The University of Iowa Guide to Campus Architecture
294
The University of Iowa Guide to Campus Architecture
294eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781587297625 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Iowa Press |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2006 |
| Series: | Bur Oak Guide |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 294 |
| File size: | 11 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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The University of Iowa Guide to Campus Architecture
By JOHN BELDON SCOTT RODNEY P. LEHNERTZ CAROLINE CASEY
University of Iowa Press Copyright © 2006 University of Iowa Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87745-990-3
Chapter One Pentacrest
In its first decades, the University of Iowa grew up according to the needs of students and the demands of building an institution of higher learning in what was still, in many ways, a frontier town. Italianate and Second Empire style brick buildings sprang up next to the state's original capitol building, mostly on a north-south axis. As the nineteenth century came to a close, the decision to construct a major new Classical building adjacent to Old Capitol made a decisive break with that tradition, initiating a new era of campus planning that took shape over the span of a quarter of a century and the administrations of four University presidents. For the first time, designs were chosen based on their stylistic resonance with the Greek Revival Old Capitol and on how they could conjure a sense of the University as a center of scholarship and learning. As new buildings of Bedford limestone went up, the older, more informal structures burned down, were torn down, or (in one instance) were moved away.
Today's Pentacrest, four monumental halls organized on diagonal axes around the Old Capitol, did not take definitive shape until the last remnant of its nineteenth-century brick buildings was razed in 1975. This crowning ensemble of University buildings, "Pentacrest" (meaning "five on a place of prominence") got its designation from a 1924 naming contest sponsored by the Daily Iowan, right after the completion of Jessup Hall, the last of the four new buildings. This name was suggested by Emerson A. Plank (D.D.S., 1929) of Independence, Iowa, who later said that he coined the term because he wanted it to "recall the Old World." Plank's idea was an endorsement of the original concept behind Old Capitol and the Pentacrest, which aimed at continuity and expression of the shared cultural values of western civilization, as understood at the time.
The Pentacrest, however, is more than the mere sum of its individual buildings. It exemplifies the City Beautiful Movement of the 1890s, which looked to the urban planning principles realized in the symmetrical disposition of buildings at world's fairs and expositions. The Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, with the Eiffel Tower as its centerpiece, and, above all, Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, with its unrestrained commitment to Beaux-Arts Classicism, were decisive for the thinking that produced the Pentacrest. The premium on axial relationships had already been established by Leander Judson's 1839 grid plan of Iowa City, which created a broad boulevard, Iowa Avenue, connecting the territorial capitol with the projected governor's mansion eight blocks to the east. Although the latter component was not to be realized, the axial thoroughfare insured that the Old Capitol, once transferred to the University, would be the centerpiece around which other buildings would develop and that the campus would have an inextricable link to its host city.
The ideal, rigidly symmetrical plan of the Pentacrest was probably the idea of Henry Van Brunt, partner in the Kansas City firm of Van Brunt and Howe, chosen by President Charles A. Schaeffer (1887-1898) and the Board of Regents to select the architect of the new Collegiate Hall (later, Schaeffer Hall) to be erected near Old Capitol. Van Brunt worked in a succession of late nineteenth-century styles, from Gothic to Classical, and had designed institutional and campus buildings in the East, notably Harvard's Memorial Hall (1878), but, as one of the lead architects of the Chicago Exposition, by the 1890s he was a fully committed proponent of the triumphant Beaux-Arts Classicism exemplified by that spectacular ensemble of buildings known as the "Great White City." Moreover, he was a theoretician, and his advocacy of the Classical Revival style predisposed him to select the design submitted by the young Des Moines architects Proudfoot and Bird. It was the beginning of a long relationship with the University that continues to the present day in recent design work by Proudfoot and Bird's successor firm, Brooks Borg Skiles. It was, however, Van Brunt's idea that created the momentum for an ideal planning scheme that came to fruition in the fully realized five-building central campus complex known as the Pentacrest.
Old Capitol, 1842
ARCHITECT: JOHN FRANCIS RAGUE, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS PREVIOUS NAME: CENTRAL HALL
Old Capitol's history began as the seat of the territorial government of Iowa. It became the University's first permanent building in 1857 when the state legislature moved to Des Moines. In addition to being the administrative center of the University, at various times it was also the home of the law school, the library, a museum, a dormitory, and even a gymnasium. The story of Old Capitol intersects with some of the most defining moments in the nation's history. Abraham Lincoln was eulogized on its steps on April 19, 1865. A hundred years later, another moment of turmoil-the protests over the Vietnam War-engulfed Old Capitol. It is the heart of the University, its pivot, and the image conjured up when remembering the high bluffs and city above the Iowa River.
Despite Old Capitol's popularity, it has had its detractors. In 1939, the rabidly anticlassicist Frank Lloyd Wright famously called the building his least favorite on campus, adding, "all of your buildings are very bad ... and they are destructive of me and my work." He advised the University to "forget your sentimentality for Old Capitol else you are doomed to destruction." Wright was advocating for contemporary design. Yet Old Capitol remains the focus of collective memory and the point of departure for architecture on campus, having inspired the Beaux-Arts Classicism of the Pentacrest buildings, the dome of Boyd Law Building, and the axes along which the various campuses are organized. Old Capitol itself has also been refined and redefined over the years, with a near total rehabilitation from 1921 to 1924 that added the west portico, an element included in the original design but never built. Owing to a lack of space, and after 110 years and fifteen University presidents, the Office of the President was moved in 1970 from its location in the southeast corner of the first floor to Jessup Hall. Old Capitol was rededicated as part of the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations, this time restored to its original character as territorial seat and home of state government. The 2006 renovation, made more extensive than originally planned by a November 20, 2001, fire that destroyed the lantern (cupola) and dome, has even more fully revived the building's nineteenth-century character.
A late example of Greek Revival architecture, Old Capitol reiterates on a more modest scale the state capitol in Springfield, Illinois (also designed by Rague) and a distinguished succession of state capitols (Ohio, Tennessee) going all the way back to Thomas Jefferson's Virginia state capitol at Richmond (1799). The walls of Old Capitol are composed of porous Iowa limestone, giving the building a roughhewn quality. The portico columns, pediment, bell housing, lantern (cupola), and dome are all wood painted to imitate stone. Owing to its prominent porticoes, Old Capitol is a Doric building. This choice was both symbolic and aesthetic-the fluted Greek Doric order, and its associations with the Parthenon and Athenian democracy, conveys efficiency, modesty, and good government. The façade walls are articulated with the even sparer Doric pilasters. Frugality and moral rectitude are the order here, relieved only by the Corinthian capitals of the lantern columns, modeled on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, a fourth-century BCE work in Athens. The dome, recently regilded in gold leaf, captures the sun to become the focal point of the building and the entire campus.
The results of the 2006 project are also visible in the detailed work done to restore Old Capitol with greater historical accuracy. Because no drawings existed from the building's construction, architectural historians pieced plans together from fragments. Some changes were made-the original wood-shingled roof, which had been replaced first with slate, then with asphalt shingles, was restored with standing-seam metal cladding-but Old Capitol today is as close to its original design as it has been since the nineteenth century (colorplate 2). Inside, the inversely rotated stairway has been retained (colorplate 3), and the building's bell-destroyed in the fire-has been replaced by one from the same period. The new interior color scheme, more in keeping with the mid-nineteenth century, has also been introduced; in place of sober white walls from the 1970s, Old Capitol is warmed by lavender, rose, and azure walls. Burnished and reopened in May 2006, it again greets visitors and looks westward across Iowa, as it has since 1842. As a "nationally important example of Greek Revival architecture," Old Capitol has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Schaeffer Hall, 1902
ARCHITECT: PROUDFOOT AND BIRD, DES MOINES, IOWA PREVIOUS NAME: COLLEGIATE HALL
The notion of the Pentacrest began with Charles A. Schaeffer, the University of Iowa's seventh president (1887-1898). As part of a larger agenda to invest in the facilities and faculty necessary to make the University a national institution, Schaeffer brought in Henry Van Brunt, one of the architects of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, to judge a competition for the design of a new academic hall. Proudfoot and Bird's winning entry began their long service as the University's architects of choice and introduced a dignified Beaux-Arts Classicism that would become synonymous with the Pentacrest. Despite Schaeffer's untimely death, a construction fire, and conflicts between the architects and contractors, the doors to Schaeffer Hall finally opened on January 23, 1902, providing a permanent and modern home for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), which was then known as the Collegiate Department. The College has called Schaeffer Hall home ever since, and the building underwent a complete renovation in 1999, marking a century since construction began on the original building. CLAS comprises the core of the University with 18,000 students, 660 faculty, and 45 departments (seven of which rank in the top ten nationally). As such, it is appropriate that, at the corner of Clinton and Washington Streets, it occupies the "cornerstone" position of the UI campus. Schaeffer Hall is the oldest University classroom building still in use for instruction.
Schaeffer Hall's design signals a decision to define and ennoble the center of campus. By choosing to build in Bedford limestone instead of the more traditional red brick, on a monumental scale, and in the Classical tradition, the University lent Schaeffer Hall a distinction appropriate to its setting and to its potential importance in the life of the institution. On the east façade, a portico greets downtown Iowa City, and the frieze of the pediment, reading "Liberal Arts," dramatically announces the building's purpose. While the design is sympathetic to Old Capitol, the choice to move up one order, from wooden Doric to monolithic limestone Ionic columns, also expresses the transition from the older structure's Greek notions of good government to Charles Schaeffer's Renaissance ideals of education and culture. Referencing Old Capitol's Doric prototype, the decorated pediment, ornamental globes, and horizontal scrolls mounting up to the now-removed central flagpole give Schaeffer Hall a sense of grandeur that amplifies the building's message that art and science are essential to a democracy. The narrow end façades repeat the portico motif of the east front but with engaged rather than freestanding columns and without a pediment, which might compete with Old Capitol's venerable image. The model is Ange-Jacques Gabriel's façade of the Petit Trianon at Versailles. On its west or rear façade Schaeffer Hall trades the rectilinear for curvilinear forms with a powerfully projecting rotunda that unexpectedly introduces Baroque drama in place of the relatively restrained Classicism of the east front.
Macbride Hall, 1908
ARCHITECT: PROUDFOOT AND BIRD, DES MOINES, IOWA PREVIOUS NAME: HALL OF NATURAL SCIENCE
The commitment to erect a quartet of monumental buildings around Old Capitol was furthered by President George E. MacLean (1899-1911), who saw it as an effort to compose a formal university campus and to express better the academic aspirations of a modern institution of higher learning at the turn of the twentieth century. Macbride Hall, named for Thomas Huston Macbride, eleventh president of the University of Iowa, is perhaps the clearest example of this determination; construction could not begin until Calvin Hall had been moved off the Pentacrest and across Jefferson Street to the north. Once completed, Macbride stood as a testament to the University's place as an outpost of civilization on the prairie, and it marked a continued determination to remake the architectural image of the University on a grander and more ordered scale-one that embodied MacLean's conception of the civilizing role of the modern university. The building houses the largest classroom on campus, as well as the Museum of Natural History-the oldest existing university museum west of the Mississippi. For more than four decades, the building was also the home of the University's library. Built in the basement with exposed interior columns instead of walls, to accommodate the ever-increasing collection, the library still became so short of space that the floor was eventually lowered to house even more books.
While Macbride Hall resembles Schaeffer Hall in plan and elevation, significant variations between the buildings prevent the uniformity of the Pentacrest from becoming tiresome. Both have projecting Ionic porticoes in recessed central sections flanked by two wings, and prominent rotundas grace the west side of each building. Macbride's portico is shallower, however, and its cornice is topped with ornamental urns, not globes, as seen at Schaeffer Hall. The façade is also less severe than Schaeffer's, with channeled limestone and sculpted reliefs above the windows. The freestanding columns of the east portico become engaged columns on the north and south end façades and pilasters on the west face of the building. The rotunda, like Schaeffer's, is reminiscent of the Italian Baroque, creating a play of light and shadow that adds to the building's visual power and interest.
The Pentacrest buildings are meant to be seen in the round, and Macbride Hall is a particularly good example. The harmonious proportions, portico, and rotunda are all evident at a quick glance, but a closer look reveals extravagantly carved panels on the first-floor windows of the wings and end façades. The creatures in these relief sculptures are grouped by species, each having an animal at the center and related creatures forming the swags. The program was developed by William Temple Hornaday of Eddyville, Iowa, and sculpted by Sinclair Shearer of Perth, Scotland. Charles Nutting, professor of zoology, arranged the groups in the correct relationship. All of the vertebrate classes are included. The field of the pediment represents a buffalo, moose, and elk. Like the animals in the window panels, these three have been included because of scientific, not just decorative, interest; they are the largest mammals indigenous to North America. Walking the perimeter of Macbride Hall, "reading" them, one can find a hawk, turkey, snapping turtle, llama, stingray, eagle, and walrus. The ornamental urns at attic level on the end façades are studded with three human heads each, representing different racial types-all related to the anthropological study of humankind appropriate to "natural science" as understood at the turn of the twentieth century.
MacLean Hall, 1912
ARCHITECT: PROUDFOOT, BIRD AND RAWSON, DES MOINES, IOWA PREVIOUS NAME: PHYSICS BUILDING
The presidency of George E. MacLean (1899-1911) saw the University of Iowa's most expansive growth to date. A frenzy of construction was initiated after a 1901 fire that destroyed the Medical Building and South Hall and damaged the under-construction Schaeffer Hall-all on the Pentacrest. MacLean Hall, built on the former site of South Hall, was intended to replace classroom and laboratory space lost in that blaze. The project stalled almost before it began, however, when a trove of human bones was discovered during excavation. Further examination revealed that the bones were refuse from South Hall's anatomical laboratory, and President MacLean ordered them quietly disposed of so that construction might resume. The Cockroft-Walton "atom smasher" was installed here in 1938.
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Excerpted from The University of Iowa Guide to Campus Architecture by JOHN BELDON SCOTT RODNEY P. LEHNERTZ CAROLINE CASEY Copyright © 2006 by University of Iowa Press. Excerpted by permission.
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