10/2004

The Getty Campus Heritage Grants for Colleges and Universities
Awards to be used for historic preservation
 

Bronx Community College received the largest grant from the Getty Grant Program—$228,000.The Getty Grant Program announced earlier this year the recipients of the 2004 Campus Heritage Grants. The beneficiaries of the awards include buildings in a range of styles, from the Beaux-Arts tradition of Morehouse College in Atlanta to the Romanesque, Italianate, and Neoclassical academic buildings of the University of Maine in Orono. Bronx Community College, New York City, is the recipient of this year’s largest grant, and will use the funds for a conservation master plan for its original campus designed by McKim, Mead & White.

Reed Institute d.b.a. Reed College – Old Dorm Block. Photo credit: Old Dorm Block, Courtesy of Charles S. Rhyne“Since a large portion of this nation’s distinguished architectural heritage is found on college and university campuses, it is extremely important to incorporate historic preservation into the campus master planning processes,” says Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Grant Program and dean for external relations of the J. Paul Getty Trust. “Designed by major architects of the day, some are built on archaeologically or historically important sites,” Getty officials note. In the case of Bronx Community College, the money will be used for research and analysis of the campus buildings, including Gould Memorial Library, which is modeled on the Pantheon in Rome. The buildings are clad in a distinctive yellow Roman brick trimmed with limestone and terra cotta and boast elaborate interiors but are battling damage from water infiltration, failure of materials, and highway and industrial pollution.

Getty grants will also fund studies that will preserve the work of architects such as Charles Klauder, who left his mark at Princeton and Yale and also was responsible for buildings at Rhodes College, Memphis, and the University of Pittsburgh, where his soaring 42-story Gothic Revival Cathedral of Learning is one of the tallest campus buildings in the world. At Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa., grant funds will support the development of a preservation plan for the core campus, which includes buildings by Thomas U. Walter, architect for the wings and dome of the U.S. Capitol

College of William and Mary, Tucker Hall (Cady & See, New York, 1908; Charles M. Robinson, 1922 and 1929) Photograph: © 2004 Dr. Ellen K. RudolphCampus Heritage Grants also will guide the preservation of landscape design at several institutions, including the 107-acre campus of Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Ill., designed by the pioneer landscape gardener Almerin Hotchkiss to take advantage of the site’s ravines and lakeside bluffs, and the grounds of Reed College, Portland, Ore., situated on the scenic former Crystal Springs dairy farm, and planted with more than 1,000 trees representing more than 100 different species. At the University of Arizona in Tucson funds will help officials survey the historic district of the 490-acre campus that includes 500 species of local flora and arid-land plants from around the world, several of which are unique to the Southwest. Cranbrook Educational Community, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., is using a Getty grant to prepare a conservation plan for its formal gardens and natural woods, lakes, and waterways.

University of New Mexico, Mesa Vista Hall. Photo courtesy of University of New Mexico Archives.Archaeologically important or historic sites are the focus of grants at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt., a showcase of collegiate architecture featuring buildings in the Gothic Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Georgian styles, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, which was built on a 19th-century ranch complete with barns, a granary, blacksmith’s shop, and cookhouse. The campus is also situated in a region with evidence of prehistoric Native American Ohlone settlements. The University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn., contains distinctive Oxford-style buildings of native sandstone built after the Civil War as well as important archaeological sites from the earliest historic settlements on the Cumberland Plateau. University of the South will use grant funds to prepare an up-to-date inventory and assessment of these architectural and cultural resources for a multiple-resource nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.

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Click here to see a list (PDF) of Campus Heritage Grant Recipients.


 
     
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