but nothing had been created to take its place. Master planning was being done for the new North Campus, and at the end of the decade, an effort in master planning was undertaken for the Medical Center. But on the Central Campus, building decisions were being made on a case-by-case basis, as they had been in the 1880s and 1890s. Things such as a shortage of buildable land and the discipline of the city’s street grid helped to maintain a sense of order, but the quality of the total campus environment was declining, despite a significant investment in new facilities. It was against this backdrop in the early 1960s that the University of Michigan undertook the first major revision of its Central Campus plan since the Burton plans of the early 1920s.

THE 1963 CENTRAL CAMPUS PLAN With the classical approach no longer applicable, planners at this time were debating what would take its place and if it was even possible to create an effective plan. No one was willing to abandon the goal that the campus should be an attractive as well as functional physical environment, but the planners were now left to determine how an institution could develop an effective planning approach to accomplish that goal. At the outset, the university made clear to its consultants—Johnson, Johnson, and Roy—that they would not be provided with the traditional bases of campus plans (enrollment projections, an academic plan, a prioritized list of building projects, etc.) but would still be expected to develop a strategy for campus development that would create a sense of beauty and order as well as solve functional problems, such as providing sites for new buildings in appropriate locations, circulation to and from the campus and its major destinations, safe and easy pedestrian movement on the campus, and parking to meet an ever-growing demand. They were also told that the plan must provide flexibility to adapt to the inevitable changes that would take place in the intellectual, technological, and physical environment of the university over the coming years. The consultants worked closely with a group of in-house faculty and professional staff to define a new approach. Key members of this group included the vice president and chief financial officer, Wilbur K. Pierpont; his assistant for campus planning, John McKevitt; the director of plant extension, James Brinkerhoff; the university architect, Lynn Fry; and the university planner, John Telfer. The close working relationship between the retained planning consultants and the in-house staff was to become a major characteristic of the framework approach employed by Michigan after 1963, but in the early 1960s, the main focus was on defining the approach itself. If buildings could no longer be relied on to provide a sense of order and harmony on the campus, were there other enduring elements of the campus that could? To investigate this question, the planners examined the history and evolution of the campus and discovered that such elements did exist. To begin with, there was the special relationship between the Central Campus and the surrounding community—the close integration that has existed since the very beginnings of the campus in the 1840s and 1850s and that is known and cherished by every Michigan student and alum (fig. 6.1). This pattern of commercial services and student housing adjacent to the campus edges has been a hallmark of the Michigan campus since before the Civil War and remains so today. Other such elements of order and continuity included the grid of the city streets in the campus area, which goes back to the founding of Ann Arbor and still provides access to university buildings and lands, and the organizational pattern of the campus itself, which began as a central forty-acre parcel containing all the university operations and has evolved over the years into a series of subareas surrounding the central forty, each with its own academic emphasis and unique character. The pedestrian circulation system was another key element of the Central Campus (fig. 6.2a). The Diag, the original walkway that was built across the campus in the 1850s, has now grown into a walkway system that provides essential student and faculty access to campus destinations. Then, of course, there was the pattern of landscape and open space, a vital element of the campus image of almost all American universities. As already noted in chapter 2, the word campus itself is the Latin word for “field” and signifies the importance attached to landscape and open space in defining the nature of the physical setting of the American university. At Michigan, this emphasis goes back to the 1850s, when Professor Andrew Dickson White

and his students planted the original stands of trees on the Central Campus—a few of which still survive despite the ravages of Dutch elm disease. Today, just as in the nineteenth century, the pattern of landscape and open space is one of the most effective and powerful elements in providing a sense of unity, order, and beauty on the campus (fig. 6.2b). Page 133 → Through the process of historical examination, the planners uncovered a pattern of elements of continuity and order that could be used to structure the growth of the campus even if the style, materials, or configuration of the various buildings might vary (fig. 6.3). These elements were mapped—individually at first, then combined together to define an overall “framework” for campus growth that transcended the architecture of individual buildings. The concept of the framework was then expanded into a series of principles that could be applied to the future development of the campus (fig. 6.4). While it is always dangerous to claim to have originated anything, the work of the 1963 Central Campus Plan was clearly a pioneering effort in the creation of the concept of framework planning, an approach that is now widely accepted and employed throughout the field of campus planning. Once the concept of the framework had been identified, the next task was to apply it to the specifics of the Central Campus as it existed in the early 1960s. When this was done, it became clear that a number of changes would be required to achieve the quality of campus environment that the plan envisioned and the university desired. Many of the campus streets were clogged with traffic unrelated to the university; drivers were simply using the campus as a shortcut to other destinations. This was both dangerous and disruptive of campus unity and continuity. An inordinate amount of campus land was devoted to surface parking, which was often located at the core of the campus, thereby directing automobile traffic into the center of the campus and occupying strategic sites that were needed for either building projects or walkways and open space. The walkway system was ill-defined and discontinuous as one moved from one part of the campus to another. Open spaces and plazas were few and did not serve as signature central “places” for campus subareas. Only the Law Quad was a well-defined central space that created a true “sense of place.” The Diag was widely recognized but poorly defined, particularly on the east side, where the edge was formed by the unfinished rear ends of buildings such as West Hall and the Randall Laboratory. The Economics Building (originally the chemistry laboratory), one of the oldest buildings on the campus, intruded into the open space and served to disrupt the unity of the Diag space even further. The Martha Cook yard was more of a private garden, and Palmer Field was the major outdoor student recreation area on the Central Campus. The open spaces that did exist were isolated and individual in nature and had not yet been drawn together into an integrated system. Page 134 → Other shortcomings existed as well: there was no uniform system of signage for the campus; outdoor lighting was inadequate or, in many cases, nonexistent; campus furnishings (benches, trash receptacles, bike racks, etc.) were haphazard, poorly designed, and insufficient in number; and there was very little campus embellishment, such as special paving materials, public art, fountains, or reflecting pools. The impression left on the visitor was “banal,” as Thomas A. Gaines said in his book The Campus as a Work of Art. It was clear that a great deal of work would be required to implement the plan, but one of the characteristics of the University of Michigan is construction activity so intense that concepts likely to be written off as “hopeless dreams” at other institutions can actually be realized at Michigan. That was precisely what happened with the 1963 Central Campus Plan. As the work of the analysis phase progressed, the consultants and the university representatives worked together to develop a set of long-range planning principles to guide the growth of the campus. These principles, intended to be of an enduring nature able to transcend individual projects of building or site development, incorporated the insights that were emerging from the analytical work. But they were designed to be broad philosophical positions that would be adhered to over a period of twenty or thirty years and that would direct individual decisions and discussions relating to specific projects and how they should relate and contribute to the overall campus

composition. They included the following: Page 135 → Protect and enhance the unique campus/community physical relationship that is so much a part of the Ann Arbor campus experience Work with the city, county, and state to provide smooth and convenient access to and from the campus Develop a peripheral roadway system around the edge of the campus so as to reduce as much as possible nonuniversity traffic from campus area streets Create a pedestrian-oriented campus core Close nonessential campus area streets by converting them to landscaped pedestrian ways or building sites so as to support the concept of the pedestrian-oriented core Complete the ring of parking structures around the campus periphery so as to encourage motorists to leave their cars at the edge of campus and use the walkway system to move to and from campus destinations Recognize and strengthen the historic growth pattern of the campus whereby the large campus is composed of a series of subcampus areas, each with its own unique academic function and physical expression Support the role of campus open space and walkways as unifying and linking elements that tie the campus together as a single entity composed of various individual parts Eliminate gaps in the systems of open space and walkways so as to strengthen their role as unifying elements Create a signature open space (or spaces) for each subcampus area Upgrade other campus elements such as signage, illumination, and campus furniture, using them as elements to enhance a sense of order and unity Add such elements as public art, fountains, and Page 136 → memorials, to enhance both the physical beauty of the campus and its educational role and meaningfulness Use these same principles to guide the future development of any new areas so as to maintain the continuity of campus character Always incorporate into physical planning the flexibility to adjust to changes in the academic environment and to society as a whole The analysis phase of the study had identified both historic patterns that had characterized the growth of the campus and a series of problems and opportunities confronting the campus in the early 1960s. The “planning principles” section set the framework within which the specific physical recommendations should be developed. The next phase of the study was to convert this information into a series of specific recommendations that could be used to guide future growth but would allow sufficient flexibility to adjust to the rapidly changing intellectual and technological environment of higher education. These recommendations reflected the physical realities of the Central Campus as it existed in 1963 and included specific suggestions for such things as street modifications, intersection improvements, adding parking structures, closing nonessential streets, creating signature open spaces for each subcampus area, connecting and filling gaps in the walkway system, linking campus open spaces to create a continuous landscape fabric for the campus, and upgrading campus details such as signage and lighting. The recommendations were then applied to each subcampus area, and a drawing was produced that recorded the basic concepts for each area and how they might be applied to that area’s pattern of physical development (fig. 6.5). New building sites were shown, but they were kept deliberately loose in form. This plan did not determine architecture—that would be the responsibility of the individual project architect, once selected—but only identified potential building locations. In a similar manner, sites were assigned no specific building uses, only the identification of “buildable areas.” Sites would only be assigned to a specific project when it became “real,” both academically and financially. The wisdom of this approach can be demonstrated by an anecdote. In 1966, the next new buildings the university planned to erect with state funds were a new psychology building and a new mathematics building. For a variety of reasons, these projects were never funded, and these departments were ultimately provided for in the renovated East Hall in the 1990s. If sites had been earmarked for them, it would have locked up key parcels of university land, when land was in very short supply and urgently needed for the billions of dollars’ worth of new construction that actually did take place between 1966 and 1996. Page 137 →

The recommendations also included an illustrative site plan and model, which showed how the campus might evolve if the basic principles were applied to future development (fig. 6.6). Character sketches were made to illustrate the quality of the physical environment the plan sought to create. But it was the fundamental principles, not the illustrations or models, that formed the basis of the framework approach.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONSULTANTS AND IN-HOUSE STAFF For the framework approach to function effectively, it was necessary that a strong working relationship be maintained between retained consultants, the leadership of the university, and the professional staff of the university. Each member of that group had a vital role to play, and each did it effectively. The consultants brought to the process the highest levels of professional talent, expertise, and experience. These consultants were used to solve specific, well-defined problems, such as creating a master plan, preparing a landscape or site design, or analyzing the demand for additional parking. Routine or ongoing, day-to-day assignments were left to the inhouse staff, as was the coordination of the work of the retained consultants. The university leadership defined overall strategic direction and provided oversight to campus planning and architecture. The regents’ bylaws delegated specific responsibility for physical facilities to the vice president and chief financial officer. From the 1960s to the late 1990s, this position was occupied by three outstanding individuals: Wilbur K. Pierpont, James Brinkerhoff, and Farris Womack. They understood planning and gave it their wholehearted support, but they also understood management and realized that they needed to hire people trained specifically in such areas as architecture, planning, engineering, and landscape architecture and to delegate detailed project management and day-to-day professional responsibilities to the university’s own professional staff. To undertake this work, therefore, they assembled one of the most competent and respected staffs of any university in the country and Page 138 → provided them the authority and support necessary to carry it out. Among this group were Jack Weidenbach, Paul Spradlin, Bill Dergis, and Thomas Schlaff as directors of plant extension; Lynn Fry, Howard Hakken, Richard Little, Richard Glissman, and Douglas Hanna as university architects; Jack Telfer, Fred Mayer, and Susan Gott as university planners; Ken Wanty as university landscape architect; Bob Pangburn, Ken Beaudry and Jack Janveja as managers of engineering services; Virginia Denham and Judy Tarapchak in interior design; and Bob Pangburn and Tom Schlaff as director of construction management. This group, working hand in glove with a group of nationally recognized consultants that included people like Bill Johnson, Carl Johnson, Clarence Roy, Jim Christman, Dick Rigterink, and Richard Wolsfeld, would be responsible for the implementation of the Central Campus Plan over the course of the next three decades.

IMPLEMENTATION The real test of any plan is how well it functions in actual operation—that is, how effective it is in producing the desired outcomes. Judged by this standard, the Central Campus Plan was a smashing success. The campus that exists today is indeed the campus envisioned by the 1963 plan. But as the process of implementation began in the mid-1960s, the challenges were daunting, and the outcome was by no means clear. Two major challenges existed. The first was to erect the buildings necessary to carry out the academic work of the institution. This challenge had existed since the founding of the university and was relatively well understood and supported. The second challenge was to build the campus framework—of circulation, walks, open space, signage, lighting, and so on—that would provide the sense of unity, beauty, coherence, and order envisioned in the plan. This element of the campus had suffered badly in the postwar years and was less well understood and supported. But the 1960s was a good time to initiate a program of this nature. It was a period of prosperity and growing college enrollments, and with the growing enrollments came a building program to provide the necessary facilities to accommodate the new students. This program required sites for new facilities and created the opportunity to reorganize and upgrade the campus framework at the same time. Several projects in the planning stage in the mid-1960s provided the opportunity to apply the principles of the Central Campus Plan to key areas of the campus.

BUILDING PROJECTS OF THE 1960S

First under the Central Campus Plan came the Fleming Administration Building. The old Administration Building, now the Literature, Science, and the Arts (LS&A) Building, was built in the late 1940s and was located on the west side of State Street, just north of the Michigan Union and across the street from Angell Hall (fig. 6.7). The proposed new administrative facility had originally been conceived of as an addition to the old building, and that is how it is shown on the sketch from the Central Campus Plan (fig. 6.8). As applied to this zone, the planning principles called for creating a signature open space for the western zone of the campus, which would link the walkways in the area; creating an automobile turnaround on Kennedy Drive, near the north entry to the Union; and converting the area between the turnaround and State Street into a landscaped walkway linked with the central forty acres. The proposed addition to the Administration Building would have interfered with the desired pedestrian flows and pushed the open space to the western edge of the zone. After further study, it was agreed to create a new, freestanding administration building and reposition it to the west side of the block, which would now move the open space to the east, where it could accommodate the major pedestrian movements and become a true focal point for the subcampus area. The design of the plaza as prepared by Johnson, Johnson, and Roy (JJR) also provided for the extension of the walkway system to areas west of Thompson Street and for connections with the walk system along Maynard Street. A special focal point for the plaza was provided by the acquisition of the Cube sculpture by Bernard (Tony) Rosenthal, a world-renowned sculptor and Michigan alumnus. It was a gift from the Class of 1965, the sculptor, and his gallery (fig. 6.9). Page 139 → Page 140 → This first major public open space created on the campus since before the Depression established a distinct identity for the western subcampus area. The walkway between the Union and the old Administration Building came about a few years later. As the Institute for Social Research complex expanded, it too was linked into the walkway system, and a small entrance forecourt to the building was created. The completion of the Regents Plaza in 1968 was the first major accomplishment in the implementation of the 1963 Central Campus Plan. Some compromises had to be made in the quality of the paving materials (the elimination of paving bricks) in order to keep the project within budget, but the campus was very proud of the resulting new open space—so much so that the regents chose to name it for themselves. Another project being erected at the core of the campus at about the same time, the Hatcher Library addition, would have a profound impact on the central forty acres. Functionally, the addition had to be contiguous to and connect with the main library. After studying the site, the planners decided to place the addition immediately south of the existing building. The site was then occupied by the old West Physics Building and a small parking lot but had been shown as a site for library expansion as far back as plans of the Burton era. The problem with this site was that it incorporated one of the major east-west pedestrian routes across the central forty and was directly over an important underground heating tunnel. This problem was solved by elevating the building one level, thereby allowing pedestrian movement to pass underneath and providing maintenance access to the utilities. This concept of a walkway penetrating a building was first employed at Michigan in 1904, with the Engineering Arch through West Hall, but the concept was carried even further in the case of the library addition by elevating the entire building. The design of the addition also allowed for the creation of a small landscaped open space surrounded by the addition itself, the Shapiro Library, the Clements Library, and the president’s house (fig. 6.10). It became known as the Library South Plaza and was designed by JJR. It was not a signature space like the Law Quad or Regents Plaza, but it did serve to add a much-needed piece of landscaped open space at the heart of the increasingly densely developed central forty acres. Other projects that took place in the 1960s also contributed to the implementation of the master plan. The Dennison Building (home to the Physics and Astronomy Departments) was laid out in such a way as to create a small but important open space along the densely developed axis of East University. It also incorporated gradelevel open passageways to allow for a pedestrian linkage between the campus walkway system and the residential areas to the east of the campus. Like the Dennison Building, the Modern Languages Building was being designed at the same time that the Central Campus Plan was being prepared, and its site layout and design related to the planned Ingalls Mall, one of the most significant framework elements proposed in the 1963 plan (fig. 6.11). The

Dental School, designed in the early 1960s, began the expansion of the northeast subcampus area, and the Power Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Roche and Dinkeloo in the mid-1960s, was positioned to the east of Felch Park, where the coal storage area for the heating plant had formerly been located. In this position, the Power Center preserved the park, and the mirrored glass used on the west facade of the building served to deepen and enhance the image of the park itself (fig. 6.12). Page 141 →

VEHICULAR CIRCULATION While the building projects of the middle and late 1960s made significant contributions to the systems of open space and walkways on the campus and increased the amount of academic space needed to carry out the university’s academic mission, significant programs to implement the Central Campus Plan were taking place in other areas as well. Late in the decade, the university, the city of Ann Arbor, and the state highway department developed a joint program to make substantial improvements to the circulation pattern on the east side of the campus, with multiple objectives: improving traffic flow, improving pedestrian safety, reducing the use of the campus as a vehicular shortcut, and creating the potential for better land use in the eastern portion of the campus. The program had a number of major elements, which included the following: rerouting major traffic flow along Washtenaw onto old Forest Avenue (now Washtenaw) and then onto Huron Street widening this road to four lanes and improving the curve onto Huron Street (an improvement for which the university provided right-of-way while funding came from federal, state, and city sources) the construction of a pedestrian overpass to connect the Hill dorm area with the Central Campus along the axis of North University (a construction paid for by the university and representing a major enhancement of the walkway system and a real safety improvement for the students) the vacation by the city of North University between Geddes and old Forest Avenue, so that it might be incorporated into the walkway system, and of the section of North University east of old Forest Page 142 → Avenue, which is now occupied by the Central Campus Recreation Building the vacation of East University between North and South University Avenues, to be developed by the university as a landscaped pedestrian way The result of this program was a significant reduction of nonuniversity traffic through the heart of the campus, a dramatic improvement to the walkway system and pedestrian safety, the creation of a smooth and uncongested vehicular flow around the eastern side of the campus, and the university’s acquisition of several strategically located parcels of land that would ultimately be used for either buildings or the development of open space or walkways. Other traffic improvements affecting the campus were also carried out at this time with the cooperation of the city of Ann Arbor. John Robbins, the city’s traffic engineer, undertook to rationalize the one-way street pattern in the city. His modifications to Ann and Catherine Streets improved flow to and from the Medical Center, and those to Fifth and Division Streets provided improved access to the western portion of the Central Campus. The extension of Observatory Street across Washtenaw Avenue to connect with Forest Avenue provided an improved vehicular link between the Central Campus and the Medical Center and improved access to the southeastern portion of the Central Campus. The cumulative effect of all of these roadway modifications was the creation of a vehicular circulation loop around the outer periphery of the Central Campus that would accommodate major traffic flows. This, in turn, would make it possible to reduce traffic at the core of the campus, where emphasis could then be placed on the creation of a safe and attractive pedestrian environment. But in order for this to happen, one other major framework system would have to be upgraded: parking.

PARKING Parking became a major problem for most universities in the immediate post–World War II period, and Michigan

was no exception. The first attempts to deal with it took the form of surface parking lots, several on the central forty acres, and reliance on on-street parking provided by the city. By the mid-1950s, it was apparent that this approach could not produce an adequate number of spaces in the proper location to meet the demand. Also, new building projects were consuming existing surface parking areas, so that the supply of surface spaces was actually starting to decline. Faced with this challenge, the faculty agreed to the imposition of a parking fee, and the university began a program to build parking structures in the densely developed areas of the Central Campus and the Medical Center. The parking structures on Church and Catherine Streets were built in the late 1950s, followed by those on Thayer and Thompson Streets in the early 1960s. All had been located near the outer edges of the campus—a concept supported by the 1963 plan. The plan proposed expanding on this idea by creating a ring of structures around the outer edge of the campus and easily accessible from the perimeter road system, which would allow drivers to leave their vehicles at the edge of the campus and move around the core of the campus on foot (fig. 6.13). This would further support the concept of the pedestrian-oriented campus core. In fulfillment of this concept, the parking structure on Fletcher Street was built in the late 1960s and that on Hill Street in 1970—thereby creating the ring of structures around the periphery of the Central Campus that had been recommended in the plan. Page 143 →

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS Other recommendations that were implemented at this time include a dramatic improvement in campus lighting, replacing the old and scattered incandescent fixtures with new, globe-type mercury vapor fixtures; the installation of a uniform system of campus signage; and outdoor campus furnishings (fig. 6.14). Also, the addition of the Rosenthal Cube in Regents Plaza had reawakened an interest in public art on campus, and the university began the creation of what has now become a significant collection of outdoor sculpture. Paul Suttman’s Lady of the Garden was donated by Martha Cook alumnae and friends in 1967 (fig. 6.15), Jon Rush’s Convergence was placed in front of the Institute for Social Research in 1990, and Bill Barrett’s Tooth Fairy was donated in 1971 by the Dental School’s Class of 1944. As the decade of the 1970s dawned, the university had made major strides forward in the implementation of the 1963 plan, but much more needed to be done. Two key projects, the Ingalls Mall and the East University Walkway, had made little progress, and the heart of the campus still lacked the sense of beauty and order that was a major goal of the 1963 plan. Page 144 →

ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER The classic image of the American campus is created by a harmonious blend of architecture and landscape to produce an integrated and pleasing environment. While the advent of framework planning had shifted the emphasis of the plan from the specifics of architectural development and questions of architectural style to the nonarchitectural aspects of campus organization, architecture continued to be an equal partner in the actual development of the campus. The framework plan provided the skeleton on which the campus could develop, but the muscle and flesh were still provided substantially by the architecture. It was by means of the individual building projects that many of the campus planning concepts were actually carried out. But the architectural character of the Michigan campus in the early 1960s was neither integrated nor harmonious. Over the years, the university had erected buildings in a wide variety of styles that reflected the changing tastes in architectural design throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Unlike campuses that had established a unified architectural style or consistent building material (e.g., Stanford, Duke, Princeton, and Colorado), Michigan had left such decisions to be made on a project-by-project basis. By the early 1960s, a wide variety of styles could be found on the campus, including Greek Revival, Italianate, Collegiate Gothic, classical, Renaissance, Romanesque Revival, Art Deco, and modernist. Some buildings were by very distinguished architects, such as the many structures by Albert Kahn, Eliel Saarinen’s Burton Tower, or York and Sawyer’s law buildings. Others were by less-famous firms primarily from within the state of Michigan. By the early 1960s, the

overall effect verged on architectural chaos. It was generally agreed that new buildings added to the campus should help to develop a greater sense of architectural harmony. But accomplishing this would not be easy; it could not be done by formula. Trying to dictate a single architectural style or building material at this stage of campus development simply would not work. The university considered the idea of assigning responsibility for each subarea of the campus to a single architect, but this idea did not work out. Ultimately, it became the responsibility of the in-house professional staff (the university architect and the university planner) to work with the retained architects for each project to develop designs that furthered the goal of promoting a greater degree of architectural harmony on the campus while producing functional and costeffective facilities. This goal was clearly enunciated by the board of regents and supported by the executive officers, but it was left to the professionals both inside and outside the university to develop the actual solutions. There was no one set answer. At issue was sometimes building placement, sometimes facade materials, sometimes building massing, sometimes fenestration patterns, and often a combination of several of these. Each case was a unique problem requiring an individual solution, and the professional team worked hard on each project to develop the appropriate one. Some were better than others, but the overall result was an improvement in the architectural cohesiveness of the campus. Most new buildings seemed to take their place rather gracefully among the older structures, and many of the new buildings worked to pull together areas previously considered architecturally incompatible. One outstanding example of this approach was Hugh Newell Jacobsen’s Alumni Center project. It demonstrated very dramatically that a new building could utilize traditional forms and materials in a way that harmonized with the surrounding buildings without slavishly copying them or denying its own contemporary character (fig. 6.16). In addition, it served to complete the northeastern architectural edge of the Ingalls Mall and effectively tied the buildings across Fletcher Street (Health Services and the Kellogg Institute) together with the rest of the campus. University professional staff, including architect Robert Chance and construction manager Georges Selim, and landscape architects JJR worked diligently along with Jacobsen to assure a successful total project. The design was widely admired both locally and nationally (it was featured on the cover of the Architectural Record—a highly regarded journal of the architectural profession) and ushered in a new era in the way buildings were designed for the campus. Many subsequent projects, such as the Tappan Hall addition, Shapiro Library remodeling, Randall Laboratory addition, School of Social Work, Weill Hall, North Quad, and the Life Sciences Institute, have employed similar approaches and have done much to enhance the architectural character of the campus. Page 145 →

PRESIDENTS FLEMING, SMITH, AND SHAPIRO In 1968, Robben W. Fleming replaced Harlan Hatcher as the ninth president of the university. Prior to his tenure at Michigan, he had served as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus. He was trained in the field of law and was an experienced negotiator and mediator as well as an experienced university administrator. Fleming possessed an outgoing personality that immediately won the sympathy and confidence of those with whom he came in contact. He possessed a genuine sympathy with student and faculty concerns and displayed great tact and patience in dealing with even the most difficult situations. These qualities enabled him to maintain the confidence of the university community throughout the course of his presidency (1968–79). All of his many skills were needed to address the thorny problems he dealt with during his tenure. President Fleming assumed office at the height of the Vietnam War protests that rocked American society in general and American university campuses in particular. The first few years of his administration were substantially concerned with efforts to deal with student protests while protecting the freedoms of speech and inquiry that are essential to the culture of a great university. By the early 1970s, the war was ended, and the protest movements began to subside, but another problem arose in its place. As the decade of the 1970s wore on, the aftermath of the turbulent Vietnam War era combined with the energy crisis precipitated by the Middle East oil embargo plunged the nation into an economic downturn. This downturn

was particularly devastating in Michigan, with its heavy dependence on the automobile industry, and it seemed as though federal government policies designed to promote more fuel-efficient vehicles were also designed to favor the Japanese automobile industry. Unemployment in Michigan soared, while state revenues plunged, and President Fleming and Vice Presidents Smith and Pierpont struggled to keep the institution financially afloat in an era of state budget cutting and appropriation take-backs. In this environment, it is not surprising that new construction activity slowed dramatically. Douglas R. Sherman was named director of capital planning in an effort to attract greater state support for building projects. He had some success in this endeavor, but given the general condition of the state economy, substantial support for the building program from the state was impossible. A few buildings were completed, such as the donor-funded Paton Accounting Center at the Business School (1976, since demolished) and the internally funded Central Campus Recreation Building (for which the students voted in favor of a fee increase) and Dance Building (both 1977). The 1970s, however, was not a decade of great physical change on the Central Campus. When President Fleming announced that he was stepping down in 1979, Allan F. Smith, a former vice president for academic affairs at the university (1968–74), was named interim president. He had two major Page 146 → facilities objectives, both of which he achieved: securing funding for a new university hospital and making an addition to the Power Center for the Performing Arts. Smith was widely respected throughout the university but had already retired from the vice presidential position and was not a candidate for the presidency. On January 1, 1980, Harold T. Shapiro assumed the office of president. Shapiro was a brilliant economist and the codeveloper of a highly respected econometric model of the national economy. He had also served as chairman of the Economics Department (1974–77) and vice president for academic affairs (1977–79). The choice of an internal candidate who was a highly respected economist and skilled administrator proved to be a very wise one on the part of the regents, for what had looked like the beginning of an economic upturn in the early 1980s proved to be merely a lull before an even worse crisis a few years later. The major issues that plagued President Shapiro, Provost Billy Frye, and CFO James Brinkerhoff were shrinking state revenues, budget cutbacks, and economic retrenchment. “Smaller but better” became the slogan of the Shapiro era. The president himself was a man of excellent taste and judgment and a supporter of planning. He possessed a genuine desire to move forward with the implementation of the Central Campus Plan, but the financial crisis imposed severe limitations on what he was able to do. One major effort he was able to initiate, however, was the 1987 update of the Central Campus Plan. Fleming, Smith, and Shapiro were all supportive of the framework approach that had developed at Michigan and provided the support and continuity necessary to carry out a long-range master plan.

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE 1970S AND EARLY 1980S: CONTINUED IMPLEMENTATION Because the social upheavals and the economic troubles of the late 1960s and 1970s resulted in a dramatic reduction in state funding for construction projects, the university turned increasingly to private philanthropy or internal sources for new projects. The total number of building projects during the 1970s was cut in half from those of the 1960s, and many of the projects that were carried out were located on the North Campus or in the Medical Center. Nonetheless, some projects were completed on the Central Campus, and they were all located and designed in conformity with the master plan and helped to carry out its long-range objectives. The Modern Languages Building (1972) was located directly north of Hill Auditorium, on a site designated in the plan, and served to provide an architectural frame for the northwest edge of the Ingalls Mall. Its massing was carefully related to Hill Auditorium and the Burton Tower, and the paving pattern created as a part of the site work for the building would later be incorporated into the paving pattern of the mall. The Central Campus Recreation Building (1977) was located at the east end of the Washtenaw Avenue pedestrian overpass, on a site provided for in the plan, and was designed with its main entrance on the same level as the bridge, thereby reinforcing the pedestrian pattern across the bridge as well as providing convenient access from both the Hill Area dorms and the academic core of the campus. On the south side of the campus, the Business School had outgrown the facilities of its 1948 building, and Dean Floyd Bond began an effort to raise private funding for additional space. His efforts led to the construction of the

Assembly Hall in 1972 and the Paton Accounting Center in 1976—both since demolished. These two projects served not only to provide additional space for the school but also to create the western architectural edge for what would ultimately grow into the Business Quadrangle. Although these projects represented significant progress in the evolution of the campus, they did not in themselves serve to complete any major new campus spaces or to radically alter the image of the campus itself. The image presented to a visitor in 1980 was not significantly different from the one presented in 1970. But by the end of the 1970s, economic conditions had begun to improve temporarily, and the state of Michigan had committed to a major expenditure to help fund a new university hospital. However, this had little impact on the Central Campus, where private philanthropy continued to be the major funding source for new construction. In the 1980s, a series of projects did have a Page 147 → significant impact and began to alter the campus image in the directions recommended in the 1963 plan. The Alumni Center project (1983, described earlier) completed the architectural frame of the Ingalls Mall. At the same time, the city agreed to vacate the western half of South Ingalls Street, thereby allowing the conversion of the street into the landscaped axis known today as the Ingalls Mall. When the Alumni Center building was completed, phase I of the Ingalls Mall project was implemented in the area between Washington Street and the Cooley Memorial Fountain. The conversion of this section of roadway to a landscaped pedestrian mall was the first step in the creation of one of the two major landscape projects at the core of the Central Campus Plan, the Ingalls Mall. It was in the southern subcampus zone that the projects of the early 1980s had their greatest impact. The first of these projects was the addition of the Allan and Alene Smith Law Library (1981). By the late 1970s, it had become evident that the existing law library (the Cook Legal Research Building) was in desperate need of additional space. The Law School, under the leadership of Dean St. Antoine, undertook a fund-raising campaign to raise the money needed to build the building. It soon became clear that the architectural design of the facility would have a direct bearing on the success of the campaign. The alumni who were being asked for funds were particularly upset about a state-funded “modernist” addition to the Legal Research Building that had been built in the 1950s and wanted assurances that no such thing would happen again before they were willing to commit to providing money. An architectural selection process was initiated, and some of the leading architects in the country were interviewed. The committee selected Gunnar Birkerts Associates of Birmingham, Michigan, to undertake the commission. Birkerts worked closely with the faculty and staff to understand what was required. He produced an initial scheme that met their requirements and, in his opinion, related in a compatible way with the historic quadrangle. It was an aboveground structure that employed mirrored glass to reflect the rich architectural detailing of the original Collegiate Gothic buildings. It was relatively well received by the faculty, but not by the alumni who were being asked to fund the project. They feared that this was a repeat of the 1955 approach and asked for an alternate to be developed. Birkerts had just published a book on underground architecture and felt that this might be an approach worth exploring. The scheme he produced was enthusiastically received by most of those involved with the project (especially the alumni), and the design now moved forward as pledges of financial support were made. The result was one of the finest underground buildings ever built, one that is greatly admired by the university community and the architectural profession (fig. 5.26). The upper (grade) level features landscaping and walkways and extends the green character of the Law Quadrangle to the southeast to link with the Business School block, as recommended in the 1963 master plan. Like Hugh Jacobsen’s Alumni Center, this project was featured on the cover of the Architectural Record and received numerous awards from the architectural profession. An even more extensive development took place on the Business School block. When Dean Gilbert Whitaker arrived to assume leadership of the school in the early 1980s, he found that despite the improvements undertaken by his predecessor, the facilities of the school were woefully inadequate to meet the needs of modern business education. His response was to develop a master plan for the required facilities and to raise private funds to carry it out. The firm of Luckenbach/Ziegelman of Birmingham, Michigan, was hired to develop the master plan and subsequently to design the buildings. They worked with Johnson, Johnson, and Roy on the site planning and landscape architectural aspects of the project (fig. 6.17). Three separate but physically linked projects—the Kresge Business Library, the Computer and Executive Education Building, and the Executive Residence—were opened in

1985 and served to complete the enclosure of the Business Quadrangle. The Kresge Library was elevated to allow a major campus walkway to pass beneath it and connect the Hill Street Parking Structure to the central forty acres. The library was sited somewhat to the south of the other buildings along the Monroe Street axis, thereby preserving three historic burr oaks on the site and creating an entry court on the north side. On the south, it divided the open space into two distinct areas: the Alessi courtyard on the west, oriented mainly to students and faculty, and the Executive Residence courtyard on the east, primarily oriented to the postgraduate program (fig. 6.18). The landscaping was designed by JJR. One more building, Sam Wyly Hall, was added to the complex in 1999, at the corner of East University Avenue and Hill Street, and served to complete the development of the block. But the fundamental character of the area was established with the 1985 program. By the mid-1980s, therefore, the southern subcampus had achieved a mature character, with signature open spaces (the Law Quad, the Business School courtyards, and the Martha Cook yard) and a fully developed walkway system connecting to the rest of the campus. In 1983, largely through the efforts of then councilman (later mayor) Jerry Jernigan, the city vacated Monroe Street between Tappan Street and East University Avenue, and this thoroughfare too was converted into a landscaped pedestrian walkway. Page 148 → The early 1980s saw several other significant developments on the Central Campus. On December 24, 1981, the old Economics Building near the center of the Diag burned down as the result of arson by a disgruntled former university employee. This had several major repercussions. To begin with, space had to be found to accommodate the Economics Department. Lorch Hall, vacated by the Schools of Art and Architecture in the mid-1970s, had been used by the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts for a variety of academic units but had not been given a clear academic focus. After careful examination, it was determined that it could be renovated effectively for the Economics Department. Its proximity to academic units such as business and law, plus its easy access to the libraries and other core academic programs on the central forty acres, made this an appropriate site. The renovation was completed in 1987, and Lorch Hall has been home to the Economics Department ever since. Page 149 → A second result of the Economics Building fire was the renovation of and addition to Tappan Hall. The example of the devastation that fire could cause to a nineteenth-century wood-frame building served as a dramatic warning of what could happen to the few other buildings of this type that remained on campus. A particularly alarming situation existed with respect to one of them, Tappan Hall (1894), which housed the Fine Arts Library, with its irreplaceable collection of works related to the history of art. The protection of this collection became a particular concern for President Shapiro and his wife, Vivian. Mrs. Shapiro spearheaded a fund-raising campaign to build a fireproof, climate-controlled addition to Tappan Hall to house the collection and to renovate the old building to provide up-to-date facilities for the History of Art Department and space for a library reading room. One aspect of this project presented a particular challenge to the architect. Functionally, the new addition needed to be a windowless, climate-controlled box. Two possible locations had been explored, to the north and to the south of the existing building. Each had a problem. On the north side, a major underground steam tunnel would have interfered and added significantly to the cost. On the south, the expansion would entail the removal of a beautiful old oak tree. The southward expansion was decided on after much consideration, but it presented another architectural challenge, for a windowless masonry cube would not be appropriate facing South University Avenue between the Museum of Art and the president’s residence and across the street from the Law Quadrangle. President Shapiro made it clear that the building should embody a sensitive architectural design as well as a functional solution within a very tight budget. The architect, Carl Luckenbach, developed an ingenious design featuring recessed arched windows that would provide architectural interest on the building’s facade while also preserving the interior’s environmental integrity. The project was completed in 1984 and has been very well received by both the users and the broader community (fig. 6.19). The last major consequence of the Economics Building fire was the redefinition of the east side of the Diag. Prior to the fire, the Economics Building had occupied a position immediately east of the Hatcher Graduate Library and

projected into the main Diag space to the north of the facade line of the library. A small secondary space had existed between the Economics Building and the Undergraduate Library (now Shapiro Library). In this position, the Economics Page 150 → Building had acted to foreshorten the open space of the Diag on the east side and to severely limit the opportunity to add new facilities to this corner of the central forty acres. Its removal opened up the potential to make major additions to the remaining buildings in this area, to provide better architectural definition to the open space, and to balance the amount of green space on either side of the Hatcher Library. The remodeling and addition to the Shapiro Library and the Randall Laboratory addition that were completed in 1995 accomplished this significant objective of urban design (fig. 6.20).

THE 1987 UPDATE TO THE CENTRAL CAMPUS PLAN By the mid-1980s, the 1963 Central Campus Plan had been effectively guiding the development of the campus for over two decades. The basic principles on which it was based were still viable and effectively directing the decision-making process in relation to campus facilities. Over the years, many of the plan’s specific recommendations had been implemented. The peripheral vehicular circulation system had been created; many nonessential internal streets had been vacated to allow for the creation of a pedestrian-oriented core; the peripheral ring of parking structures had been developed; new campus plazas had been developed by the Administration Building, south of the Hatcher Library, and in the Business School block; many parts of the walkway system had been linked to create a much more effective flow than in the early 1960s; and the physical relationship between the campus and the community had been preserved and enhanced. Some other important recommendations, such as the development of the Ingalls Mall and the East University Walkway, were only partially implemented, but much progress had occurred. Beyond this, other changes that had a direct influence on campus development had been underway since the early 1960s. Society in general and the architecture profession in particular had begun to question the appropriateness of modernist design. Two books, From Bauhaus to Our House by Thomas Wolfe and Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi, had sparked this questioning. The latter work was particularly influential because it was written by a distinguished member of the architectural profession. The response to this challenge was a renewed interest in the issue of context, and many architects began to think once again about their buildings as part of a larger environment rather than considering each as a “ship on its own bottom.” At the same time, society was becoming much more supportive of historic preservation, and since many of the finest works of American architecture are located on university campuses, an increased emphasis was placed on the adaptive reuse of existing buildings as opposed to the “demolish and replace” approach. One result of the modernist approach to architectural design was the appearance of high-rise buildings on campus. Prior to World War II, Burton Tower was the only “tall” building at the University of Michigan. Beginning in the 1950s a series of eight-to ten-story buildings began to appear including Haven Hall, the Business Administration Building, South Quadrangle, and Alice Lloyd Residence. They were joined in the 1960s by the Dennison Building, the School of Dentistry, the Hatcher Library addition, and the Fleming Administration Building. In the early 1960s, a common response to limited land resources was the use of high-rise buildings. The illustrative site plan that accompanied the 1963 plan showed a significant number of these towers as potential solutions to this problem on the Central Campus. But experience over the years had demonstrated serious drawbacks to the indiscriminate use of high-rise construction in the university setting. They encouraged antisocial behavior in resident halls and the loss of faculty and student interaction and collegiality in academic buildings. George Thomas summarizes the University of Pennsylvania’s experience with high-rise dormitories as follows: Unfortunately, the high-rise towers had never fostered the type of community facilitated by the Cope and Stewardson dormitory quadrangle. Indeed, given the track record of high-rise housing for less sophisticated tenant groups, this might have been anticipated. Page 151 → Beginning in the 1950s, critics had analyzed the problems of “skyscraper Utopias of Le Corbusier and Gropius” and found them wanting for public housing. It should not have been a great leap to see that they were equally unsuited for undergraduates in their first unsupervised residential experience. Jane Jacobs’s hymn to

the value of the street and the anonymity of the high-rise of 1961, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, should have been an even more forceful warning about the potential problems that the high-rise dormitories posed. When the buildings first opened in 1970, students who left their doors open on the assumption that they were living in a dorm were victimized by crimes that ranged from the minor to the serious. Over three decades, the buildings proved difficult to manage and were usually the last choice behind the quad, off-campus housing, and even tiny rooms of Hill House.

Issues such as these that had not appeared to be problems when the 1963 plan was being prepared were now having significant influence on campus development. By the mid-1980s, consequently, it seemed appropriate to reexamine and update the 1963 plan. President Shapiro and Vice President Brinkerhoff asked JJR to revisit their 1963 plan, retain what was still valid, and revise and update those parts of the plan that required it. They worked with a university committee consisting of the following men: Robert M. Warner, School of Information and Library Studies Charles W. Cares Jr., professor of landscape architecture, School of Natural Resources James N. Cather, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Evan M. Maurer, director of the Museum of Art Marvin W. Peterson, School of Education Thomas Easthope, associate vice president for student services Kurt Muenchow, student William S. Sturgis, assistant to the vice president and chief financial officer Frederick W. Mayer, university planner Richard L. Glissman, university architect Kenneth Wanty, university landscape architect The consultant team was led by JJR’s Carl Johnson, and the majority of the work was completed during 1986. The updated plan was presented to the board of regents in 1987 and was officially adopted by them. The update concluded that the basic principles embodied in the 1963 plan were still valid and working effectively to guide the development of the campus. What needed revision were the specifics of the application of these principles to the Central Campus as it existed in the mid-1980s (fig. 6.21). Since the major modifications to the vehicular circulation and parking system proposed in the 1963 plan had been accomplished, the recommendations in these areas were much more modest. The update recommended vacation of two streets (Monroe between State and Oakland, Madison between Packard and Thompson), to enhance the pedestrian core and enable future development of academic or residential facilities. It proposed expansions to several of the parking garages (those on Fletcher, Thompson, and Thayer), to meet growing demand. Historic preservation concerns were addressed in a section titled “Buildings and Spaces of Distinction.” High priority was given to the completion of two major unrealized projects from the 1963 plan, the Ingalls Mall and the East University Walkway. Emphasis was also placed on the completion of an integrated and linked walkway system and on continuing to create plazas and open spaces as new building development takes place. Of greater concern in 1987 than in 1963 was the issue of capacity. The land area of the Central Campus was

distinctly limited, and the city was opposed to any major expansion of the university’s landholdings. High-rise buildings were not proving to be the panacea that planners had once hoped they would be, so what was to be done? Was the university approaching a point where the Central Campus would reach capacity, so that no further building would be possible? To answer these questions, the planners once again applied the basic principles of framework planning to the campus as it existed in the mid-1980s. They blocked out areas of protected open space, walkway patterns, buildings to be preserved, and so on. Then they defined a series of “developable sites.” They estimated the capacity of each site based on the application of arbitrary building footprints and heights and concluded that at least 1.5 million gross square feet of new building capacity existed on the Central Campus. In practice, these estimates proved rather conservative, and the actual capacity was somewhat higher; however, the analysis demonstrated that substantial growth capacity still existed. Page 152 → The 1987 update tended to be more specific about individual sites incorporating such things as build-to lines where appropriate, points allowing service access, future plazas and interior courtyards, walkway pass-throughs, building linkages, and potential building expansion areas. In addition, it identified potential locations for campus design features, such as sculpture, fountains, and memorials, and identified a series of campus buildings and open spaces that should be preserved because of their historic or architectural significance. Finally, it pointed out the critical importance of completing the Ingalls Mall and the East University Walkway, for the creation of the image and sense of place that was a major goal of the entire effort of campus planning.

THE DUDERSTADT BUILDING PROGRAM In 1987, President Shapiro announced that he was stepping down as president of Michigan to assume the presidency of Princeton University. James Duderstadt, who had served as dean of the College of Engineering (1981–86) and then provost (1986–88) under President Shapiro, was named to succeed Page 153 → him. President Duderstadt was a brilliant nuclear engineer and physicist trained at Yale and Caltech. As the Stenecks noted in their edition of Howard Peckham’s The Making of the University of Michigan (357), Duderstadt possessed a characteristic that one often associates with engineers: “a faith in the ability of educated people to control their own destinies and to build their own futures.” He had a keen analytical mind, a dynamic and forceful personality, respect for the facts, confidence to make decisions, an aptitude for achieving a quick grasp on a situation, and an ability to get things accomplished. He was anxious to achieve results and impatient with obstructionism and delay. More interested in product than process, he had little patience with incompetence, and his diplomatic skills were sometimes strained by unproductive and unpleasant situations and individuals. One area where President Duderstadt excelled was in the realm of strategic planning. He had a clear vision of what the university must do to retain a position of leadership in the twenty-first century, and he set about doing those things in every area of university life. He expounded his vision widely within the university community, to alumni, and throughout the state. He convinced the governor of the wisdom of his vision and gained the governor’s support for funding projects necessary to carry that vision forward. Fortunately, the economy of the state improved significantly in the late 1980s. Unemployment fell, and state revenues grew, which meant that the state was once again in a position to fund major construction projects. The university acted wisely to prepare for this new surge in building activity by updating the Central Campus Plan to continue to provide an effective framework within which the new development could occur. The 1987 update, which had been developed largely during President Duderstadt’s tenure as provost, now became the framework to carry out his major program of campus renovation and expansion. The program itself had two major components: first, renovating and expanding existing campus buildings (particularly science facilities) that had become obsolete for their present academic purposes or were needed for other purposes than those for which they had originally been designed and, second, the addition of new facilities where the renovation approach was not feasible. President Duderstadt was very interested in recording and preserving the university’s history, and this increased emphasis on building renovation fit well with the goal of historic preservation. The adaptive reuse of many older campus buildings not only provided the up-to-date facilities required to carry out the university’s

academic mission but, at the same time, preserved the historic character of the Central Campus as it had evolved over the course of the century. Included among these major renovation and addition projects were the following: Lorch Hall renovation, 1987 Michigan League renovation and addition, 1987 Kraus Building renovation, 1991 Kelsey Museum renovation, 1991 Chemistry Building renovation, 1993 Randall Laboratory renovation, 1997 Shapiro Library renovation and addition, 1995 Angell Hall renovation, 1996 C. C. Little Building renovation, 1996 Student Activities Building renovation and Visitors Center addition, 1996 Health Services renovation and addition, 1997 West Hall renovation, 2002 One of the projects that attracted particular interest was the Shapiro Library renovation and addition. The old Undergraduate Library was completed in 1956. It was characteristic of the architecture of that period—a brick box with a blue and white curtain wall on the north facade and a few small windows on the other elevations (fig. 6.22a). It had been nicknamed the “Ugli,” both as an abbreviation of “undergraduate library” and as an aesthetic commentary on the building itself. It stood in sharp contrast to the many examples of historical architectural styles surrounding it. When the decision was made to expand as well as renovate the facility, an opportunity presented itself to deal with the aesthetic as well as the functional shortcomings of the building. The design that was developed by Albert Kahn Associates (Kahn was the architect of the original building and many of the surrounding buildings) was far more contextual in nature and related harmoniously to the historic architecture of the surrounding area (fig. 6.22b). It was clearly a building of the 1990s, but it worked well with the earlier buildings. The general reaction to the completed project was summed up by one student who exclaimed to his friend upon seeing the renovated library for the first time, “Look, they made the Ugli beautiful!” Page 154 → Not all of the facility needs of the campus could be satisfied by major renovations and small additions; new buildings were needed as well. The old Chemistry Building (1908 and 1948) could be renovated for some activities of the department, but its mechanical systems were at their limits; new facilities were needed to accommodate technologically demanding research laboratories in areas such as synthetic chemistry and organic chemistry, as well as to solve the logistical problems presented by the first-and second-year teaching labs. Planning for the new building had begun during President Shapiro’s tenure but was completed under President Duderstadt. Its site was a critical one on the northeast corner of the central forty acres, adjacent to the older chemistry buildings, to which the new building would be connected (the former site of the Barbour Gymnasium and the Waterman Gymnasium). The site straddled a major campus walkway leading from the Hill dorm area to the academic core, which had to be preserved. To make matters worse, the demands of the building itself were daunting. The site contained approximately 70,000 square feet, whereas the building program called for a structure of over 250,000 square feet that should be linked with the Chemistry Building at every level. There were serious doubts as to whether the site would permit the development of a well-designed solution that would meet the needs

of both the users and the university. The architect, Harley Ellington Pierce Yee, solved the problem by designing the building around a central atrium through which the campus walkway was allowed to pass, thereby preserving the continuity of the walkway system while allowing maximum utilization of the site for building purposes (fig. 6.23). Interestingly, the footprint that resulted from HEPY’s 1988 design for the Chemical Sciences Complex was very close to the one shown for the site as early as the 1921 plan developed during President Burton’s time. The concept of allowing a campus walkway to penetrate a building to protect the integrity of the walkway system while simultaneously allowing the utilization of a site for building purposes was an old one dating back as far as the West Hall building of 1904. Since that time, it has been used in numerous projects, such as the Dennison Building, the Hatcher Library addition, the Kresge Business Library, and the Randall Laboratory addition. The concept was also recommended in the 1963 Central Campus Plan and its 1987 update. Other new building projects from the Duderstadt program include the following: Angell Hall Computing Center, 1990 Pharmacy Research addition, 1992 Randall Laboratory addition, 1995 Tisch Hall, 1996 Page 155 → School of Social Work, 1997 Wyly Hall, 1999 All of these projects were sited in accordance with the 1987 master plan, and the actual building footprints came remarkably close to those shown in the illustrative site plan included in the report.

THE COMPLETION OF THE FRAMEWORK As mentioned previously, the successful creation of a campus image requires the harmonious blending of architecture and landscape to create an overall environment that is both functional and attractive. Buildings tend to be the easier part of this environment to accomplish, because their value and purpose are more easily understood and because they have many advocates among the faculty and administration. Therefore, funding for buildings tends to be more readily forthcoming from both the state and private donors. But without landscape, it is impossible to have a campus. In the words of Richard Dober, “A campus without landscape is as likely as a circle without a circumference, an arch without a keystone, an ocean without water. Most campuses have significant acreage devoted to lawns, greens, and playfields. Areas between buildings have aesthetic, functional and symbolic purposes which landscape defines and sustains.” People understand this, but in the competition for scarce financial resources, it is often difficult to obtain support for projects in landscaping and site development. Some of these areas can be incorporated into and funded as part of individual building projects, and many schemes for site development at Michigan have been accomplished in just this way. Others cannot be done in this manner and must be funded separately. Deans Whitaker and White of the Business School raised money independently to enhance the central space of the Business Quadrangle. Similarly, deans of the Engineering College and directors of Bentley and Ford Libraries raised money for site improvements adjacent to their buildings. But in some cases where key projects serve everyone on campus but have no specific academic “owner,” the only source for the funding is the central administration. This was precisely the case with areas such as the Diag, the Ingalls Mall, and the East University Walkway. The walkway and the mall had been identified in the 1963 plan as high-priority projects essential to the creation of the campus framework on which the plan was based. But by the time the plan was

updated in 1987, these projects had been only partially completed. The Diag had been in existence since the origin of the campus and was the major symbolic open space of the Central Campus, yet few improvements had been made in recent years. Page 156 → Old walks leading to buildings no longer in existence remained; new pedestrian movement patterns had not been accommodated; building entrances had been reconfigured; and the stress of many construction projects had compacted the soil, resulting in poor drainage and a loss of trees. Something needed to be done if a quality campus environment was to be created and preserved. Fortunately, the leadership of the university was equal to the challenge. President Duderstadt and the regents supported these improvements, and two key members of the administration deserve special credit for the instrumental roles they played: Farris Womack, executive vice president and chief financial officer, saw to it that the funding necessary to carry out these projects would be available, and Paul Spradlin, director of plant extension, coordinated the various projects and kept them moving forward on time and within budget. These three key projects in site development in the 1990s finally resulted in the creation of the campus framework first proposed in the Central Campus Plan of 1963.

THE INGALLS MALL The construction of the Ingalls Mall took place between 1983 and 1990, but the planning for the project dates back much further. The basic concept was established during the Burton era, and the specific design was begun at the time of the Central Campus Plan of 1963. The detailed design of the actual paving and landscape plans evolved over a period of thirty years, with the concept for some areas changing somewhat as the various iterations of the plan unfolded (fig. 6.24). The first scheme was developed in 1967, shortly after the completion of the Central Campus Plan. The original scheme featured a somewhat less formal walkway pattern at the north end, with asymmetrical curvilinear walks. In the area just north of North University Avenue, a vehicular drop-off for Hill Auditorium was also included. The brick banding around Burton Tower was a feature of all the schemes. All of them were designed by the firm of JJR, particularly by Clarence Roy, Carl Johnson, Bill Johnson, and Jim Christman. In the early schemes, Bill Johnson and Clarence Roy played a more significant role, while the latter schemes were more strongly influenced by Carl Johnson and Jim Christman. The only element of the first scheme that was directly implemented was the brick paving pattern around the Modern Languages Building in the early 1970s. Two things prevented further implementation at this time: the budget crisis of the late 1970s and the fact that the west arm of South Ingalls Street was still owned by the city of Ann Arbor. When the Alumni Center project was approved in the early 1980s, the university requested the vacation of this section of South Ingalls Street, to which the city agreed in 1980. This made it possible to begin the development of the mall in a more comprehensive way. Page 157 → After the Alumni Center was completed in 1983, it was decided to convert the area north of the 1940 Cooley Memorial Fountain to a pedestrian way with landscaping, and a revised design was prepared. After examining actual pedestrian patterns more closely, it was decided to move to a diagonal and crossed walk pattern as opposed to the curvilinear pattern shown in the earlier plan (fig. 6.25). In 1989, when the area between the fountain and North University was implemented, another change was made. The proposed vehicular drop-off on the east side of Hill Auditorium was eliminated. The use of formal drop-offs at public buildings had declined dramatically in the late twentieth century. Drop-offs still took place, but now they were mainly from autos that then proceeded to parking spots in nearby structures, rather than by cabs or carriages. Thus the drop-off made more sense on the west side of the hall, from which drivers could then proceed to the Thayer Street Parking Structure. Moving the drop-off also enhanced the integrity of the pedestrian mall by removing an inconsistent auto-oriented element. Page 158 → The last section of the mall, between the Kraus Building and the Chemistry Building, was implemented in 1990

and entailed relatively little alteration to the original concept. It was, of course, refined and more completely detailed than in the original scheme. But with the completion of this phase, the almost-century-old concept of a landscaped mall running north from the Hatcher Library to the northern edge of the Central Campus was finally realized (fig. 6.26). It has become one of the most popular and widely recognized open spaces on the Michigan campus (fig. 6.27).

RENOVATION OF THE DIAG The second major project of site improvement from this era was the renovation of the Diag itself. The design for this project was prepared by JJR in 1992 and approved by the regents in December 1993. But actual implementation did not take place until 1997, due to building construction projects already underway. The concept was to preserve the fundamental character of the space but to improve its quality by a number of alterations: realigning walks to reflect actual movement patterns; sizing them to reflect volumes of usage; improving drainage and growing conditions for trees; improving maintainability; and enhancing usability of the area through the provision of seat walls, improved security lighting, and more bicycle storage (fig. 6.28). The center of the space would remain as a paved plaza surrounded by grass and trees; more detailed planting would occur along the edges of the space adjacent to the buildings. Higher-quality materials such as brick and stone paving and stone seat walls around the central plaza would be used, and the bronze block M at the center of the Diag (a gift from the Class of 1953) would be restored and reinstalled. When the Randall Lab addition and the Shapiro Library expansion and renovation were completed in 1995, they provided a strong architectural definition to the eastern edge of the central space. These projects, combined with the site and landscape renovations that took place in 1997, restored the Diag once more to its proper image as the signature open space of the Central Campus (fig. 6.29). Page 159 → Page 160 → Page 161 →

THE EAST UNIVERSITY WALKWAY The last of the three major projects for site improvement in the 1990s was the East University Walkway. The former street had been vacated by the city in the late 1960s on the condition that it be converted to a pedestrian walkway. With a similar condition, two property owners at the south end of the block, Fred Ulrich and Howard Wikel, donated their portion of the vacated right-of-way to the university. A preliminary design plan prepared by assistant university planner Clinton N. Hewitt demonstrated the feasibility of converting the street to a landscaped walkway. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the budget crisis facing the university prevented the implementation of the agreement, although the northernmost section between the Dana and C. C. Little Buildings actually was converted into a pedestrian walk. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the area was used as a construction marshaling zone for a variety of construction projects in the surrounding buildings, such as the renovations to East and West Halls and the Randall Laboratory, the Randall Lab addition, and the underground chiller plant beneath the Dennison courtyard. Not until the mid-1990s, when construction activity in this area abated, was the university in a position to move ahead with the conversion of the former street into a landscaped pedestrian walk. Two alternate concepts were prepared by JJR, the major difference being the location of service parking for West Hall. One option placed it on the East University side of the building, the other on the South University side. After a review of the options by the executive officers and the regents, the South University option was chosen. The construction of the project took place during the summer of 1996. During construction, a special working group including representatives of the South University merchants, the city, and the university was created to ensure that there would be as little disruption as possible, and this seemed to work well. There was some disagreement among various student groups over the types of plant materials to be used. Students from the School of Natural Resources and Environment wanted to see only native plant materials used, with no mowed lawns. The LS&A students wanted to maximize the amount of lawn area accessible for use by outdoor classes or just to read and relax on. The designers tried to come up with a plan that incorporated some of each preference. As with all outdoor environments, things change with time. More bike racks and benches have been added, and additional changes may well be made to the mix of plant materials. Nevertheless, there seems to be a consensus among the majority

of the students, faculty, and alumni, as well as the Ann Arbor community, that the East University Walkway project represented a significant enhancement of the overall Central Campus environment. At the south end of the walkway, near the old Engineering Arch (of West Hall) and Ulrich’s bookstore, a highly dynamic, interactive node (McDivitt-White Plaza) has been added to the wide array of spaces that characterize the Central Campus (figs. 6.30–31). With the completion of the East University Walkway project and the Diag and Ingalls Mall projects, a major milestone was reached. The structural framework around which the growth of the campus could occur was now in place, and the character and image of the campus that had first been defined in the 1963 plan was now a reality. The university had moved from a period where it was struggling to establish and complete the framework to one where it could build on, enhance, and extend that framework as it continues to grow and develop. Areas on the edge of the campus such as the blocks between Monroe and Hill and between State and Oakland and the area west of Thompson Street will become the sites of future projects, and this development can retain its relationship to the rest of the campus by incorporating the key framework elements as the areas grow and as new building complexes are planned. In this way, the campus can preserve a sense of unity, consistency, and continuity, even as it adjusts to the inevitable changes that will continue to occur. This was the challenge presented to those who undertook the original 1963 Central Campus Planning Study, and they responded admirably. Future historians will record whether or not we possess the wisdom and judgment to continue doing so. Page 162 →

PUBLIC ART ON CAMPUS Since earliest times, public art has played a vital role in communicating concepts of religion, morality, history, patriotism, duty, valor, and wisdom to a largely illiterate population. Sculpture, mosaics, frescoes, and paintings were a fundamental part of all public buildings and spaces. With the spread of literacy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the written word took over the principal role in communication, and the aesthetic aspect of public art was emphasized as its primary virtue. As a result, public art came to be regarded as decoration rather than a fundamental element of design. But public art still plays an important role in establishing the unique character and personality of each individual campus space, and as such, it plays an important role in campus wayfinding (what Richard Dober refers to as “place marking”). Public art has long been a feature of the American campus. It was originally used to honor major individuals or events in the history of the institution, such as founders, distinguished presidents or faculty members, historic events, and donors. More recently, with the rise of abstraction in the art world, it has been used as an enhancement in major open spaces on the campus or in association with significant buildings. But it has always been an important part of campus development. The tradition of public art at Michigan goes back as far as the mid-nineteenth century. The Professors’ Monument (1846) and the Class of 1870’s gift of an ill-fated Benjamin Franklin statue were the first pieces of freestanding sculpture on campus. Sculptural decoration of campus buildings dates back at least as far as the tympanum over the door of the 1880 museum building. It continued to be employed by architects on many subsequent buildings, including, for example, Martha Cook Residence and the Law Quadrangle buildings, the Michigan Union and the Michigan League, the Rackham Building, the Ruthven Museums Building, and the LS&A Building. The installation of freestanding pieces resumed with the Milles Fountain in the early 1940s and the eagle by Marshall Fredericks that was erected at the main entrance to the football stadium in 1950, as a World War II memorial. Tony Rosenthal’s Cube was installed on the Regents Plaza in the late 1960s and became a popular feature of this campus open space. From this point forward, the collection of public art on the Michigan campus has grown steadily, until there are now over fifty major freestanding pieces extending across the entire campus, Page 163 → from the football stadium to the botanical gardens. The pieces not only provide aesthetic enhancement to the campus but also serve an educational function, by exposing students from all disciplines to art and provoking their curiosity and consideration. The art helps to give a distinctive character to individual open spaces on the campus and thereby enriches both the attractiveness and functionality of the campus itself. This collection should continue to grow as the campus expands, as it is a basic component of the total campus development framework (fig. 6.32). Page 164 →

THE VSBA PLANNING ERA On September 19, 1997, Lee Bollinger was inaugurated as the twelfth president of the University of Michigan. From the outset, it was clear that President Bollinger’s approach to campus planning and architecture would be different from that of his predecessors. Instead of defining broad general goals for campus planning and architecture and leaving the details of execution to the university’s professional staff, he intended to play a very active personal role in the decision-making process. He often expressed the view that the planning and architectural design efforts that preceded his administration were distinctly “mediocre,” and he seemed to place the blame for this on the university’s professional staff, as well as Michigan-based architectural and landscape architectural firms. His response was to direct new architectural commissions increasingly to out-of-state firms. He also dismissed the university’s long-term planning consultants, JJR, without a word of explanation, replacing them with his own handpicked consultants, Venturi, Scott Brown, and Associates. This was done without considering any other potential firms, and while VSBA was certainly a well-qualified firm, the procedure departed from normal university practice in selecting professional service providers. His second move was to isolate the university’s own professional staff from any meaningful decision-making role in the areas of planning and architecture. Henceforth, all key decisions in these areas would be made by the president and CFO Robert Kasdin. Site selection, architect selection, design review, and so on were now done by the president and CFO, and smaller design projects, which had previously been executed by in-house staff, were now to be farmed out. Despite their excellent credentials, VSBA had little knowledge of the Michigan campus, so their first major undertaking was to analyze the campus and familiarize themselves with the detailed workings of the university. For the first year and a half or so, they pursued this in-depth analysis of various aspects of the university campus, ranging from academic relationships, to environmental analyses, to student walking patterns, to visual assets and liabilities. They often reported back to the university on their discoveries, always concluding their presentations by asking, “Have we got it right?” This allowed the listeners the opportunity to correct errors of fact and misinterpretations that might have crept into their analyses and to express differing opinions. In January 1998, VSBA issued a report entitled Phase I Overview, in which they presented much of the information they had developed during the analysis phase. This was followed in June 1998 by a report entitled Arts/Sciences Axis, in which they presented more information and identified the existence of a performing arts axis that ran roughly eastwest along the northern edge of the campus and a science axis running roughly north-south along the eastern edge of the campus. These two axes intersected in the area just east of the Dental School and the Fletcher Street Parking Structure, and VSBA suggested that this location offered a wonderful opportunity to develop a large-scale, interdisciplinary facility that would also serve to link the Central Campus with the Medical Center. The concept for the physical development of this area was not new. Basic elements of such development were identified as far back as the 1963 Central Campus Plan (fig. 6.33). They consisted of a pedestrian level to include academic facilities, open space and walkways at approximately 890 feet above sea level (the same level as the Diag and the Hill Area dorms); parking below this plaza level, with academic facilities above it; and gradeseparated pedestrian crossings over Washtenaw at the north and south ends. The southern pedestrian overpass had been built in the late 1960s, but not much else in these plans had taken place (fig. 6.34). In the 1987 update to the 1963 plan, the concept was retained, and the architectural footprints became more precise. During his term, President Duderstadt proposed using this area for a “gateway center” focused on upgraded facilities for undergraduate education. A detailed plan for the site was drawn up to incorporate this program, but before it could be implemented, President Duderstadt announced his retirement. The new president put a hold on the project so that he and VSBA could assess it and determine whether they wanted to proceed with it and, if so, in what form. The first aspect of the project to be altered was the program. President Duderstadt had viewed the area as a gateway to the university, focused on incoming undergraduate students and linking the residential concentration around Palmer Field with the academic core on the central forty acres. But President Bollinger viewed it as an ideal location for a linkage between the Central Campus and the Medical Center—the Life Sciences Institute that had become a major initiative of his new administration. In addition, it appeared to be an excellent location to create an interface between the arts and sciences at the intersection of the two major axes defined by VSBA. This, then, became the programmatic basis for the Palmer Drive complex as detailed planning resumed in early 1999.

The revised program led to changes in the architectural plans for the block. To begin with, since one of the buildings was now to be a heavy-duty laboratory building, vibration isolation became a concern. VSBA recommended that to assure this, the lab building should not be located above the parking structure. In addition, they felt it should be positioned along the science axis that passed diagonally across the site. Therefore, the footprint for the parking structure was revised, and the Life Sciences laboratory building was placed at a different angle than on the previous scheme. The building east of the heating plant became known as the Commons Building and was planned to contain mechanical equipment at the lower levels, commercial services such as dining and shopping at Page 166 → the plaza level, and meeting rooms and other support spaces at the upper levels. In addition, the plaza level would accommodate general pedestrian flow, and at the north, it would connect to a pedestrian bridge over Washtenaw giving access to the Medical Center and the Palmer Field residence halls. On top of the parking structure would be another academic building, the Science Instruction Center (nicknamed the “L Building” for its shape), which would contain primarily classroom and office functions. Together, the L Building and the Life Sciences Lab Building would define a triangular open space on the top level of the parking structure. The final element of the complex would be a performing arts facility (later named the Walgreen Drama Center and resited on the North Campus) that would contain the Arthur Miller Theater—another of President Bollinger’s pet projects. In addition to their role as master planners, VSBA was named as the design architect for the Life Sciences Institute, the parking structure, the Science Instruction Center, and the Palmer Commons Building. As a result, these buildings adhered very strictly to the locations and shapes shown on the precinct plan. VSBA did exert a powerful influence over the design of the entire area, and they deserve much credit for resisting pressures to change critical elements of the plan, such as the location of the pedestrian bridge over Washtenaw (figs. 6.34–36). Page 167 → VSBA studied many aspects of the development of the Central Campus, analyzing the literary college’s overall renovation program, reviewing concepts for renovating Haven and Mason Halls, recommending sites for new buildings for the Law School and the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, suggesting a site for a new residence hall, and so on. But it is clearly in the Palmer Drive zone of the campus—the interface between the Central Campus and the Medical Center—that the firm had its greatest physical impact. That site demanded a large-scale integrated project to maximize the potential of the area and make the development concept work. It required a program linking both sides of Washtenaw Avenue and presenting a strong visual image that would relate harmoniously to the planning and architectural traditions of the Central Campus. In designing the academic buildings, architect Robert Venturi sought to draw on the legacy of Albert Kahn, who had designed many of the buildings on the Central Campus and whose architectural work Venturi admired greatly. Kahn’s science buildings in particular contained many elements that Venturi sought to refer to in his own structure. The VBSA buildings were designed as flexible “loft space” that could be altered and reconfigured to meet the changing requirements of the occupants. In an interview published in the May/June 2005 issue of Preservation Magazine, Denise Scott Brown explained the firm’s approach: “We should think, while designing, of how the building can adapt and accommodate” (26). On the exterior of the buildings, the architect also sought to relate to the legacy of Albert Kahn. But Venturi’s notion of “context” was more complex than a simple replication of the existing buildings, as he explained in the same Preservation Magazine interview. Context—the setting of the building as it affects its exterior design, is all the rage now—and that is valid. But harmony in architecture can derive from contrast as well as analogy. You can wear a gray suit with a gray tie, a gray suit with a red tie, or a gray suit with a gray-and-red striped tie. The idea is to make the new similar in some ways, dissimilar in others. (26) This is the approach Venturi took in the design of the Palmer Drive complex. Elements such as individual punched windows and vertical pilasters, which were characteristic of the Kahn buildings, were also employed in

the Palmer Drive complex. But VSBA used them in a symbolic, rather than literal, way—applying them as decorative elements on a flat facade. This approach to context expressed Venturi’s unique Page 168 → philosophy on designing a contemporary building that sought to relate to the architectural context of the Central Campus. It was a major project and represents VSBA’s most important physical impact on the Michigan campus. At the larger philosophical level, the firm’s influence was far more profound. Their critique of modernism and their identification of many of the shortcomings of the modernist approach ushered in the contextual approach to architectural design, according to which such things as the architectural character of surrounding buildings, the overall design framework of a campus precinct, and the enhancement of overall design harmony were considered legitimate concerns in the design process for a new facility. Since Hugh Jacobsen’s Alumni Center in 1983, this approach, deriving in large measure from the work of VSBA, has been the principal philosophy of the architects and landscape designers who have worked on the Michigan campus. On the issue of campus architecture, the Bollinger/VSBA era had several other results. The first was a reemphasis on architecture as the key element of campus development. Lee Bollinger had made it clear from the outset of his presidency that he was an architecture enthusiast and that he intended to emphasize upgrading the quality of campus architecture as a major goal of his administration. One of the ways he set about to accomplish this was to assume direct personal control of the architectural selection process and to place emphasis on hiring architects with an outstanding national or international reputation. (These firms quickly became known as WFAs, “worldfamous architects,” by the in-house staff.) Since the role of the university architect and university planner in directing the work of retained consultants was sharply diminished, it was up to each individual architect to determine for himself how far he was willing to go in considering campus context in the evolution of individual building designs. Fortunately, the firms selected to date have not been the type that would completely disregard the issue of context. Another goal the president set for his administration was to increase the density of development on the campus. To this end, he instituted a policy of limiting land acquisition to only those parcels needed to accommodate a planned and funded project. He vetoed the acquisition of a number of critical parcels that would clearly be required to accommodate projects that were anticipated but not yet designed. In fact, he even sold off North Campus land that he deemed nonessential. The result was increased pressure on existing land resources, which, in turn, made it more difficult to preserve campus open space and historic structures and landscapes. Other impacts of the Bollinger administration would be felt in the area of campus planning. As the twentieth century drew to a close, major changes in the top level of the university administration were about to take place. Although he had only been president for three years, it was becoming clear that Lee Bollinger was dissatisfied with certain aspects of the Michigan presidency. The word began to spread in the academic world that President Bollinger would be receptive to the offer of a presidency at another prominent institution, and when such an offer came his way, he took it. The Bollinger tenure at Michigan was over; it was one of the shortest in the history of the university. With the departure of Bollinger, the role of VSBA in the master planning of the university campus declined sharply, and the firm was never given the opportunity to complete the work of creating an updated master plan for the Central Campus.

CONCLUSION: THE COMING OF A NEW MILLENNIUM As the twentieth century came to a close, the University of Michigan Central Campus had entered the mature stage of its planning and development, in which all three components of a truly successful campus are present (fig. 6.37). The first of these components is architecture. The campus contains a collection of well-designed academic buildings, many of them the work of some of the nation’s finest architects, including one of the largest collections of buildings by Albert Kahn to be found anywhere, as well as structures by Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Roche and Dinkeloo, York and Sawyer, Gunnar Birkerts, Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Charles Moore, Robert Venturi, and Robert A. M. Stern. Many of the less distinguished buildings that characterized earlier periods of campus development have been either replaced or remodeled and upgraded. While some unattractive buildings remain, they seem to constitute a smaller proportion of the total building stock of the university with each passing year. Page 169 →

Open space and site development comprise the second successful component visible at Michigan. The campus now consists of a series of well-defined and beautifully landscaped open spaces that serve to define and connect the various subareas of the campus. They add beauty and character to the campus and provide continuity and harmony that ties the campus together as a unified whole. Some contain paved plazas; others are soft lawns. The spaces are of various shapes Page 170 → and sizes, and many contain sculpture, fountains, or other focal elements. They flow gracefully from one to another, connected by a continuous and organized pattern of pedestrian walkways that link together the individual buildings and spaces. Together, the architecture and open spaces give character to the Michigan campus as it exists today. The final component of an outstanding campus that Michigan had achieved by the end of the twentieth century is a discernible sense of order. As a result of its long tradition of campus planning, the campus has now reached the point where the buildings are sited in a way that forms clearly defined open spaces joined in an organized way to form a recognizable and logical pattern of campus order. The importance of an orderly campus configuration is perhaps the hardest to understand, but in my view, it is the element that makes the difference between an average campus and an outstanding one. One particularly admirable characteristic of the Michigan campus is the fact that the quality of the Central Campus environment extends from one edge to the other. It is not a campus with a beautiful core area but a lessattractive peripheral area. At Michigan, a quality environment exists on almost all parts of the campus. All of these realities were goals of the master plans created in 1963 and updated in 1987, utilizing the framework approach. This approach remained valid as the university entered the second decade of the twenty-first century, and it can continue to effectively guide the development of the campus for the foreseeable future if the university administration so chooses. The University of Michigan is a complex institution and endeavoring to determine in detail its future evolution is a difficult challenge. What can be predicted with absolute certainty is that it will change. The academic curriculum, research methodology, educational technology, and patterns of student life will all change. The university’s efforts to provide the facilities necessary to accommodate these changes will also lead to changes in the physical environment of the campuses, either through the renovation of existing buildings or the construction of new ones. On Central Campus, where open sites to accommodate new construction are rapidly disappearing, this will force the institution to make some very difficult choices. Some existing buildings or landscaped spaces may have to be sacrificed in order to make way for newer facilities because a significant expansion of the campus landholdings is unlikely. By the beginning of the twenty-first century the campus had developed a mature design form characterized by many fine works of architecture, signature open spaces, and a continuous pattern of buildings and landscaping. In order to avoid serious damage to these important areas in the process of future development it is extremely important that an effective master plan be in place. Whether that plan employs the framework approach that has been effectively in use since 1963 or whether a new approach better suited to the realities of a new century is developed, it is critical that an effective master plan be utilized to guide the future growth of the campus. Without such a plan there is a real risk that an important piece of campus architecture or a signature open space will be sacrificed to the pressure for growth and development. In view of all the effort and money expended to create the quality campus environment we now possess, that would be a tragic outcome. For it is essential that a great university like Michigan possess a physical setting that embodies the same quality of excellence that it has always insisted upon in its academic endeavors. Page 171 →

ANECDOTE: THE CENTRAL CAMPUS HISTORIC DISTRICT In the late 1970s, the University of Michigan made a decision to demolish the old Barbour and Waterman

Gymnasiums to provide the site for a desperately needed expansion of the chemical sciences complex. This decision caused much consternation among the advocates of historic preservation. They protested the decision and investigated possible reuses for the old buildings. Many adaptive reuses were feasible, but technologically sophisticated chemistry laboratories were not among them. The buildings were demolished in 1979. Preservationists, concerned that something similar might happen again, decided to increase awareness of the historic and architectural significance of the Central Campus. The Michigan State Historic Preservation Office prepared an application to establish a Central Campus Historic District and have it included on the National Register of Historic Places. The application was submitted to the federal government and approved in 1978, making the area shown in the figure (right) an officially recognized National Register Historic District. At first, the university regents and administration were hostile to the listing, which had taken place without their cooperation or permission. They feared that it would restrict their flexibility to use their buildings and lands in the best interests of the university. (The listing does not prohibit the demolition of buildings, it simply limits the use of federal funds in conjunction with such a demolition.) With time, as most of the buildings in the district were renovated and modernized, the hostility to the listing was replaced by a growing respect and admiration for the architectural legacy of the Central Campus. When renovation projects were being reviewed, regents such as Thomas Roach and Sarah Power often commented on the importance of respecting the architectural character of a historic building. Today, there appears to be a broad base of support throughout the university community for the concept of preserving the university’s architectural heritage, accompanied by a real pride in the university’s many fine buildings and in the work of a number of world-renowned architects that now graces the campus. Page 172 →

Page 173 →

EPILOGUE In the opinion of this writer the American college and university campus is the finest urban design prototype created in this country. Similar views have been expressed by many others including renowned architect Le Corbusier, who said, “The American campus is a world in itself, a temporary paradise, a gracious stage of life,” and Eero Saarinen, who said, “Universities are the oases of our desert-like civilization. And as the monasteries of the Middle Ages, they are the only beautiful, respectable pedestrian places left.” History has shown that effective physical master planning has played a critical role in the creation of the functional, but at the same time, beautiful and humane environment that is the hallmark of the American campus. The University of Michigan is an outstanding example of this typically American design form with its fine architecture, lovely landscaped open spaces, and synergistic relationship with its host community. And like many other leading American universities its long tradition of effective campus planning has played a pivotal role in the creation of this quality environment. From the very beginning the growth of the Ann Arbor campus has been guided by a series of well-conceived and implementable physical plans. These plans have contributed both order and continuity to the university’s longterm planning process. When periods of unplanned or poorly planned growth did occur, such as the post–Civil War and post–World War II eras, the work of the earlier plans provided a basis on which new plans could build. This has led to a continuity and consistency in the University of Michigan’s long-term planning process that has contributed immeasurably to the creation of the quality environment that we know as the Ann Arbor campus. But it is unrealistic to expect a planning process to Page 174 → be superior to the people responsible for it. Over the years the University of Michigan has been fortunate to have drawn to itself a series of outstanding individuals as regents, executive officers, administrators, staff professionals, and retained professionals. Let us hope this trend continues, for it is upon these individuals that the future effectiveness of campus planning and the future quality and character of the Michigan campus will depend.

A NOTE OF GRATITUDE The author would like to conclude this book by expressing his sincere gratitude to the University of Michigan for giving him the opportunity to participate in shaping the quality and character of the physical environment of the campus of one of the world’s great universities. During my thirty-seven-year tenure at Michigan, I participated in the preparation of master plans for each of the university’s campuses and was also directly involved in the implementation of each of them. I was involved with over one hundred significant building projects including such campus landmarks as the Power Center for the Performing Arts, the Alumni Center, the Allan and Alene Smith Law Library, the Lurie Bell Tower and Lurie Engineering Center, and the Palmer Drive Complex, to mention only a few. In the process, I had the opportunity to work with some of America’s finest architects and landscape architects. During this period of intensive construction, the university significantly increased the square footage of its campus facilities, but at the same time we were able to maintain and enhance the amount of campus open space and to strengthen the sense of order and structure of the campus. We created new open spaces such as the Regents Plaza, the Library South Plaza, the Ingalls Mall, the East University walk, the Monroe walk, the University Hospital courtyard, the North Campus Diag, and many other smaller but equally significant open spaces. We also were able to undertake the renovation, enhancement, or expansion of existing open spaces such as the Diag, the State/North University square, and the extension of the Law Quad across the top of the Smith Law Library. In addition, many existing natural areas were protected and preserved throughout the several campuses of the university. In the course of all this development we were able to utilize both architecture and open space to reinforce, strengthen, and enhance the perceived sense of order so that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus possessed all three hallmarks of a successful campus—quality architecture, a unifying fabric of landscape and open space, and a clearly perceivable sense of campus order.

Of course projects of this nature require the participation of a wide variety of people with a broad array of talents and abilities that all contribute to a successful outcome. Over the years I have been privileged to work with an outstanding group of talented and dedicated people, both retained consultants and university staff, faculty, and regents. Working together from the mid-1960s to the end of the century, we were able to bring about dramatic improvements to the physical character of the university campus. Throughout the course of my career I commented on many occasions that I had the best job in the university, and I was being completely sincere. When I retired in 2003 I could say with complete confidence that I left the campus a better place than it was when I arrived. Few physical planners get the opportunity to say that they have lived to see their dreams carried out. I am one of the lucky ones. It has been a wonderful and rewarding career, and I am truly grateful for it.

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SOURCES The following documentary sources were used in the preparation of this book. Those listed as “primary” were relied on most heavily in the preparation of the chapter concerned. Not all chapters have “primary” sources.

ARCHIVES AND FILES Archives and files consulted include the University of Michigan Archives and the Board of Regents Records at the Bentley Historical Library, files from the University Planners Office and the University Architects Office, bound copies of the Michigan Alumnus, and the archives of the Ann Arbor News. The majority of the University of Michigan plans discussed in this book are available online at the website for the university’s Architecture, Engineering, and Construction division.

REFERENCES Chapter 1 Primary Sources

Marwil, Jonathan L. A History of Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Observer Company, 1987. Peckham, Howard. The Making of the University of Michigan, 1817–1967. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967. 175th anniversary edition, edited and updated by Margaret L. and Nicholas H. Steneck. Ann Arbor: Bentley Historical Library, 1994. Shaw, Wilfred B., ed. The University of Michigan, an Encyclopedic Survey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1942–58. Others

Ferry, W. Hawkins. The Buildings of Detroit. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1968. Reps, John W. The Making of Urban America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965. Chapter 2 Primary Sources

Mayer, Frederick W. Campus Design. Master’s thesis, Cornell University, 1963. Turner, Paul Venable. Campus: An American Planning Tradition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984. Others

Bolotin, Norman, and Christine Lang. The World’s Columbian Exposition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Chapman, M. Perry. American Places. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. Dober, Richard P. Campus Architecture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. Dober, Richard P. Campus Heritage. Ann Arbor: Society for College and University Planning, 2005. Dober, Richard P. Campus Landscape. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000.

Dober, Richard P. Campus Planning. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1963. Dober, Richard P. Old Main. Ann Arbor: Society for College and University Planning, 2006. Gaines, Thomas A. The Campus as a Work of Art. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1991. Gumprecht, Blake. The American College Town. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008. Hegemann, Werner, and Elbert Peets. Civic Art. New York: Architectural Book Publishing, 1922. Klauder, Charles Z., and Herbert C. Wise. College Architecture Page 176 → in America and Its Part in the Development of the Campus. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929. Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. Lynes, Russell. The Tastemakers. New York, 1954. McGaw, Robert A. The Vanderbilt Campus. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1979. Moore, Charles, and Daniel H. Burnham. Architect: Planner of Cities. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921. Olmsted, Frederick Law. “How Not to Establish an Agricultural College.” The Nation, October 25, 1866, pp. 335–36. Olmsted, Vaux, & Co. Report upon a Projected Improvement of the Estate of the College of California at Berkeley near Oakland. San Francisco and New York, 1866. Reps, John W. The Making of Urban America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965. Rybezynski, Witold. A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. Schuyler, Montgomery. “Architecture of American Colleges.” Architectural Record 26–31 (October 1909–May 1912). Silber, John. Architecture of the Absurd. New York: Quantuck Lane Press, 2007. Truman, Ben C. History of the World’s Fair. Chicago, 1893. Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art and Graham Foundation, 1966. Wolfe, Tom. From Bauhaus to Our House. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1981. Chapter 3 Primary Source

Truettner, Julia M. Aspirations for Excellence: Alexander Jackson Davis and the First Campus Plan for the University of Michigan, 1838. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Others

Bennett, Wells. “Building the University of Michigan.” MSS, 1965, Wells Ira Bennett Collection, box 3, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Duderstadt, Anne. The President’s House at the University of Michigan: A Photographic Essay. Ann Arbor:

privately printed, 2000. Farrand, Elizabeth M. History of the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor: Register Publishing House, 1885. Hinsdale, Burke A. History of the University of Michigan, ed. Isaac N. Demmon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1906. Peck, Amelia, ed. Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect, 1803–1892. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Rizzoli International, 1992. Peckham, Howard. The Making of the University of Michigan, 1817–1967. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967. 175 th anniversary edition, edited and updated by Margaret L. and Nicholas H. Steneck. Ann Arbor: Bentley Historical Library, 1994. Shaw, Wilfred B., ed. The University of Michigan, an Encyclopedic Survey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1942–58. White, Andrew D. Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White. New York, 1904. Vaughan, Victor C. A Doctor’s Memories. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926. Whitesell, Patricia S. A Creation of His Own: Tappan’s Detroit Observatory. Ann Arbor: Bentley Historical Library, 1998. Chapter 4 Primary Sources

Bentley Historical Library Archives. University of Michigan. Shaw, Wilfred B., ed. The University of Michigan, an Encyclopedic Survey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1942–58. University Planners Office Files. University of Michigan. Others

Bartlett, Nancy Ruth. More than a Handsome Box. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning, 1995. Duderstadt, Anne. The University of Michigan: A Photographic Saga. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Millennium Project, 2006. Duderstadt, Anne. The University of Michigan College of Engineering: A Photographic History Celebrating 150 Years. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Millennium Project, 2003. Peckham, Howard. The Making of the University of Michigan, 1817–1967. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967. 175th anniversary edition, edited and updated by Margaret L. and Nicholas H. Steneck. Ann Arbor: Bentley Historical Library, 1994. Truettner, Julia M. Aspirations for Excellence: Alexander Jackson Davis and the First Campus Plan for the University of Michigan, 1838. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Page 177 → Chapter 5

Benner, Violet. The Horace B. Rackham School of Graduate Studies. Ann Arbor: Regents of the University of Michigan, 2004. Bentley Historical Library Archives. University of Michigan. Duderstadt, Anne. The University of Michigan: A Photographic Saga. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Millennium Project, 2006. Duderstadt, Anne. The University of Michigan College of Engineering: A Photographic History Celebrating 150 Years. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Millennium Project, 2003. Duderstadt, James J. On the Move. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Millennium Project, 2003. Ferry, W. Hawkins. The Legacy of Albert Kahn. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970. Gram, Lewis M., John C. Christensen, and Walter M. Roth. Postwar Public Works Program for the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1943. Horste, Kathryn. The Michigan Law Quadrangle. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. The International Competition for a New Administration Building for the Chicago Tribune, MSMXXII. Chicago, 1923. Michigan Alumnus, 1900–1950. Olmsted, Frederick Law. Preliminary Report upon the Development of the Northern Portion of the University Property. Brookline, MA, August 1916. Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architects. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Michigan, Supplementary Report upon the Development of the University Property. 1922. Peckham, Howard. The Making of the University of Michigan, 1817–1967. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967. 175th anniversary edition, edited and updated by Margaret L. and Nicholas H. Steneck. Ann Arbor: Bentley Historical Library, 1994. Shaw, Wilfred B., ed. The University of Michigan, an Encyclopedic Survey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1942–58. University Planners Office Files. University of Michigan. Chapter 6 Bentley Historical Library Archives. University of Michigan. Dober, Richard P. Campus Landscape. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000. Forsyth, Ilene. The Uses of Art: Medieval Metaphor in the Michigan Law Quadrangle. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. Gaines, Thomas A. The Campus as a Work of Art. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1991. Michigan Alumnus, 1950–2000. Peckham, Howard. The Making of the University of Michigan, 1817–1967. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967. 175th anniversary edition, edited and updated by Margaret L. and Nicholas H. Steneck. Ann Arbor: Bentley Historical Library, 1994.

“Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.” Preservation May/June 2005, p. 26. Shaw, Wilfred B., ed. The University of Michigan, an Encyclopedic Survey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1942–58. Thomas, George E., and David B. Brownlee. Building America’s First University: An Historical and Architectural Guide to the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. University Planners Office Files. University of Michigan. Venturi, Robert, and Denise Scott Brown. Architecture as Signs and Symbols. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. Reports

Johnson, Johnson, and Roy. Central Campus Planning Study. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1963. Johnson, Johnson, and Roy. Campus Walkways. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1967. Johnson, Johnson, and Roy. Campus Identification Signs. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1967. Johnson, Johnson, and Roy. Central Campus Planning Study 1987 Update. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1987. Johnson, Johnson, and Roy. Diag Renovation Study. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992. Mayer, Frederick W., and Christopher M. Kretovie. Changes in Central Campus Land Use, 1964–1996. Ann Arbor: University Planners Office, 1996. Venturi, Scott Brown, and Associates. Arts/Sciences Axis. June 1998. Venturi, Scott Brown, and Associates. Phase I Overview. February 1998. Epilogue Le Corbusier. When the Cathedrals Were White. New York, 1964. Page 178 →

SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan Figs. 1.2, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 3.5, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.14, 3.15, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, 4.10, 4.11, 4.12, 4.13, 4.14, 4.15, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.11, 5.12, 5.16, 5.17, 5.18, 5.19, 5.20, 5.21, 5.23, 5.24, 5.28, 5.29, 5.31, 5.34, 5.35, 5.38, 6.24, A2.1, A3.1, A4.1, A5.1, A5.2. Richard Rigterink

Figs. 2.4, 2.5, 2.25, 2.27, 5.2, 5.7, 5.9, 5.10, 5.13, 5.14, 5.15, 5.25b, 5.26, 5.32, 5.33, 5.36, 5.37, 6.1, 6.10, 6.14, 6.15, 6.16, 6.18, 6.19, 6.20, 6.26, 6.30, 6.32, 6.34, 6.35, 6.36, 6.37. Johnson, Johnson, and Roy

Figs. 2.26, 3.1, 3.4c, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.13 6.17, 6.21, 6.25, 6.28, 6.33a, 6.33b. Frederick W. Mayer

Figs. 2.1, 2.3, 2.7, 2.12, 2.13, 3.4a, 5.8, 5.27, 6.11. James E. Christman

Figs. 2.6, 3.13. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1924

Figs. 3.2, 3.3. Kenneth Cobb

Fig. 6.27. James Duderstadt

Fig. 3.6. Richard Dober

Fig. A1.1 University of Michigan—Architecture, Engineering, and Construction, University Planner’s Office

Figs. 5.22, 5.25a, 6.12, 6.22. Nina B. Dimitrieva

Figs. 5.13, 6.31. Christopher Campbell, Courtesy of Quinn Evans Architects

Fig. 5.1. Julia M. Truettner

Fig. 1.1. Werner Hegemann and Elbert Peets, Civic Art (New York: The Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1922)

Figs. 2.2, 2.11, 2.14, 2.15, 2.16, 2.19, 2.22, 2.23. Harvard University Archives

Fig. 2.8. Schaffer Library, Union College

Fig. 2.10. Architectural Record, October–December 1894

Fig. 2.21. National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted Historic Site

Fig. 2.20. New England Magazine, 1897

Fig. 2.18. W. W. Clayton, History of Davidson County (1880)

Fig. 2.17. American State Papers, Public Lands Series, vol. 6

Fig. 1.3. Andrew Jackson Downing, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, supplemented by Henry Winthrop Sargent, 8th edition (New York, 1859)

Fig. 2.14. The International Competition for a New Administration Building for the Chicago Tribune, MSMXXII. Chicago, 1923

Fig. 5.30. Page 179 → Page 180 →

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INDEX Adams, Charles Kendall, 64 Albert Kahn Associates, 114, 153, figs. 5.28, 5.32. See also Kahn, Albert Allen, John, 5, 6, 7, fig. 1.4 Andrews, Edmund, 54 Angell, James B., 58, 60, 69 Ann Arbor, City of founding, 5–7 land gift to University of Michigan 1899, 77 lithograph of 1853, fig. 1.6 location for state university, 7, 44–45, fig. 3.1 map of 1836, fig. 1.5 Olmsted plans for, 33, 85 plan of 1824, fig. 1.4 Ann Arbor Land Company, 7, 15, 44, fig. 3.1 Arboretum. See Nichols automobile, impact on planning, 39, 76–77, 130–31 Bates, Henry, 108–9 Beal, Junius, 85, 106 Beaudry, Ken, 138 Beaux Arts campus planning, 33–37, 38, 39, fig., 2.23 era, 31–33 See also Michigan, University of Benard plan. See California-Berkeley, University of Bennett, Wells, 45 Birkerts, Gunnar, 111, 147, fig. 5.26 Bollinger, Lee, 164–66, 168

Bond, Floyd, 146 Brinkerhoff, James, 132, 137, 146, 151 Bulfinch, Charles, 18–19 Bulfinch plan. See Harvard Burges, William, 30–31, fig. 2.18 Burnham, Daniel, 30, 32, 33, 41, 82, 90 Burton, Marion LeRoy, 80, 89, 92–95, 100, 103, 113, 126. See also Michigan, University of: campus master plans Burton Building Boom. See Michigan, University of: campus master plans California-Berkeley, University of, 24, 25, fig. 2.16 Benard plan for, 34 Cambridge University, 12–14, 18, 35 “campus,” defined, 1, 14, 15, 133 campus nomenclature, University of Michigan, 128 campus master plans American campus plan types (see campus plan typologies) Bulfinch plan for Harvard, 18–19, fig. 2.8 First (early) campus plans, 16–17, 34–36 Jefferson plan for University of Virginia, 20–23, fig. 2.11 Ramee plan for Union College, 19–20, fig. 2.10 Trumbull plan for Yale, 17–18, fig. 2.6 University of Michigan plans (see Michigan, University of: campus master plans) campus plan typologies, 21–22, 35 building in a park, 16, 21, 45, 49, fig. 2.3 college, the, 11–12 colonial colleges, 14–16 cottage plan, 25 court/courtyard/open quad, 13, 15, 22, 35 mall/axial mall, 21, 35, fig. 2.11 precedents, Monastic and European, 10–14

quadrangle, American, 12, 18, 22, 29, 35, 109, fig. 2.8 quadrangle, English, 12–13, 14, 18, 19, 30, 111, fig. 2.2 romantic plan, 23–27, 29–30, figs. 2.14, 2.15, 2.16 row, linear/collegiate, 15, 17, 22, 35, 49, 50, 55–56, fig. 3.15 Campus Studio, fig. 2.27 Carpenter Gothic style, 23, 60, 61. See also Gothic architecture cat hole. See Michigan, University of Catholepistemiad, 3, 20, fig. 1.1 Central Park, New York City, 24, 27, fig. 2.15 Chance, Robert, 144 Chicago, University of, 28, 34, 58, 59, 63, fig. 2.21 Chicago Tribune competition, 114, fig. 5.30 City Beautiful era/movement, 22, 33, 59. See also White City Classical architecture/Classical Revival, 23, 36, 59, 98, 129, 144. See also Colonial Revival Clements, William, 83, 85, 89, 93, 106 Committee of Five, 94–95, 97 Cobb, Henry Ives, 35 plan for University of Chicago, fig. 2.21 plan for University of Michigan, 68–71, 72, 79, 101, fig. 4.13 “college,” defined, 14 Collegiate Gothic architecture, 35, 36, 107, 129, 144, 147, fig. 5.9. See also Gothic architecture colonial period/colleges, 14–16, 17 Colonial Revival style, 60, 129. See also Classical architecture Columbian Exposition. See World’s Columbian Exposition Columbia University (King’s College), 14, 15, 16, 34, 35, 63, fig. 2.22 Cook, William W., 107–11 Cooley, Mortimer, 79, 80, 82 Cooley, Thomas M., 64 Cooley memorial fountain. See Michigan, University of: public art

Cope, Walter, 98 Cornell, Ezra, 26, 28 Cornell University, 24, 26, 28, 29, 58 Cousin, M. Victor, 5 Cropsey, Jasper Francis, 53, figs. 3.10, 3.12 Dartmouth College, 14, fig. 2.7 Davis, Alexander Jackson plan for Davidson College, 46 plan for Llewellyn Park, fig. 2.14 plan for New York Agricultural College, 23 plans for University of Michigan, 23, 45–55, 59–60, 64, 87, 89, 101, figs. 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 (see also Michigan, University of: campus master plans) Denham, Virginia, 138 Dergis, Bill, 138 Detroit, City of, 1–5, 7, 9 map of 1830, fig. 1.3 University of Michigan building/college, 3–5, fig. 1.2 University of Michigan founding, 1–3 Ditchy, Clair, 121 Dober, Richard, 130, 155, 162 Donaldson and Meier, 110 Douglass, Silas, 51, fig. 3.13 Downing, Andrew Jackson, 23, 24, 27, fig. 2.14 Duderstadt, James, 152–54, 164 East University Walkway. See Michigan, University of: open space Ecole de Beaux Arts, 33 federal programs Federal Arts Program, 117 G.I. Bill of Rights, 38, 120, 122, 128 Public Works Administration, 37, 117–18

Works Progress Administration, 37, 117–18 Federal style, 23, 48, 50, 59–60 Fleming, Robben W., 145–46 framework approach (to planning), 37–42, 46, 132–33, figs. 2.26, 2.27, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 Fry, Billy, 146 Fry, Lynn, 102, 132, 138 Gaines, Thomas A., 134 Garden Cities Movement, 27 German system of education. See Prussian system G.I. Bill of Rights. See federal programs Glissman, Richard, 138, 151 Gothic architecture/Gothic Revival, 13, 19, 45, 48, Page 182 → 59, 60, 110, fig. 3.2. See also Carpenter Gothic; Collegiate Gothic Gott, Susan, 138 Great Depression, 36, 112, 117 Greco-Roman precedent, 33 Greek Revival style, 23, 51, 59, 60, 144 Gropius, Walter, 37, 38, 130 Hakken, Howard, 138 Hanna, Douglas, 138 Harley Ellington Pierce Yee, 154 Harvard, John, 14 Harvard University, 13–19, 28, 41, 58 buildings of, 15, 18, 59 Bulfinch plan for, 18–19, fig. 2.8 Harvard yard, 15, 18, 82, fig. 2.9 Olmsted plan for, fig. 2.20 Hatcher, Harlan H., 127 Hewitt, Clinton, 161 Hillhouse, James, 17

historic preservation/adaptive reuse, 151, 153 Houghton, Douglass, 54 Hudson River School (of painting), 19, 23, 53, fig. 3.10 Huron River, 6, 44, 91 Hutchins, Harry Burns, 85, 87, 92, 106, 107 Industrial Revolution, 27 Ingalls Mall. See Michigan, University of: open space Illinois, University of, 35, 40 Chicago Circle Campus, 38, fig. 2.25 Illinois Institute of Technology, 38, fig. 2.24 Jacobsen, Hugh Newell, 144, 147, fig. 6.16 Janveja, Jack, 138 Jefferson, Thomas, 3, 20–23, fig. 2.11 Jefferson plan. See Virginia, University of Jenison, Edward, 60, 64 Jenney, William LeBaron, 63 Jensen, Jens, 90 Jernigan, Jerry, 148 Johns Hopkins University, 28, 34, 35, 58 Johnson, Johnson and Roy, 87, 164, fig. 2.26 1963 Central Campus Planning Study, 132 (see also Michigan, University of: campus master plans) 1987 Central Campus Plan Update, 150–51 (see also Michigan, University of: campus master plans) Administration building site design (Regents Plaza), 139 Alumni Center site design, 140 Business School site design, 147–48 Diag design, 158, fig. 6.28 East University Walkway design, 161 Ingalls Mall design, 156, fig. 6.25 Library South Plaza design, 140

JJR. See Johnson, Johnson and Roy Kahn, Albert, 76, 77, 106, 110, 114, 122, 144, 167, figs. 5.2, 5.7, 5.8, 5.10, 5.14, 5.15. See also Albert Kahn Associates Committee of Five, supervising architect, 89, 94, 98, 102, 126 Kasdin, Robert, 164 Kelsey, Francis W., 69, 79, 80, 83, 86, 87, 88 Land-Grant College Act, see Morrill Act Larson, Eric, 31 Latrobe, Benjamin, 21 Le Corbusier, 37, 130, 173 L’Enfant, Charles-Pierre, 3, 27 Little, Clarence Cook, 106–7 Little, Richard, 138 Llewellyn Park, fig. 2.14 Lloyd, Alfred, 88, 106 Lorch, Emil, 97, fig. 5.6 plan for University of Michigan, 80–85, 87, 88, 101, 102, 126, figs. 5.4, 5.5 Luckenbach, Carl, 149. See also Luckenbach/Ziegelman Luckenbach/Ziegelman, 147, figs. 6.17, 6.19, 6.20 Lum, Harpin, 45, 49, 50, 64. See also Michigan, University of: campus master plans: 1840 plan Lynes, Russell, 23, 24 Mason, Stevens T., 5, 48 Mayer, Frederick, 138, 151 McKevitt, John, 132 McKim, Mead and White, fig. 2.22 Michigan, State of, 5, 7, 17, 76 Michigan, University of (UM) architectural character/styles associated with, 59–61, 97–99, 144–45 Beaux Arts campus, 76–78, 120, 121–22 Victorian campus (romantic plans), 59–63

athletic plant, 128 automobile, impact in planning, 130–31 board of regents, 44, 45 committee on campus and buildings, 82, 93 committee on location of buildings, 80, fig. 5.4 legislative requests by, 92–94, 99, 106 botanical gardens, 71, 78, 89, 90 buildings Administration Building (General Services, LSA), 119, 120, 138, 162, fig. 5.36 Alumni Center, 102, 144, 147, 156, 157, 168, fig. 6.16 Alumni Memorial Hall (Museum of Art), 63, 78, 80, 110, fig. 5.3 Anatomical Laboratory, 61, 63, 124 Angell Hall, 60, 63, 98, 113, 119, 153, 154, figs. 5.14, 5.17 Architecture Building (1928, see UM: buildings: Lorch Hall) Art and Architecture, 9 Art Building (not built), 68–69 Assembly Hall, 146 Barbour, Betsy Residence, 85, 105, 110 Barbour Gymnasium, 66, 78, 154, fig. 4.9 Bentley Library, 155 Buildings and Grounds Building, 62, 86 Burnham House, 91 Burton Memorial Tower, 82, 113–16, 122, 146, 150, 156. figs. 5.29, 5.31, 5.32 Business Administration (Business School), 109, 119, 120, 131, 146, 147, 148, 150, 155, figs. 6.17, 6.18 campanile, 101, 113–14, fig. 5.17 (see also UM: buildings: Burton Memorial Tower) Catherine Street Hospitals, 68, 78, 85 Catherine Street Parking Structure, 131, 142 Central Campus Recreation Building, 145, 146 Chemical Lab, 49–50, 53, 59, 62, fig. 3.11, fig. 4.5 (see also UM: buildings: Economics)

Chemistry (Chemical Sciences), 80, 83, 119, 120, 153, 154, fig. 6.23 (see also UM: buildings: Dow Lab) Church Street Parking Structure, 120, 131, 142 Clements Library, 80, 103, 105, 106, 140, fig. 5.22 Commons Building (Palmer Commons), 165, 166 Computer and Executive Education Building, 147 Cook, John P. Dorm, 109 (see also UM: buildings: Law Quad) Cook, Martha Residence, 85, 98, 108, 110, 134, 143, 148, 162 Cook, William, Legal Research Library, 109, 110, 147, figs. 5.25, 5.26 (see also UM: buildings: Law Quad) Couzens Hall, 107, 118 Dana Building (see UM: buildings: West Medical) Dance Building, 145 Dennison (Physics and Astronomy), 105, 140, 141, 150, 154, 161 Dental School (1870s), 61, 62 Dental School (1908), 68 Dental School (1971), 68, 141, 150, 164 Detroit, university building, 3, 4, 5, fig. 1.2 Detroit Observatory, 50, 51, 59, 77, fig. 3.10 Dow Chemistry Lab, 102, 154, fig. 6.23 East Engineering (East Hall), 119, 120, 137, 161 East Medical (C.C. Little), 98, 153, 161, fig. 5.15 East Quadrangle, 118, 119, 120 Economics Building, 134, 148, 149, fig. 4.5 (see also UM: buildings: Chemical Lab) Education, School of, 98, 112 Engineering Building (1891), 62, 63, fig. 4.4 Engineering Shops, 61, 63, 113, fig. 4.8 Executive Residence, 147, 148, fig. 6.18 Fleming Administration Building, 138, 139, 150, fig. 6.9 Fletcher Street Parking Structure, 164 Food Stores, 120

Football Stadium, 107 Ford Library, 155 Gateway Center (not built), 164 General Services (see UM: buildings: Administration Hatcher Graduate Library (1920, New Library), 98, 140, 150, 154, fig. 6.10 Haven Hall (1933, see UM: buildings: Law Building) Haven Hall (1952), 119, 150, 167 Health Service, 86, 117, 118, 144, 153 Heating Plant (1879, Boilerhouse), 61, 124 Heating Plant (1914, Power Plant, Central Power Plant), 85, 86, 118, 125 Hill Area Dorm Complex, 131, 146, 164 Hill Auditorium, 82, 85, 97, 98, 102, 106, 112, 114, 122, 146, 156, 157, figs. 5.6, 5.7, 5.28 Hill Street Parking Structure, 147 Homeopathic Hospital, 62, 68, 77, fig. 4.3 Hospitals (1891, see UM: buildings: Catherine Street) Page 183 → Hutchins Hall, 109, 111 (see also UM: buildings: Law Quad) Institute for Social Research, 140, 143 Internes’ Residence, 118 Intramural Sports Building, 98, 107 Kellogg Institute for Dentistry, 118, 144 Kelsey Museum (see UM: buildings: Newberry Hall) Kraus Building (see UM: buildings: Natural Science) Kresge Business Library, 147, 154 Laundry, 85, 86 Law Building (1863, Haven Hall, 1933), 49, 50, 59, 60, 63, 64, 69, figs. 3.15, 4.1 Law Quad, 98, 106, 107–11, 122, 134, 140, 147, 148, 162, figs. 5.24, 5.25, 5.26, 5.27 Lawyers’ Club and Dormitory, 108–9 (see also UM: buildings: Law Quad) Legal Research Library (see UM: buildings: Cook, William)

Library, General (1883), 61, 63, 64, 65, 69, 80, 113, fig. 4.7 Library, General (1920, see UM: buildings: Hatcher) Life Sciences Institute, 145, 165–66 Literary College (see UM: buildings: Angell Hall) Little, C. C. Building (see UM: buildings: East Medical) Lloyd, Alice Residence Hall, 120, 121, 150, fig. 5.37 Lorch Hall (1928, Architecture Building), 98, 106, 107, 109, 112, 148, 149, 153 Markley Hall, 120, 131 Mason Hall (1841, see UM: buildings: North Wing) Mason Hall (1952), 119, 167 Medical Building, 49, 50, 51, 59, 63, 66, 124, fig. 3.9 Michigan League, 82, 102, 106, 107, 111, 114, 117, 118, 153, 162 Michigan Union, 85, 98, 106, 110, 118, 138, 162, fig. 5.9 Modern Languages Building, 102, 114, 141, 146, 156 Mosher-Jordan Residence Hall, 112, 118 Museum Building (1880), 50, 61, 63, fig. 4.6 Museum Building (1928, see UM: buildings: Ruthven) Museum of Art (see UM: buildings: Alumni Memorial Hall) Music Building (not built), 114–15, fig. 5.28 Natural Science (Kraus) 80, 82, 83, 85, 98, 122, 153, fig. 5.8 Neuropsychiatric Institute, 118 Newberry, Helen Residence, 85, 105, 110 Newberry Hall (Kelsey Museum), 112–13, 153 North Quad, 145 North Wing (1841, Mason Hall), 49, 50, 59, 60, figs. 3.8, 4.2 Palmer Commons (see UM: buildings: Commons) Palmer Drive Area, 165–67, figs. 6.33, 6.34, 6.35 Palmer Parking Structure (Life Sciences Structure), 166 Paton Accounting Center, 145, 146

Pavilion Hospital (see UM: buildings: University Hospital, 1869) Pharmacy Building, 120, 154 Physics (1889, see UM: buildings: West Physics) Physics and Astronomy (see UM: buildings: Dennison) Power Center for the Performing Arts, 124, 141, 146, fig. 6.12 Power Plant (1914, see UM: buildings: Heating Plant) President’s House, 48, 64, 140, fig. 3.6 Professors’ Houses, 48, 50, 61, figs. 3.5, 3.6, 4.3, 4.4 Rackham, 105, 113, 116, 122, 162, fig. 5.33 Randall Laboratory, 98, 124, 134, 145, 150, 153, 154, 158, 161, fig. 6.20 Reader Environmental Interpretive Center, 91 Regents Field, 68, 78 Ruthven Museums building, 98, 106, 107, 111, 162 Science Instruction Center, 166 Shapiro Library (Undergraduate Library, UGLI), 120, 140, 145, 149, 150, 153–54, 158, fig. 6.22 Simpson Memorial Institute, 106, 107 Smith, Allan and Alene Library, 109, 147, fig. 5.26 (see also UM: buildings: Law Quad) Social Work, School of, 145, 155 South College, 50, 59, 60, fig. 3.8, fig. 4.2 South Quadrangle, 119, 131, 150 Stockwell Hall, 118 Student Activities Building, 153 Student Publications, 112 Tappan Hall, 61, 66, 69, 145, 149, figs. 4.10, 6.19 Thayer Street Parking Structure, 131 Thompson Parking Structure, 142 Theatre Building (not built), 86, 87, 88, 92 Tisch Hall, 154 Undergraduate Library (see UM: buildings: Shapiro)

University Building (University Hall), 49, 50, 59, 60, 63, 64, fig. 4.2 University Hospital (Pavilion Hospital, 1869), 61, 62, fig. 4.3 University Hospital (1925), 85, 88, 92, 98 University Terrace, 120 Vaughan House, Victor, 117 Walgreen Drama Center, 166 Waterman Gymnasium, 61, 63, 66, 154, fig. 4.9 Weill Hall, 145 West Engineering (West Hall), 71, 78, 80, 89, 134, 140, 153, 161, fig. 5.2 West Medical (Dana), 78, 161, fig. 5.1 West Physics, 61, 63, 80, 140 West Quadrangle, 118 Women’s Athletic Building, 107 Wyly, Sam Hall, 148, 155 Yost Field House, 98, 107 Buildings and Grounds Department, 92, 93, 97 Burton Building Boom (see UM: campus master plans) “campus” designation, 128 campus landscape, 53–55, 71–72, 103–6, 122–23, fig, 4.14 planting plan 1850, fig. 3.13 (see also UM: campus master plans; White, Andrew Dickson) campus master plans, 179 (table 1) 1838 Davis plan, 45–49, 53, figs. 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 1840 plan, 45, 49–50, 55, 59, 61, 64, 66, 73, figs. 3.7, 3.15, 4.11 1898 Cobb plan, 68–71, 79, figs. 4.12, 4.13 1907 Lorch plan, 80–85, figs. 5.5, 5.6 1916/1922 Olmsted plans, 33, 85–89, fig. 5.11 1920s Burton Building Boom and 1921 plans, 47, 85, 92–97, 99–102, 106–7, 109, 119–21, 123, figs. 3.4, 5.16, 5.23 Committee of Five, 89, 94–95, 97, 106, 126

Comprehensive Building Program, 85, 88, 93–102, 106 site for Burton Memorial Tower, 113–15, fig. 5.29 site for Rackham building, 116, fig. 5.33 1943 Post War Development Plan, 118–22, 131, fig. 5.35 1963 Central Campus Planning Study, 40, 132–41, 156, 162, figs. 2.26, 6.1–6.8, 6.13, 6.33 1987 Central Campus Plan Update, 47, 150–52, figs. 3.4, 6.21, 6.33 1998 VSBA plans, 164–68, fig. 6.33 cat hole, 74–75, 85, 87, 88, 92 Central Campus, 131, fig. 6.37 1963, 1987 plans (see UM: campus master plans) connections/link with Medical Center, 87, 88, 103, 114, 165 defined, 128 Central Campus Historic District, 171 central forty acres, 63–64, 77, 128, figs. 3.12, 5.34 (see also UM: open space: Diag) expansion beyond, 68, 131 selection of for campus site, 44–45, fig. 3.1 Committee of Five (see UM: campus master plans: 1920s Burton) Comprehensive Building Program (see UM: campus master plans: 1920s Burton) Diag (see UM: open space) Duderstadt building program, 152–55 early history, 1–8 Ann Arbor, relocation to, 5–8, 15 Ann Arbor, site for, 44, fig. 3.1 board of trustees, 3 branches, 5, 45, 48 first buildings, 48–50 first plans for Ann Arbor site, 44–47, 59–60 founding in Detroit, 1–5 hospital area, 128

in-house professional staff, 102, 127, 137–38, 144, 164 Medical Center, fig. 6.37 connection/link with Central Campus, 87, 88, 102, 103, 114, 146, 165 defined, 128 North Campus, 146 defined, 128 planning for, 132 open spaces/plazas (see also UM: campus landscape; UM: buildings: Law Quad) Alessi courtyard, 147 Page 184 → Business School courtyard, 48 Diag, 65, 70, 80, 82, 83, 102, 103, 134, 149, fig. 3.14 renovation of, 158–61, figs. 6.28, 6.29 East University Walkway, 102, 161–62, figs. 6.30, 6.31 Felch Park, fig. 6.12 Ingalls Mall, 70, 80, 82, 83, 116, 141, 144, 156–58, figs. 5.6, 5.8, 5.10, 5.29, 6.24, 6.25, 6.26, 6.27 Library South Plaza, 140, fig. 6.10 Martha Cook yard, 134, 148 McDivitt-White Plaza, 161 Palmer Field (women’s playing field), 85, 103, 107, 118, 121, 134, 165, fig. 5.37 Regents Plaza, 140, figs. 6.7, 6.15 parking/parking decks, 131, 134–35, 142, 151, fig. 6.13 Plant Extension, 102, 127 public art, 73, 117, 134–35, 143, 162–63, figs. 6.15, 6.32 Ben Franklin statue, 57, 73, 162 Milles, Carl, Sunday Morning in Deep Waters, Cooley Memorial Fountain, 147, 157, 162, fig. 6.32 Professors’ Monument, 43, 53, 72, 162 Rosenthal, Bernard (Tony), Cube, 139, 143, 162, figs. 6.9, 6.15, 6.32 Suttman, Paul, Lady of the Garden, 143, fig. 6.15

street closures/vacations, 105, 147, 148, 151, 156, 161 superintendent of buildings and grounds, 102, 126 vehicular circulation/traffic, 141–42 World War influences, 37, 38, 92, 118, 129 See also Kahn, Albert; Burton, Marion LeRoy; Pitkin and Mott Michigan Territory, 2, 3, 5, 7. See also Michigan, State of Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 37, 38, 130, fig. 2.24 Mills, John, 21 Minnesota, University of, 35, fig. 2.23 modern architecture (modernist movement, modernism), 37–42, 110, 113, 121, 122, 129–30, 144, 147, 50, 168, fig. 5.36 Montieth, John, 2, 3, 4 Morrill Act, 28 “multiversity” campus, 38 Napoleonic model, 5 neo-traditional town planning, 40 Newcombe, Frederick C., 89 new urbanism, 40 Nichols Arboretum, 89–91, figs. 5.12, 5.13 Northwest Ordinance, 2, 17 Olmsted, Frederick Law Jr., 85 Olmsted, Frederick Law Sr., 24–26, 28–29, 32, 90, figs. 2.15, 2.16. See also Olmsted Brothers Olmsted Brothers, 85–89, 92, 101, 102, 103, figs. 2.20, 5.11. See also Olmsted, Frederick Law Sr. Oxford University, 12, 14, 35, figs. 2.1, 2.2 Palmer, Thomas, 33 Palmer Field. See Michigan, University of: open space Pangburn, Bob, 138 Pardon, Edward C., 92, 102, 126 Peckham, Howard, 127, 153 Pennsylvania, University of, 14, 34, 98, 150

Pettibone, D. A., 49, fig. 3.7 Piano, Renzo, 110 Pierce, John D., 5, 44, 46, 48 Pierpont, Wilbur, 127, 131, 132, 137 Pitkin and Mott, 87, 106, 120, 123, figs. 5.21, 5.23 Clements Library landscape plan, 103, 105, fig. 5.22 Law Quad landscape plan, 109 Palmer Field landscape plan, 112 Rackham building landscape plan, 116 Pond and Pond, 106, 110, fig. 5.9 post-modernism, 40 Princeton University (College of New Jersey), 14–15, 26, 58, 59, 144 architectural style, 35–36 buildings of, 15, fig. 2.13 Professors’ Monument. See Michigan, University of: public art Prussian system of education, 5, 50, 58 public art. See Michigan, University of: public art Public Works Administration. See federal programs Ramee, Jacques Joseph, 19–20 Ramee plan. See Union College Reed College, 35, fig. 2.23 Reps, John, 33 Rice University, 34, 35, fig. 2.23 Richard, Gabriel, 2, 4, 5 Roche and Dinkeloo, 141, fig. 6.12 Romanesque Revival style, 61, 63, 65, 66, 98, 109, 113, 144 Romantic plan, 23–26, figs. 2.14, 2.15 Rosenthal, Bernard (Tony), Cube sculpture. See Michigan, University of: public art Rummel, Richard, 55, 71, 72, fig. 4.15

Rumsey, Elisha, 5, 6, 7, fig. 1.4 Rutgers University (Queen’s College), 14, 15, 16, fig. 2.3 Ruthven, Alexander Grant, 112 Saarinen, Eero, 173 Saarinen, Eliel, 113–14, 144, figs. 5.29, 5.30, 5.31, 5.32 Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 32 Schlaff, Thomas, 138 Schuyler, Montgomery, 59 Scott Brown, Denise, 167 Selim, Georges, 144 Shapiro, Harold T., 146, 151 Shaw, Wilfred, 49, 53, 79, 113 Shepard, John, 85, 88, 89, 99 Committee of Five, supervisor of plans, 94–95, 97, 102, 126 Sherman, Douglas R., 145 Simonds, Ossian Cole, 90–91, figs. 5.12, 5.13 Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, fig. 2.25 Smith, Allan F., 145—146 Smith, Shirley, 94, 106, 113 Smith, Hinchman and Grylls, 116, fig. 5.33 Spier and Rohns, 66 Spradlin, Paul, 138, 156 Stadetbau movement, 27 Stanford University, 24, 25, 34, 35, 58, 59, 63, 144 St. Antoine, Theodore, 147 Steneck, Margaret and Nicholas, 127, 153 Sturgis, William, 151 Suttman, Paul, Lady of the Garden sculpture. See Michigan, University of: public art Tappan, Henry Philip, 1, 28, 50, 51, 58

Tarapchak, Judy, 138 Tealdi, Aubrey, 90 Telfer, John, 132, 138 Thomas, George, 98, 150 Thomson, Isaac, 49 Thornton, William, 21 Town, Ithiel, 48, 49 Town and Davis, 48 Trinity College, 13, 30–31, fig. 2.18 Truettner, Julia, 46, 60 Trumbull, John, 17 Trumbull plan. See Yale University Turner, Paul V., 19, 38 UM. See Michigan, University of Union College, 19, 59, 63 Ramee plan for, 19–20, fig. 2.10 “university,” defined, 3, 14 buildings at, 12 functions assigned to, 11 Van Brunt, Henry, 64 Van Brunt and Howe, 64 Vanderbilt University, 34, fig. 2.17 van Sweden, James, 91 Vaughan, Victor, 71 Vaux, Calvert, 23–24 Venturi, Robert, 40, 150, 167 Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, 87, 127, 164–68, fig. 6.33 Victorian era, 27–31. See also Michigan, University of Virginia, University of, 63, fig. 2.12

academical village, 20 Jefferson plan for, 20–23, 59, fig. 2.11 Wanty, Ken, 138, 151 Ware and Van Brunt, 64 Washington, D.C., 3, 27 Washington, University of, 34, 35, fig. 2.23 Weidenbach, Jack, 138 Whitaker, Gilbert, 147, 155 White, Andrew Dickson, 58, 65, 113 tree planting, University of Michigan, 1, 54–55, 71, 73, 133, fig. 4.14 White, Joseph, 155 White City, 31–32. See also City Beautiful; World’s Columbian Exposition Whitesell, Patricia, 51 William and Mary, College of, 14, 15, 16, 17, fig. 2.4, 2.5 Wolfe, Thomas, 40, 150 Womack, Farris, 137, 156 Woodward, Augustus, 3, 4, 5, 20 Works Progress Administration. See federal programs World’s Columbian Exposition, 31–33, 59, 68, fig. 2.19 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 37, 90, 130 Yale University, 14–15, 28, 58, 59 row plan, 15, 17, 49 Trumbull plan for, 17–18, 21, 49, fig. 2.6 York and Sawyer, 108, 110, 144