Gray Brick, Red Brick
Building a University
By Peter Serenyi
Write on your doors the saying wise and old, "Be bold! Be bold!
and everywhere-Be bold!"
- Longfellow
In the midst of the Great Depression, only the bold looked beyond the
present. And so Longfellow's self-confident words, composed in a more prosperous
age, were chosen to introduce "Northeastern and the Future,"
an essay in the university's fund-raising brochure, Blazing a New Trail
in Higher Education. On June 14, 1934, just months before the brochure
was circulated, President Frank Palmer Speare had announced that Northeastern
would build a new campus. The design proposals were in hand; the money
was not. The time was ripe for Northeastern to articulate its mission both
verbally and visually.
Blazing a New Trail defined Northeastern's special role in American
higher education: "to afford students a direct approach to the practical
problems with which the individual and society are faced" and "to
provide a flexible program of educational opportunities at costs within
the reach of the student of limited means." The university would remain,
its leaders pledged in 1934, uninhibited by tradition, responsive to human
needs, and focused on teaching and on offering students a chance to earn
while learning. In the lean years of the Great Depression, this seemed
a recipe for success.
In fact, success had already been achieved. By 1934, the university-still
affiliated with the YMCA-had grown to more than 4,600 students. There was
a dire need for new facilities. A trustee committee prepared a Program
for the Competition in June 1933 outlining the requirements in conceptualizing
a campus for Northeastern. Functionality was the uppermost concern. "Due
attention must be given to three elements in the development of the University
plant," the program stipulated: "architectural appropriateness,
utility, and economy."
The program went on to note, "The Owner does not desire that the
exterior design, bulk, and materials of the adjacent YMCA building, in
which it now has and will continue to have certain quarters, nor the Opera
House across the avenue, nor the other buildings in the vicinity, shall
influence the architects in presenting their own designs for the new University."
Northeastern would define itself through its goals, not in response to
its neighbors. A year later, President Speare announced that the competition
had been won by the nationally renowned, Boston-based architectural firm
Coolidge Shepley Bulfinch and Abbot.
In 1936, an academic crisis sent administrators and designers scurrying
back to their plans, which had yet to be realized for lack of sufficient
funds. The College of Engineering, central to the viability of the university,
had failed to receive accreditation. The inspection team from the Engineers'
Council for Professional Development had particularly noted Northeastern's
cramped classrooms and inadequate laboratory facilities. There could be
no further delay in breaking ground.
With this first opportunity to translate its mission into built form,
the university wanted to make a bold statement about its aspirations. Coolidge
Shepley Bulfinch and Abbot sought to prove that architectural appropriateness,
utility, and economy could work together to produce a memorable form. Richards
Hall (originally called the West Building) was the proof of its success.
The winning design for the campus had been aptly described by a headline
in the Boston Evening Transcript (June 14, 1934): "The New Northeastern:
Modernistic Classical in Design." It was characterized by Beaux-Arts
classicism: axial, symmetrical, its whole taking precedence over its constituent
parts. As such, it was reminiscent of Welles Bosworth's MIT campus of 1913.
In the design of Richards Hall, however, those very aspects of the original
concept that most resembled MIT's-monumentality and weight-were chiseled
off to arrive at a scheme more spartan and utilitarian, yet still dignified.
On October 3, 1938, during the fortieth anniversary of Northeastern's
founding, Richards Hall was dedicated. In accepting the keys to the building,
President Speare praised its design and construction, for it had been "planned
for the most effective use and the maximum economy and efficiency in operation."
The significance of the building ranged beyond the utilitarian, however.
Speare continued: "The dedication of this building marks a new era
in the life of the university, an era in which what has been created will
be rendered permanent and enduring."
By 1944, planning for the main quad was essentially complete. The campus
plan had shed many of the Beaux-Arts characteristics in Coolidge Shepley
Bulfinch and Abbot's ten-year-old original plan, most notably the interconnected,
U-shaped, classical buildings forming a series of semienclosed courtyards.
The notion of connecting buildings at ground level had been abandoned in
favor of creating an underground tunnel system. (Another plan, also from
the early 1940s, separates the buildings but still links them with covered
corridors.)
Significant Beaux-Arts elements remained, however: axial symmetry, a
sense of dignified yet understated formality, and, above all, the courtyards,
no longer self-contained but present nonetheless. The concept of creating
a campus with a series of courtyards is one of the most compelling aspects
of the plan. These courtyards define gathering spaces, tie one part of
the campus to the next, and open it up to its surroundings. One need only
turn to Cram and Ferguson's 1935 design for Boston University-an uninviting,
stripped-down, neo-Gothic wall separating Commonwealth Avenue from the
Charles River-to appreciate the value of these spaces.
Ultimately, the Boston Evening Transcript's use of the term "modernistic"
applies less to the original design for the campus than to the 1944 plan.
Although the 1944 campus plan as foreshadowed in Richards Hall betrays
a vestigial Beaux-Arts design methodology-in its symmetry, centrality,
and verticality-it also draws its spirit from a Bauhaus, matter-of-fact
functionalism. The Beaux-Arts bulk and ornamentation had been chipped away
and replaced by the flat, planar Bauhaus surface effect and choice of color,
which evoked the white structures of European modernism. Beaux-Arts composition
had succumbed to a truly modernistic, Bauhaus surface treatment.
The singularity and suitability of Northeastern's architectural plan
can be fully appreciated only in context. For Harvard's residential college
campus on the Charles (192430), the architects at Coolidge Shepley
Bulfinch and Abbot had chosen a neo-Georgian treatment. Beaux-ArtsBauhaus
defined Northeastern. With its red brick and white steeples, Harvard evokes
America's patrician, English tradition. With its stripped-down classicism
and open courtyards, Northeastern celebrates an egalitarian order. It is,
in short, a democratic university.
In 1936, the year the accreditation process propelled Northeastern's
building plan forward, the university became an entity in its own right,
formally independent from the YMCA. That pride of ownership was obvious
in the siting of Richards Hall. Disregarding the original campus plan,
the university had placed Richards not next to but opposite the Y, which
still provided library and classroom facilities. In so doing, Northeastern
took possession of its land and instantly created a campus. This pattern
was followed in 1941 when the Science Building (now the west wing of Mugar)
was placed opposite the South Building (now Cullinane Hall) to suggest
yet another "college quad" effect. An aerial photograph of about
1940 captures the complex and ambivalent relationship between parent and
child institutions. With its sheer bulk, the YMCA building dominates the
block, but the adolescent offspring boldly declares its youthful independence
by removing to a distance and carving into the landscape V-shaped pathways
projecting directly from its doors.
When Frank Palmer Speare handed over the presidency to Carl Ell in 1940,
the fundamental characteristics of the campus were clearly defined. During
his administration, Ell completed all the buildings remaining in the 193444
plans for the campus. He then went on to extend Speare's vision with the
construction of the Cabot Physical Education Center of 195455 and
the Graduate Center (Churchill Hall), completed in 1958. In 1956 the Classroom-Laboratory
Building (Hayden Hall) was dedicated, an occasion broadly conceived to
celebrate twenty years of progress. Progress, in architectural terms, had
followed a linear course. It was left to President Asa Knowles to chart
a new one.
Knowles set high standards for his administration. In his inaugural
speech of September 8, 1959, he proclaimed, "It is our task to equal
and even surpass our predecessors in the implementation of these visions
[so that] this university will achieve 'that greatness which is her destiny.'
" Knowles's expansive goals extended to the university's physical
plant. Within the context of the Diamond Anniversary Development Program,
initiated in 1961 and completed by 1974, Knowles added eight new academic
buildings to the seven already in existence. He also built the addition
to the Ell Student Center, the Barletta Natatorium, and three dormitories.
He bought up buildings in the immediate vicinity for housing, classrooms,
and offices. By the time he retired as president of Northeastern in 1975,
Knowles had increased the Boston campus from 15 to 50 acres and-including
the various suburban campuses, of which the largest is Burlington-the total
real estate holdings of the university from 28 to 337 acres.
The most significant building constructed on the Boston campus during
the Knowles presidency was the addition to the Ell Student Center (196466).
With usable floor space of more than 102,000 square feet, the building
included a 1,200-seat cafeteria, a 10,000-square-foot central atrium/lounge,
a ballroom for 300, a large game room, and 25 meeting rooms. Designed by
Jean Paul Carlhian of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbot, the structure
exemplified two entirely different approaches to design. With its gray
brick and vertical windows, the exterior largely adopted the Beaux-ArtsBauhaus
style of the original campus. Its interior, however, characterized by a
dramatic use of concrete forms and multileveled interlocking spaces, followed
the so-called Brutalist style of the 1960s.
The building's split personality emerged from Knowles's concern for
uniformity and economics. Carlhian recalls the response when he suggested
to Knowles that the university abandon its 1930s modernism in favor of
a contemporary style: "Give me your white brick and vertical windows
for the exteriors and do anything you want with the interiors." Carlhian
obliged. Hidden behind the university's no-nonsense signature exterior
unfolded a space of dramatic breadth and concept.
In addition to Northeastern's architects, some students began to voice
opinions about the campus. In the winter of 1963, about 300 students were
polled, with the majority describing the campus as "business-like,"
"lacking variety," or "very disappointing." Bob Minichiello,
Ed'64, the student responsible for the survey, pressed his agenda in an
open letter to the Northeastern News. Casting off the undergraduate's typical
diffidence, he proposed a five-point program aimed at "repairing Northeastern's
architectural reputation." He recommended that architects address
the issue in a university-sponsored symposium; that the administration
reconsider its future plans for the campus; that the interiors of existing
buildings be repainted in bright red, blue, and yellow on a white background;
that a course on modern architecture or a full degree program in architecture
be offered; and that a permanent committee on architecture-including students,
faculty, and administrators-be established.
Knowles was unmoved. He defended the campus as "functional, modern,
simple, and attractive." "This basic style will not be altered
drastically in the present development program," he categorically
declared. In addition to his much heralded conservatism, Knowles was motivated
by economic considerations. Oddly enough, however, it was economic considerations
that eventually relieved the university of its almost military precision.
In 1961, Northeastern purchased a seven-acre-plus parcel from the United
Realty Company. The entire red-brick industrial complex occupying the site,
once owned by the United Drug Company, was to be razed to make way for
a sports facility. After reducing to rubble three blocks of buildings facing
Forsyth Street, however, the demolition crew was ordered to stop. The university
had grown so rapidly that the old buildings now had to be salvaged for
offices and laboratories.
The high point of the complex is the grand corner structure facing Leon
and Greenleaf Streets (now Lake Hall). Originally designed to house administrative
offices for United Drug, the building exerts a strong presence through
its form, siting, and surface treatment, which ranges from extensive use
of quoins to an elaborate parapet. The choice of buff-colored terra-cotta
ornamentation to relieve the red-brick exterior lends the building scale,
proportion, and a heightened sense of significance. Yet it is the gently
curved facade of Nightingale Hall that would most dramatically influence
architectural developments at the university.
Knowles undoubtedly never suspected that the reclaimed United Drug buildings
he had meant to destroy would emerge as his greatest contribution to the
architecture of the campus. It was left to his successor to understand
their unintended legacy. When Kenneth Ryder accepted the presidency in
May 1975, he declared, "We look forward to establishing a climate
of harmony and unity." The final years of Knowles's administration
had been characterized by confrontation-with students, faculty, and neighbors.
Healing wounds was thus a first priority for the new president.
A more welcoming aspect for the campus would advance that goal. The
United Drug complex, a notable example of turn-of-the-century industrial
architecture, provided a means of introducing a more flexible design. From
it would emerge the university's second, "red-brick" campus,
characterized by softer forms and warm surfaces.
Knowles's building plan had been frenetic. Ryder's-the pace as well
as the plan-was selective and judicious. At the outset, two buildings were
brought to completion. The Stearns Cooperative Education Center, constructed
in 197576, was the last structure to be designed by Shepley Bulfinch
Richardson and Abbot. Willis Hall, an apartment-style dormitory opened
in 1979, also turned its face to the past. Designed by Keyes Associates
of Waltham, the undistinguished slab remains the most inappropriately conceived
building on campus. It is a high-rise in a low-rise campus, sheathed in
gray brick in a red-brick environment. In its color, texture, and materials,
it stands oblivious to the United Drug complex just beyond its front door.
In turning on a diagonal, it spurns neighboring Lake and Holmes Halls to
align itself with the gray campus some distance away. With the construction
of Willis Hall, loyalty to the original campus design was carried to an
absurd conclusion.
Cargill Hall (198182), on the other hand, boldly announced that
the university was turning a corner. When Michael Meltsner was appointed
dean of the Law School in 1979, one of his most urgent tasks was to enlarge
its facilities to ensure that it would meet accreditation standards established
by the American Bar Association. The Building Committee settled on Herbert
Newman, an "artist-architect" who served on the faculty of the
Yale School of Architecture. With the constant support of President Ryder,
Newman effected a radical departure from the design tradition of Northeastern.
Instead of stacking yet another box into the limited area defined by
the Knowles Center and Stearns on the north and Dockser on the south, Newman
opened up space by partially sinking Cargill Hall. Within its cavities
were created two courtyards, filled with trees and grass, and a plaza,
dominated by a clock tower. With such an imaginative rethinking of spatial
concepts, Northeastern's "quad tradition" had been given new
meaning. The purplish-gray slate sheathing of Cargill Hall was yet another
link between the gray-brick campus of the founders and the newly emerging
red-brick campus. Even though many would view Cargill as out of step with
the rest of the university, Newman had in fact designed a bridge between
the past, which deserved respect but not mindless replication, and the
future, which remained to be realized.
At the same time, Newman had an opportunity to shape that future with
his design for Kariotis Hall. Situated on the southwest end of the Law
School plaza, Kariotis is the university's most radical building. Here
utility, economy, and functionality-Northeastern's basic design principles-were
thrown over in favor of an artistic statement. As realized, the red-brick-and-concrete,
semicircular body of Kariotis Hall is the most evocative piece of sculpture
on campus. Robert Campbell, the architecture critic of the Boston Globe,
captured its effect within the whole. "In relation to the rest of
Northeastern, his [Newman's] buildings look as whimsical as flower children
on the steps of the Pentagon."
As President Ryder well understood, at the heart of any major research
university is a first-rate library. Northeastern's reputation was growing
nationally, but this key facility had not. Dodge Library, never intended
to accommodate the needs of a research university with an increasing number
of colleges and graduate schools, had become a glaringly inadequate facility
a mere decade after it opened in 1952. Pressure from students and the university's
accrediting agency during the late 1960s prompted the trustees to accept
a proposal for a sixteen-story library building in 1970, but the design
was abandoned for reasons of cost. An annex to Dodge to be constructed
under the quad met a similar fate.
Ryder was adamant: a new library absolutely had to be built. Although
no funding was in sight, a two-phase invitational design competition was
launched in 1981. In January 1983, the Architects Collaborative was awarded
the commission for a five-story, 240,000-square-foot library.
Not until September 1986, after three years of intensive work, was sufficient
funding secured-$13.5 million from the Department of Defense and $5 million
from trustee and graduate George Snell-to inspire hope that the project
would take concrete form. Another year elapsed before groundbreaking and
another three years before the library finally opened in the fall of 1990.
Although President Ryder retired in 1989, the dedication of the library
a year later must be seen as the crowning achievement of his presidency.
The library was well-constructed, intelligently planned, and "user
friendly"; it has met the test of time successfully. In form, scale,
exterior cladding, and detailing, it sits proudly in the midst of the older
gray campus without trying to conform to its design characteristics. It
is in its siting, however, that the library makes its most dramatic contribution
to the campus as a whole. With its deeply recessed portico and projecting
stair tower, the building's north facade offers a welcoming backdrop to
the quadrangle. As it wraps behind the stair tower, the portico also faces
west, providing a striking vista toward the red-brick campus. Opening up
to the north and west, the Snell Library gathers the campus around itself,
thus becoming not only the intellectual center of the university but its
physical center as well.
An additional element unifying the campus was the greenery introduced
during Ryder's presidency. Before his beautification campaign was kicked
off, Northeastern's campus was well-known not only for its gray brick but
also for its black tar. The greening of Northeastern began modestly and
proceeded incrementally. In 1976, the university received its first park,
complete with picnic tables. In 1985, ground was broken to landscape the
main (later named the Krentzman) quadrangle.
The desire to transform Northeastern's campus from that befitting a
commuter school to that of a residential university prompted the trustees
to commission Sasaki Associates to develop a new master plan for the campus.
The principal concept of the plan, which was completed in 1987, was to
construct "an open space mall that will link existing campus development
with proposed new buildings and facilities. This will be the major organizing
element for the whole campus and will run from the Resource Center [Snell
Library] located at the heart of the campus across Forsyth Street to the
Parker Street campus edge." The mall would be defined by "a system
of connected pedestrian open spaces" adorned with plantings and outdoor
furniture and flanked by new and existing buildings. Up to the edge of
Leon Street, most of these recommendations have since been realized.
The master plan offered two other notable recommendations: variety should
be encouraged in the design of new buildings, and clear boundaries and
entry gateways should be created throughout the campus. To counter the
uniformity of the campus, "selective new buildings should exhibit
functional and symbolic design features . . . that bring distinction and
variety to the campus at strategic locations." The new Classroom Building
and the Egan and Marino Centers dramatically fill both roles as they create
additional sites of interest and entry along Huntington Avenue and across
from the recently built Ruggles MBTA station, another location from which
pedestrians stream onto campus.
With Kariotis Hall, the Snell Library, the first campus beautification
efforts, the new master plan, and the renovation of older campus buildings,
the Ryder presidency set a promising course for the future. It was left
to John Curry, inaugurated in July 1989, to pursue it. The path was straight
and clear, but it was strewn with obstacles. In the fall of 1990, enrollments
began to drop precipitously. Forced to act quickly and decisively, President
Curry restructured the university: he drastically cut budgets over five
years, froze faculty positions, and pruned the staff. Still, efforts to
beautify the campus moved forward with unprecedented speed: landscaping;
construction of three new buildings (Classroom Building and the Egan and
Marino Centers); major renovations of Dodge Hall, the Ell Student Center
(renamed the Curry Student Center in 1996), and Columbus Place; and remodeling
of Ryder Hall. It was as if someone had waved a magic wand.
That someone was Robert Culver, in 1990 appointed senior vice president
and treasurer by President Curry. Culver and Curry were determined to improve
not only the university's financial standing but also its physical plant,
which they rightly valued for investment as well as aesthetic ends. With
a deeply felt interest in architecture complementing his expertise in matters
financial, Culver articulated a vision of how architecture, planning, and
interior design could work together to express the university's mission.
Not since Frank Palmer Speare had such a clear and conscious effort been
made to convey institutional aspirations through built form. As President
Curry redefined Northeastern's future as a smaller but better institution
of higher learning, the treasurer translated that goal into a more open,
flexible, and visually satisfying campus environment. The key recommendations
of the 1987 long-range master plan were realized in less than ten years.
In 1996, the most open and engaging connection between the gray- and
the red-brick campuses was achieved with the Centennial Path, leading from
Snell Library to Forsyth Street. Flanked by the science and engineering
buildings, the space opens up toward the west thanks to the ingenious siting
of the Egan Center. The edges of the landscape are defined on one side
by a cluster of trees that partially shield the Dana and Snell Engineering
Buildings and on the other by a grouping of flowers and shrubbery that
is reflected in the dark glass wall of Egan. The path itself is composed
of gently curving brick and asphalt surfaces interspersed by softly sculpted
mounds of grass and flanked by carefully placed outdoor furniture. In the
path's vista is Centennial Common, which presently concludes the spatial
continuum beginning with the Krentzman Quadrangle. In the best tradition
of New England greens, the common serves not only as a place of rest and
relaxation but also as a magnet for the buildings that face it.
Given the highly defined personality of the original campus, composed
of cool, abstract, and rather cerebral buildings expressing a functional
approach to learning and a puritanical way of life, landscaping offered
the most economical and persuasive means of altering that effect quickly
and decisively. A more "life-affirming" environment-to borrow
a phrase from Culver-emerged in which greater connectedness, openness,
flexibility, choice, and freedom prevailed. It should never be forgotten,
however, that the softening of the original campus was possible precisely
because courtyards were the central element of the original campus design,
even though the automobile, rather than nature, was too long allowed to
occupy them. In recent years, that concept has been carried throughout
the campus, from outdoor gathering areas like quadrangles and commons to
interiors incorporating inviting places for eating, conversation, study,
and rest.
Architecture is born out of a dialogue between client and designer.
When the partners are a good match and the owner's institutional identity
is captured in built form, the result is a triumph for authenticity. Northeastern's
founding generation clearly articulated its goals of order, utility, and
economy; the architects responded with a design that combined the dignified
formality of the Beaux-Arts tradition with the utilitarian spirit of Bauhaus
modernism. Thus did Northeastern's founding generation and its architects
give us a remarkable historical document in the original campus, a document
that speaks well to the university's vision of its unique role within the
city and as an institution of higher learning. It is important that that
authentic form, created to be "permanent and enduring," in the
words of Frank Palmer Speare, be preserved in its integrity.
If Richards Hall defines Northeastern's first phase, Kariotis Hall creates
the path for the second. Its warm, expressive curvilinearity softens the
cool, calculating angularity of the original buildings. While lacking the
dramatic effects of the Marino Center, the most worthy exemplar of the
Curry years is the Classroom Building, for it blends a respect for the
past with a bold statement, in its high-tech facilities, about the university's
present and future strengths.
The gray-brick campus and the red-brick campus both define Northeastern
as it moves into its second century. That those two parts of the whole
campus converse with one another, play off one another, represents the
rich diversity and complexity of Northeastern today.
Peter Serenyi is an emeritus professor in the art and architecture
department. This article is excerpted from Tradition and Innovation: Reflections
on Northeastern University's First Century, edited by Linda Smith Rhoads.
The book can be ordered for $39.95 by calling 617-373-1998.
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