Collegiate Gothic

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

19th century

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. 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

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.

Architects of the Collegiate Gothic style

James Gamble Rogers — Montgomery Ward Memorial Building (1927), the Northwestern University Medical School.

• Julian Abele — African American architect, chief designer (1920s-1950) of the Horace Trumbauer firm
• Cope & Stewardson
• Ralph Adams Cram
• William Augustus Edwards
• Philip H. Frohman
• Guilbert and Betelle
• Charles Klauder
• Pond and Pond
• James Gamble Rogers
• Horace Trumbauer
• David Webster
• York and Sawyer

Examples

Quadrangle Dormitories, University of Pennsylvania (1895)

The Mitchell Tower, University of Chicago (left) — modeled after the Magdalen Tower, Oxford (right).

Suzzallo Library (1926), University of Washington in Seattle.

File:Keatinghall.jpg

Keating Hall (1936) on Rose Hill Campus, Fordham University.

• Altgeld's castles — a set of buildings within five Illinois universities (1896–1899)
• Boston College — specifically Gasson Hall, Devlin Hall, St. Mary's Hall, and Bapst/Burns Library
• Bryn Mawr College — Pembroke Hall (1894)
• Carleton College
• Central Commerce Collegiate, Toronto
• Central Technical School, Toronto
• City College of New York
• Cornell University
• Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute, Toronto
• Duke University — Duke Chapel (1930), and West Campus, arch. Julian Abele.
• Eastern Commerce Collegiate Institute, Toronto, Canada
• Emma Willard School
• Florida A&M University
• Florida State University
• Fordham University
• Grinnell College
• Indiana University-Bloomington
• Isaac E. Young Middle School, New Rochelle, New York
• John Carroll University
• [John Marshall High School, Los Angeles, California
• Lehigh University
• Loyola University Maryland
• Loyola University New Orleans — Marquette Hall (1910)
• The Mary Louis Academy
• McGill University, Montreal, Canada
• McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
• Michigan State University
• New Jersey Institute of Technology — Central King Building, the old Central High School of Newark (1911)
• Northwestern University
• Northwest Missouri State University — Administration Building
• Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia
• Princeton University — Blair Hall (1896)
• Reed College, Oregon
• Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee
• Purdue University
• Sewanee—The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee
• Trinity College, Connecticut
• University of Arkansas
• University of Chicago
• University of Denver
• University of Florida
• University of Idaho
• University of Michigan — U of M Law School (1924)
• University of Oklahoma
• University of Pennsylvania — Quadrangle Dormitories (1895)
• University of Richmond, Virginia
• University of Saskatchewan, Canada
• University of St. Thomas, Minnesota
• University of Toledo — University Hall and Memorial Field House, Ohio
• University of Toronto — St. George campus, Canada
• University of Washington in Seattle — Suzzallo Library (1926)
• Washington University in St. Louis — Brookings Hall (1900), and the Danforth Campus
• The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
• West Chester University
• Yale University — Sterling Memorial Library, Harkness Tower, and the Memorial Quadrangle; arch. James Gamble Rogers.

See also

• Gothic architecture
• Gothic Revival architecture
  • Late Gothic Revival
  • Carpenter Gothic
• Hokie Stone — exclusive to Virginia Tech's Collegiate Gothic (and other styles) building façades.