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Cornell West Campus

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West Campus is a residential section of Cornell University's Ithaca, New York campus located east of Library Slope and between the Fall Creek gorge and the Cascadilla gorge. It primarily houses upperclassmen. West Campus is currently part of a residential initiative which will result in the adoption of a residential college housing system. By 2009, the revamped West Campus will be organized into five residential colleges.

File:Wc 201021.jpg
West Campus at the end of the West Campus housing initiative

History

Grand Terrace

The 1920s Plans to Expand the Gothics

After Risley Hall was designed as a women's residence hall in 1911, work began on the construction of a men's residence hall complex on West Campus. In 1910, Warren Hanning's campus plan had established the site for new halls in the English collegiate gothic style. Trustees George Charles Boldt, Andrew Dickson White, and Robert Henry Treman led a subscription campaign. The site was designed by architect Ralph Adams Cram, who had recently completed the Graduate School at Princeton University. Architectural firm Day & Klauder designed multiple buildings, each housing between 16 and 30 men. Founders Hall was built in 1914 and South Baker Hall was built in 1915.

The War Memorial

In the 1920s, West Campus was envisioned as fully Gothic in style, connected to Frederick Law Olmsted's plan of a grand terrace overlooking Lake Cayuga. Rhode Island architect F. Ellis Jackson, class of 1900, expanded this plan to include a memorial to the 264 Cornellians who had died in the First World War. The World War I Memorial group has twin Army and Navy towers with Lyon Hall to the north and McFaddin Hall to the south, both built in 1928. Mennen Hall was built in 1931. Names of those who served are inscribed on plaques between unglazed tracery windows in the cloister. Over the windows are names of battles in which they fought. The names of individual and group donors toward the construction of the halls are inscribed in the tower rooms, Lyon Hall, and over the buildings' entries. The first floor of the War Memorial includes an elaborately decorated octagonal memorial room to the war dead, including a painting by Alison Mason Kingsbury. The upper three floors were designed as the meeting rooms and apartments for the Quill and Dagger honorary society.[1]

Although portions of West Campus were built in the Gothic style, the grand terrace plan was ultimately scrapped. Six dormitories were built in 1953 to accommodate the post-World War II expansion in enrollment. These six brick dormitories were called the "University Halls" to distinguish them from the gothic "Baker Dormitories." In the 1970s and 1980s, five of the individual University Halls were named in honor of various alumni classes which had achieved large donation records. The original Noyes Community Center, which offered dining, recreation and other services to residents of the campus, was constructed in 1966.

West Campus Initiative

In 1999, then-Cornell president Hunter R. Rawlings III announced a new West Campus Initiative to rebuild large parts of West Campus. With an initial $100 million donation, the project aimed to create a residential college system on West Campus. Furthermore, a new Noyes Recreational Community Center was also proposed to replace the current community center. The targeted completion date of the project is August 2009.

Residences

House system

File:BeckerHouse.jpg
Carl Becker House

As part of the Residential Initiative, the house system aims to create smaller communities enhanced by a relaxed atmosphere to supplement students' academic pursuits. Each residential college is housed in a newly-built main building, and three colleges include surrounding Gothic-styled buildings. Within each main building, each college has its own dining hall. Rooms are divided into hallway-style arrangements and suite-style arrangements. All residents must enroll in the House Choice meal plan, which allows them unlimited meals in their own house dining hall, but limits the number of meals they may take elsewhere. This is similar to the Risley meal plan which has been in effect since 1971.

File:Bethecommon room.jpg
Cook House Common Room

The house system is comprised of:

Gothic Halls

Gothics

The Gothic Halls is a group of nine residence halls on West Campus. The halls are recognizable by their ivy-covered stone walls of local bluestone trimmed in Indiana limestone, reflecting the late Gothic architectural style of Oxford and Cambridge. All nine were named The Baker Dormitories in honor of George Fisher Baker, a New York City banker.

As the West Campus house system is completed, all of the Gothics will become affiliated with house communities. Boldt Tower, Boldt Hall (Language House), Baker Tower, and North Baker Hall are now part of Alice Cook House. McFaddin Hall will be part of the Hans Bethe House. The others, South Baker Hall, Founders Hall, Mennen Hall, and Lyon Hall, will be part of House 5.

Boldt Hall

The halls are currently coeducational except for Lyon Hall (women only) and Boldt Tower (men only), but they are all open only to upperclassmen. Lyon Hall also houses the permanent sanctuary of the Quill and Dagger senior honor society and a war memorial shrine. The rooms are singles or doubles arranged in suites and apartments. The facilities include laundry, kitchens, computer networking, study lounges, and TV/social lounges. Some annual events include drive-in movies on the Tower, Fall trips to hike the gorges, sea kayaking on Cayuga Lake, go-karting, a Winter Semi-formal, a Mardi Gras celebration, trips to the Late Show with David Letterman and an end of the year barbecue.

Class Halls

Class of '18 Hall

Originally known as the University Halls or U-Halls, the Class Halls were originally all-male dormitories built on West Campus in 1953. They were designed by Champman, Evans & Delenhanty and Quinlivan, Pierik & Krause.[2] Although officially denied by Cornell, some claim that when constructed, they were intended to be temporary housing (as evidenced, for example, by the transitory fiberglass showers) until better structures could be built. The six halls are named for Elmer Sperry (the inventor of the gyroscope)[3] and the Cornell graduating classes of 1917, 1918, 1922, 1926, and 1928.

In 1987, these buildings were gutted and the original aluminum-framed windows replaced with dark-brown metal casings. More study spaces and kitchens were added, and the capacity of each University Hall was reduced.[4]

In 1885, Andrew Dickson White's final presidential report warned the University of the day when "all be hard and dry, [the University]'s buildings mere boxes." Such a description is apt to describe the Class Halls. All were built in a similar box-like fashion, lacking individualizing characteristics and architectural complexity. The interiors were indisguinshable from each other, as well. Although not as clear with the addition of the Noyes Community Center, the Class Halls formed a quadrangle arranged symmetrically along an axis formed by the War Memorial. The Transfer Center, one of two West Campus Program Houses resides in the Class of 1917 Hall. This Program House established in 1977 will be dissolved in May 2007 when the building is torn down. Between 2003 and 2007, the halls are being demolished in favor of larger residential colleges as part of former president Hunter R. Rawlings III's "West Campus Housing Initiative." For many years Sperry Hall (University Hall #6) was also a Program House. The Class of 1926 Hall housed the Just About Music (JAM) Program House.

Of the original group, the halls which remain today are:

  • Class of 1917 Hall (Transfer Center) (to be replaced by House 5)
  • Class of 1918 Hall (to be replaced by House 4)
  • Class of 1926 Hall (to be replaced by House 4)

Housing selection process

Cascadilla Hall, Cornell's Collegetown Dormitory

Whereas first-year housing on North Campus is guaranteed for rising underclassmen at Cornell, upperclassmen housing is more complex. Sophomores are guaranteed housing, but seniors and juniors are not. A lottery system is used to randomly allow students who apply to select their residences for the next year. For the residential college dorms, an in-house lottery of current upperclassmen is used to allocate a fixed number of rooms for rising juniors and seniors. Next, the remaining rooms are applied for. The number of senior and junior slots in this pool are determined by the total number of open rooms on West Campus, minus the number of sophomores who applied for West Campus housing. Then, in order of senior to sophomore, the applicants are allowed to select their rooms for the next academic year. Furthermore, students are allowed to block, so that up to five applicants may select adjacent rooms at the same time.

Small Living Units

West Campus includes a number of other student residential structures, many of which are owned by Cornell. These include (from North to South):

  • Alpha Sigma Phi (Rockledge)
  • Sigma Nu
  • Sigma Alpha Epsilon
  • Phi Gamma Delta (The Oaks)
  • Alpha Delta Phi
  • Chi Psi
  • Alpha Tau Omega
  • Watermargin (coed cooperative)
  • Theta Delta Chi
  • Omega Tau Sigma
  • Kappa Sigma
  • Phi Sigma Kappa
  • Sigma Pi
  • 725 and 625 University Ave.
  • Von Cramm Hall
  • Cayuga Lodge
  • Delta Phi (Llenroc - Ezra Cornell's mansion)
  • Phi Kappa Psi
  • Psi Upsilon
  • Sigma Phi
  • Telluride House (coed cooperative)
  • Delta Tau Delta
  • Delta Chi
  • Delta Upsilon
  • Algonquin Lodge
  • Kappa Alpha Theta
  • Pi Kappa Alpha
  • Delta Kappa Epsilon
  • Young Israel
  • 112 Edgemoor Lane
  • Chi Phi
  • Lamda Chi Alpha

Other Buildings

West Campus is served by the Noyes Community Center (formerly the Noyes Student Union) located on Stewart Ave. centered on the axis of the War Memorial.[5] This building is being demolished and has been replaced with the new Noyes Community Recreation Center, which provides indoor athletic facilities located on Campus Road. Academic buildings include: the Kahin Center (1902) designed by William Henry Miller.[6]

Parking

The inadequacy of parking has been the source of controversy and litigation. Alice Cook House was built on the main West Campus parking lot. The University sought to replace the lost parking spaces by paving over the Redbud Woods, located on the gardens of the Treman estate. Conservation advocates sought to protect the area as a Historic District. Nonetheless, after much litigation and protests, the University paved the woods as a dormitory parking lot.[7]

  1. ^ http://www.fs.cornell.edu/fs/facinfo/fs_facilInfo.cfm?facil_cd=3013
  2. ^ http://www.fs.cornell.edu/fs/facinfo/fs_facilInfo.cfm?facil_cd=3089
  3. ^ http://ezra.cornell.edu/posting.php?timestamp=803188800
  4. ^ http://www.fs.cornell.edu/fs/facinfo/fs_facilInfo.cfm?facil_cd=3089 visited 2007-01-07
  5. ^ http://www.fs.cornell.edu/fs/facinfo/fs_facilInfo.cfm?facil_cd=3029
  6. ^ http://www.fs.cornell.edu/fs/facinfo/fs_facilInfo.cfm?facil_cd=4736 retrieve 2007-01-09
  7. ^ http://www.redbudwoods.org/story.html retrieved 2007-01-08
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