BIG-PICTURE TRANSFORMATION

FIVE KEY WAYS THE CAMPUS YOU REMEMBER HAS CHANGED.

By Katy Kramer

It almost doesn’t matter when you graduated: Northeastern doesn’t look the same anymore.

Perennials have replaced parking lots. Boxy buildings share lawn space with curved glass-curtain façades. There are trees. Even founding president Frank Palmer Speare, whose bold vision first shaped the campus, might need a tour to get his bearings.

Yet, as Peter Serenyi notes in his essay about Northeastern’s architecture, “Gray Brick, Red Brick: Building a University,” Speare oversaw the creation of a design more enduring than he could have guessed. For, as early as 1934, courtyards were interspersed among the campus’s Beaux Arts/ Bauhaus gray-brick buildings. And those courtyards would give the campus great flexibility.

As the decades went by, courtyard greenery was overtaken by asphalt. Parking lots, a convenience for faculty and students at a growing, largely commuter school, sprang up like dandelions.

But the asphalt was just a placeholder, keeping the spaces open for the next round of interpretation. Eventually, new quadrangles, pathways, and innovative structures began to replace cars, a fresh rendering of an old vision, determined and tempered by the university’s changing priorities.

So, with all its visual and spatial elasticity, what’s different around campus these days? A lot. A whole lot. Just look at these five transformations.


From inside to outside

In 1936, when the College of Engineering lost its accreditation, in large part for lack of adequate facilities, more functional classrooms and labs became a priority at Northeastern. Richards Hall was built soon thereafter—its design considered solid and academic—and the fledgling university turned its focus inward.

Later, as Northeastern began a transition from commuter to residential university, more appealing living and learning spaces were required. Today’s older buildings—Richards, Dodge, Ell—are easily recognizable, but their interiors are no longer spartan. And the outdoors has been invited in, via skylights and sunny atriums.

Building exteriors are wrapped in greenery and abut sculpture gardens. The old pedestrian tunnels still snake beneath campus, but the more important connector is above ground: a seamless network of pathways designed by landscape architects Pressley Associates, which meanders for blocks without yielding to automobiles.

Krentzman Quad, the original main quadrangle, got a complete face-lift in 1985. The Library Quad—between Snell Library and the Curry Student Center—is ringed by low brick walls that invite lounging and socializing; the huge glass panes of the Student Center food court offer those inside a transparent connection to this lively “town square.” Centennial Walk, a colorful, dramatically contoured pathway, links the old campus to Centennial Common, a rounded hillock that spreads into a broad expanse of green.

“Now,” says Serenyi, former Northeastern art and architecture chair, “it’s such a pleasure to walk on the surface that you shun the tunnel system.”


From black and white to color

President Carl Stephens Ell stayed true to the Speare vision. Between 1940 and 1956, more light-gray buildings—including Mugar,

Ell, Dodge, Cabot, and Hayden—joined Richards. As student enrollment increased and the asphalt went down, the campus took on a decidedly black-and-white cast.

Only in the mid-1980s did planners, realizing
that attractive campuses lure prospective students, undertake the greening of Northeastern in earnest. Rhododendron and azalea, tulips, flowering pear, borders of gold and crimson perennials, hemlock, and native red pine were planted where asphalt once laid claim.

Bright florals and lush greens—emerald, lime, olive, and jade—eased out the monochrome. Benches, grassy slopes, and shade trees invited pedestrians to linger. By 1992, the campus had won the American Nurserymen’s National Landscape Award for excellence in landscape design and environmental improvement.

Buildings, too, now come in hues. Red and orange brick have become the new gray. Brilliant glass fronts reflect and refract light.

The seven-story Behrakis Health Sciences Center, which opened this month, sports an attention-grabbing curved glazed façade.

Like Dorothy arriving in Oz, Northeastern has burst into color.


From corners to contours

As the form of the new Behrakis Center indicates, the hard edges that once symbolized efficiency and economy at Northeastern have become organic, curved, inviting. Building exteriors, classroom spaces, and pathways arc in ways that suggest energy and contemplation, as well
as community.

Yet the old linear forms still work alongside the elliptical designs. The right-angled tiers of Snell Library complement the sweeping curves of the Egan Research Center. In figure-ground parlance, the buildings define the space around them in distinct, varied ways.

Some old curves have been discovered and reinforced. Shillman Hall, a state-of-the-art classroom building, echoes the arcing red-brick façade of Nightingale Hall, once part of a complex of United Drug Company buildings.

The intricate assemblage of building contours, walkways, and graded topography turns bricks, mortar, and grass into a dynamic whole, a visually interesting campus.


From insular to interconnected

In 1933, when the university’s housing committee called for design proposals for the new campus, it asked that architects not be influenced by the look of adjacent buildings.

The committee wanted the university’s goals, not its neighbors, to dictate style. And so the winning submission, by Boston-based architects Coolidge Shepley Bulfinch and Abbott, was for a campus designed to stand alone in the city.

Existing physical barriers helped increase the campus’s insularity: Sheds and sidings for several passenger railroads and freight lines formed an effective wall between Northeastern and Roxbury.

But by 1987, a new Orange Line stop—Ruggles station—had opened. As part of a new university master plan, which called for a campus more linked to the city and a city made more accessible to students, the station included a bridge connecting Northeastern to Columbus Avenue.

Within a few years, the campus was extending into Roxbury. Parking garages were built. A former cigar factory was renovated into office space and renamed Columbus Place. The building now known as Renaissance Park was purchased.

Davenport Commons—sleek undergraduate dorms and townhouse units for income-eligible Boston residents—underscored the sense of community on Columbus Avenue. The momentum continues:

A squash and recreation facility for Boston schoolchildren and Northeastern students and employees will open next year.

On the other side of campus, the Marino Recreation Center—its soaring design and prominent Huntington Avenue location bestowing it “signature” building status at Northeastern—strengthened the bridge to the Fenway. Marino’s modern athletic facilities and street-level dining, retail, and office space act as a magnet for university and community.

Both urban portals—to Roxbury, to the Fenway—weave the new campus into the existing fabric of the neighborhood.


From commuter to residential

The 1987 master plan, in addition to targeting town-gown barriers, challenged administrators “to transform the campus from that befitting a commuter school to that of a residential university.” Clearly, students who felt more connected to campus would be more inclined to stay and to graduate. But it was not until President Freeland drew upon the planning expertise of Boston architects William Rawn Associates that the campus’s west end became the new locus of residential life.

West Village, an undergraduate housing complex on Parker and Ruggles Streets, offers a compelling reason to call the university home. Building A, a thirteen-story high-rise with breathtaking views of the city, opened in 1999. Buildings B and C followed a year later, and E opened this month. Ground was broken for G and H in June; they will serve as dorms as well as house the College of Computer Science.

By fall 2004, Northeastern will be able to provide housing for half of its undergraduates. Now, as the university expands skyward, the newest courtyards are in the air, in the spacious vistas that extend out over the city.

Imagine President Speare’s sense of accomplishment when he retired in 1940,having watched a campus rise from an abandoned ball field.

And imagine his pleasure were he to see Northeastern today. The university continues to reap the benefits of Speare’s plan, which his successors have transformed into a well-designed and beautiful university community.

Katy Kramer, MA’00, wrote about the B-School Beanpot in the May issue. A freelance writer who lives in Epping, New Hampshire, she contributes the magazine’s “Husky Tracks.”