Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    Student Housing
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
The chapel at Trinity U., in Washington, D.C., is described as an “architectural achievement” in Klauder and Wise’s 1929 College Architecture in America. The building was designed by Maginnis & Walsh and opened in 1924.
The chapel at Trinity U., in Washington, D.C., is described as an “architectural achievement” in Klauder and Wise’s 1929 College Architecture in America. The building was designed by Maginnis & Walsh and opened in 1924.Chronicle photo by Lawrence Biemiller

90 Years Ago, a Book About College Architecture Offered Plenty of Advice — Some of It Still Useful

Advice
By Carla Yanni May 3, 2019

Ninety years ago, two architects, Charles Z. Klauder and Herbert C. Wise, published a book that was the first of its kind, a carefully researched compendium of exemplary campus buildings called College Architecture in America and Its Part in the Development of the Campus,

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

Ninety years ago, two architects, Charles Z. Klauder and Herbert C. Wise, published a book that was the first of its kind, a carefully researched compendium of exemplary campus buildings called College Architecture in America and Its Part in the Development of the Campus, (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929). Given that Klauder and Wise, Philadelphia-based architects, contributed buildings to many American campuses, several of which they celebrate in their book, at first blush it may seem like the book was a barely disguised advertisement.

In fact, it was more. The authors included structures designed by many firms, both national and local. The prose is clear and direct; cost estimates are sprinkled among the glossy photos; pragmatic advice mingles with lofty philosophical goals. Aimed at administrators, the book served to educate the people who held the purse strings.

When I began the research for my recent book, Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), the first source I latched onto was Klauder and Wise. My project was to examine the architecture of dormitories in the United States from the 18th century to 1968, highlighting the opinions of architects, professors, deans, and students, and connecting the dormitory to social and educational history. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2013-14, the United States had 3,039 degree-granting four-year colleges. As an extremely rough estimate, if each one had an average of 10 dormitories, that’s 30,000 possible case studies.

In spite of the ubiquity of this building type, the architecture of residence halls is not well understood. Although I faced a challenge in selecting case studies, by flipping through the pages of Klauder and Wise I could easily grasp which dormitories were state-of-the-art in 1929. I zeroed in on gracious quadrangles at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which Klauder and Wise illustrated with crisp, legible plans and an aerial view showing Lake Mendota, on whose southern shore the campus lies. And how could I miss the Martha Cook Building at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, with its long row of windows and its terrace facing the garden?

At the time, I assumed the Martha Cook Building was home for intellectually talented young women. My research in the archives showed that hopeful glimmer to be far from the truth. Mr. Cook, the building’s donor, did not want academically gifted women — he called them bluestockings — to inhabit the dorm. He also wasn’t interested in diversity. He wanted well-heeled white women to live in his model dormitory. He even said, “I don’t know why the Oriental girls are there. That building is not the League of Nations.”

In 1929, the authors treated men’s dormitories and women’s residences as distinct forms; the two types appear in two separate chapters. Klauder and Wise noted that even the simplest (meaning cheapest) dormitories for women needed specialized spaces. Women’s dorms required a desk near the front entrance, bells that signaled each room, a generous lounge for hosting dances, a fireplace of liberal size, and a suite of rooms for the housemother. The authors explained how to use architecture to achieve genteel surveillance. In today’s world of co-ed dormitories, co-ed bathrooms, co-ed suites, and co-ed rooms, and the welcome addition of what are often called safe spaces for gender nonconforming students, it is hard to imagine such a hard line between the design of men’s and women’s dorms.

20190503-campusspaces-yannibookreview/lmgvw6Q175/6532-college-architecture-jacket-flat-750x999.jpeg

A few other anachronisms appear in College Architecture in America. The residence-hall plans set aside rooms in the basement for trunk storage. In the olden days, male and female students alike brought only as much clothing as would fit in one or two trunks; they would unpack in September and leave the trunk in the storage room for the academic year. Then there is the recommendation that “every laboratory should have one wall blackboard, but in lecture-rooms and classrooms, more blackboard surface is needed.” When I was in the central administration at the University of Rutgers at New Brunswick, I promoted blackboards over white boards, arguing that it is only a matter of weeks before some distracted instructor destroys a white board with a Sharpie. (I was ignored.)

And what about ventilating big classrooms to remove the air fouled by the possibly poisonous breath of undergraduates? Klauder and Wise said: “Vitiated air from large lecture rooms may be expelled through vents contrived in the cast-iron standards of the chair seats.” Good luck finding those replacement parts. In a more significant and urban-scaled departure from contemporary practice, Klauder and Wise recommended that in dense cities, architects design a continuous block of structures in the form of a “rampart” to keep the nearby neighborhoods out. Most planners today would propose the precise opposite. Cities ought to be engaged with multi-use buildings on the edges of campuses in order to create 24/7 street life.

The urban critic and public intellectual Lewis Mumford slammed the book as a compilation of “tame and undistinguished traditional architecture,” and objected that it gave no hint of the future. With characteristic wit, Mumford wrote: “I for one should dislike to think that college architecture should remain in the decorous state of mummification it has now achieved.” Mumford wanted the avant-garde Frank Lloyd Wright to take a crack at campus architecture — which in fact, Wright did, but not until 1936 when Florida Southern College hired him to design a bevy of buildings. From Mumford’s point of view, any style that drew on the past led to mummification. What was needed, he wrote, was a team of courageous men to rescue colleges from drowning in their architectural backwater.

The arrangement of interior spaces was the key to the successful collegiate building.

Indeed, Klauder and Wise themselves worked in a variety of historical styles, from Georgian Revival to Elizabethan to French Gothic, but the authors actually explained that they did not want readers to focus on exterior motifs. In this regard, Mumford did not give them the benefit of the doubt. Klauder and Wise maintained that the arrangement of interior spaces was the key to the successful collegiate building.

While the book is filled with beautifully prepared plans, Klauder and Wise were quick to point out that the plans were not there to be copied. Each building illustrated was unique to its site and its locality; therefore a direct imitation was doomed to failure. The authors advised architects to develop an understanding of the academic program; to create spaces for socializing; to pay attention to context; to consider regional differences. These last recommendations seem so contemporary that they jump off the page — they could easily have appeared recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education itself.

A version of this article appeared in the May 10, 2019, issue.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Facilities
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
About the Author
Carla Yanni
Carla Yanni is a professor of art history at Rutgers University and the author of Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

UCLA students, researchers and demonstrators rally during a "Kill the Cuts" protest against the Trump administration's funding cuts on research, health and higher education at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in Los Angeles on April 8, 2025.
Scholarship & Research
Trump Proposed Slashing the National Science Foundation’s Budget. A Key Senate Committee Just Refused.
Illustration of a steamroller rolling over a colorful road and leaving gray asphalt in its wake.
Newly Updated
Oregon State U. Will End a Renowned Program That Aimed to Reduce Bias in Hiring
Dr. Gregory Washington, president of George Mason University.
Another probe
George Mason President Discriminated Against White People After George Floyd Protests, Justice Dept. Says
Protesters gather outside the Department of Education headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 14, 2025 to protest the Trump administrations cuts at the agency.
An Uncertain Future
The Education Dept. Got a Green Light to Shrink. Here Are 3 Questions About What’s Next.

From The Review

Photo-based illustration with repeated images of a student walking, in the pattern of a graph trending down, then up.
The Review | Opinion
7 Ways Community Colleges Can Boost Enrollment
By Bob Levey
Illustration of an ocean tide shaped like Donald Trump about to wash away sandcastles shaped like a college campus.
The Review | Essay
Why Universities Are So Powerless in Their Fight Against Trump
By Jason Owen-Smith
Photo-based illustration of a closeup of a pencil meshed with a circuit bosrd
The Review | Essay
How Are Students Really Using AI?
By Derek O'Connell

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin