Collegiate Gothic in North America

Brookings Hall at
Washington University in St. Louis

Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the 19th and 20th centuries for school structures on campuses in the United States and Canada.

History [edit]

19th century [edit]

The beginnings of Collegiate Gothic architecture in North America date back to 1829 when 'Old Kenyon' was completed on the campus of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

Later, in 1878, Seabury and Jarvis Halls were completed on the campus of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Together with Northam Towers there, these buildings make up what is known as the "Long Walk". Built to plans drawn up by William Burges, these buildings remain among the best examples of Collegiate Gothic architecture in the United States.

In 1894 Cope & Stewardson completed Pembroke Hall on the campus of Bryn Mawr College. At Bryn Mawr, Cope & Stewardson combined the original Gothic architecture of Oxford and Cambridge Universities with the American Early Gothic Revival style and the local New England landscape, to establish the Collegiate Gothic style.^[1] Commissions shortly followed for buildings on the campuses of the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Washington University in St. Louis, marking the nascent beginnings of a movement that transformed many college campuses across the country.

Harkness Tower, Yale University.

20th century [edit]

The Collegiate Gothic movement gained further momentum when Charles Donagh Maginnis designed Gasson Hall at Boston College in 1908. Publication of its design in 1909, and praise from influential American architect Ralph Adams Cram, helped establish Collegiate Gothic as the prevailing architectural style on American university campuses for decades. Maginnis & Walsh went on to design buildings at some twenty-five other campuses, including the main buildings at Emmanuel College (Massachusetts), and the law school at the University of Notre Dame.

Boston College's Gasson Hall is credited for establishing the typology of dominant Gothic towers in subsequent campus designs, including those at Princeton (Cleveland Tower, 1913–1917), Yale (Harkness Tower, 1917–1921), and Duke (Chapel Tower, 1930–1935).

Architect James Gamble Rogers' extensive work at Yale University, beginning in 1917, may be the prototypical example of the genre. His designs lent an air of instant heritage and gravitas to the campus. Rogers was criticized by other prominent American Gothic Revival architects, namely Cram, for his use of steel frames underneath stone cladding, and tricks such as splashing acid on stone walls to simulate age. Rogers was also criticized by the growing Modernist movement of the time. The 1927 Sterling Memorial Library came under especially vocal attack from Yale students for its historicist spirit and its lavish use of ornament.

Other notable examples of Collegiate Gothic include Charles Klauder's steel-frame skyscraper on the University of Pittsburgh's campus, the Cathedral of Learning, and the extensive and consistent collection of designs at the University of Chicago.

The style was also frequently used to design high schools and even elementary school buildings.