Browse Exhibits (3 total)

The increase in student population and changing curriculum affected the campus at the University of Richmond in much the same way as they did at institutions across the United States after World War II and one generation later in the late 1960s. The firm of Carneal and Johnston (William Leigh Carneal Jr. (1881–1958) and James Markam Ambler Johnston (1885–1974)), one of the most successful architecture firms in Richmond, carried the baton from Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson and continued the traditional Collegiate Gothic building up to the design of the Robins Center in 1970 when Modernism peeked through. Images of other Carneal and Johnston designs can be found here. 

The period following World War II saw a change in the demographics of the student body with increasing numbers of students and more students coming from afar who needed housing. Changes in the undergraduate curriculum and the move of the law school to the campus required new permanent buildings as the temporary military barracks used as housing, offices, and classrooms could not be used indefinitely.  As early as 1944 the university was making plans for expanding its built environment according to a series of Collegian articles authored by Ted Eggleston in the fall of that year.

• 22 November 1944 (Introduction to series)
• 22 November 1944 (first article)
• 29 November 1944 (second article)
• 15 December 1944 (third article)

This semester we have been looking at campus planning manuals dating to 1929, 1933, and 1966.  These texts, two of which were commissioned by the Association of American Colleges to help aministrators guide the development of their campuses, provide a backdrop against which to compare the planning and building of the University of Richmond campus.  These texts are:

• Charles Z. Klauder & Herbert Wise, College Architecture in America, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929.  
• Jens Fredrick Larson & Archie MacInnes Palmer, Architectural Planning of the American College, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933.  
• Richard Dober, Campus Planning, New York: Reinhold Book Corporation, 1963.

What follows are just small portions of what the students have found in their primary research and information they have gathered in what, for some, will have been their first experiences with primary research.  We owe a great deal of thanks to Fred Anderson and Darlene Herod at the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and Andrew McBride and Chuck Rogers in University Facilities for their time and insight.  We must also give a nod to our starting point the UR History Architecture page and John Alley's History of the University of Richmond, 1830-1971, which provided everyone with a starting point.

The architectural history of the Temple University campus parallels that of many urban campuses in the United States.  Born out of a need to educate working class residents of the City of Philadelphia, Temple University became a model for other institutions expanding in the post-war period.  The design work of Nolen & Swinburne was noted in Architectural Record and designated for awards by national building groups in the 1960s.  This exhibit will span the whole of Temple's history, but focuses on the rapid development that came in the postwar period and along with it, the conflict that arose with the residential neighbors near the campus.