Beginnings Gothic Revival architecture was used for American college buildings as early as 1829, when "Old Kenyon" was completed on the campus of
Kenyon College in
Gambier, Ohio. Another early example was
Alexander Jackson Davis's University Hall (1833–1837, demolished 1890), on
New York University's
Washington Square campus.
Richard Bond's church-like library for Harvard College,
Gore Hall (1837–1841, demolished 1913), became the model for other library buildings.
James Renwick Jr.'s Free Academy Building (1847–1849, demolished 1928), for what is today
City College of New York, continued in the style. Inspired by London's
Hampton Court Palace, Swedish-born
Charles Ulricson designed
Old Main (1856–1857) at
Knox College in
Galesburg, Illinois. Following the
Civil War, many
idiosyncratic High Victorian Gothic buildings were added to the campuses of American colleges. Examples include
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Boynton Hall, 1868, by
Stephen C. Earle);
Movement Beginning in the late-1880s, Philadelphia architects
Walter Cope and
John Stewardson expanded the campus of
Bryn Mawr College in an understated English Gothic style that was highly sensitive to site and materials. Inspired by the architecture of
Oxford and
Cambridge universities, and historicists but not literal copyists, Cope & Stewardson were highly influential in establishing the Collegiate Gothic style. Commissions followed for collections of buildings at the
University of Pennsylvania (1895–1911),
Princeton University (1896–1902), and
Washington University in St. Louis (1899–1909), marking the nascent beginnings of a movement that transformed many college campuses across the country. In 1901, the firm of
Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge created a master plan for a Collegiate Gothic campus for the fledgling
University of Chicago, then spent the next 15 years completing it. Some of their works, such as the Mitchell Tower (1901–1908), were near-literal copies of historic buildings.
George Browne Post designed the
City College of New York's new campus (1903–1907) at
Hamilton Heights, Manhattan, in the style. The style was experienced up-close by a wide audience at the 1904
Louisiana Purchase Exposition in
St. Louis, Missouri. The
World's Fair and
1904 Olympic Games were held on the newly completed campus of
Washington University, which delayed occupying its buildings until 1905. The movement gained further momentum when
Charles Donagh Maginnis designed
Gasson Hall at
Boston College in 1908. Maginnis & Walsh went on to design Collegiate Gothic 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.
Ralph Adams Cram designed a series of Collegiate Gothic buildings for the
Princeton University Graduate College (1911–1917).
James Gamble Rogers did extensive work at
Yale University, beginning in 1917. Some critics claim he took
historicist fantasy to an extreme, while others choose to focus on what is widely considered to be the resulting beautiful and sophisticated Yale campus. Rogers was criticized by the growing
Modernist movement. His cathedral-like
Sterling Memorial Library (1927–1930), with its
ecclesiastical imagery and lavish use of ornament, came under vocal attack from one of Yale's own undergraduates: A modern building constructed for purely modern needs has no excuse for going off in an orgy of meretricious medievalism and stale iconography. Other architects, notably John Russell Pope and Bertram Goodhue (who just before his death sketched the original version of Yale's Sterling Library from which Rogers worked), advocated for and contributed to Yale's particular version of Collegiate Gothic. When
McMaster University moved to
Hamilton, Ontario, Canadian architect
William Lyon Somerville designed its new campus (1928–1930) in the style.
Origins of the term American architect
Alexander Jackson Davis is "generally credited with coining the term" documented in a handwritten description of his own "English Collegiate Gothic Mansion" of 1853 for the Harrals of Bridgeport, Connecticut. By the 1890s, the movement was known as "Collegiate Gothic".
1904 commentary In his praise for Cope & Stewardson's
Quadrangle Dormitories at the
University of Pennsylvania, architect
Ralph Adams Cram revealed some of the racial and cultural implications underlying the Collegiate Gothic:
High rise expression Collegiate Gothic complexes were most often horizontal compositions, save for a single tower or towers serving as an exclamation. Gamble designed the skyscraper Collegiate Gothic academic building at
Northwestern University's downtown Chicago campus in the 1920s, completed in 1926. This was in the wake of the international 1921
Tribune Tower competition, which out of more than 200 entries from well-known architects, famously chose a neo-Gothic design by Howells and Hood for their commercial skyscraper. At the
University of Pittsburgh, Charles Klauder was commissioned by
University of Pittsburgh chancellor
John Gabbert Bowman to design a tall building in the form of a Gothic tower. What he produced, the
Cathedral of Learning (1926–37), has been described as the literal culmination of late Gothic Revival architecture. A combination of Gothic spire and modern skyscraper, the steel-frame, limestone-clad, 42-story structure is both the world's second tallest university building and Gothic-styled edifice. The tower contain a half-acre Gothic hall supported only by its 52-foot (16 m) tall arches. It is accompanied by the campus's other Gothic Revival structures by Klauder, including the
Stephen Foster Memorial (1935–1937) and the French Gothic
Heinz Memorial Chapel (1933–1938).
21st-century revival A number of colleges and universities have commissioned major new buildings in the Collegiate Gothic style in recent years. These include Princeton University's
Whitman College, designed by
Porphyrios Associates, and
Benjamin Franklin College and
Pauli Murray College, both designed by
Robert A.M. Stern Architects, at Yale University. The University of Southern California's USC Village was created as a less expensive
post-modern nod to Collegiate Gothic revival. (Harley Ellis Devereaux, 2017). ==Architects of the Collegiate Gothic style==