University of Chicago. Dept. of Buildings and Grounds.

Before Lyman Flook’s appointment as Superintendent of Construction in 1927, building activities at the University were directed and supervised by the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Buildings and Grounds and the University Business Manager. The Trustees’ Committee was among the first standing committees appointed by the President of the Board. Composed of the President of the University, the President and Secretary of the Board, and five Trustees, it held its first meeting in October, 1890. It was authorized to select the architect, designate the first sites and buildings, review specifications, consider bids, and make recommendations to the Board of Trustees. The Committee met regularly until the end of 1893, after which its work was assumed by the newly created Executive Committee of the Board; it was reinstated in 1898 and continued its work until 1932, when it was superseded by the Trustees’ Committee on Business Affairs.

In 1900, the University Council established a five-member Buildings and Grounds Committee drawn from the faculty and charged with advising the Trustees’ Committee on Buildings and Grounds. President Harper named Ernest D. Burton chairman of the group and expressed the hope that “steps be taken in the various departments concerned to formulate as accurately as possible the plans of buildings in which they are generally interested.” The faculty committee, however, was soon replaced by individual departmental committees selected as the need arose.

The Business Manager, an officer of the Board of Trustees and after 1923, a Vice-President of the University, was responsible for all expenditures on buildings and grounds. He prepared lists of University needs and estimated costs of physical improvements, and presented them to the Trustees’ Committee for discussion and approval. When funds had already been authorized, and only questions of design were involved, the Committee on Buildings and Grounds assumed full responsibility. If new expenditures were required, however, the Business Manager presented the Committee’s recommendations to the full Board of Trustees for discussion a ratification. Once building proposals were approved, the Business Manager secured the necessary contracts, supervised construction, and paid all bills.

The Department of Buildings and Grounds evolved gradually during these years. Although maintenance was originally handled by an Engineer, the growth in size and duties of the maintenance staff during the University’s first decade made the need for an efficient Superintendent apparent. M. H. Maclean was appointed the first Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds in 1903 and served until 1910. He was succeeded by Clyde Douglas (1910-1915) and H. W. Rouse (1916-1919). In 1919, Lyman Russell Flook, an engineer and former Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds at the University of Michigan, was named to the post. Although the administration of the physical plant had always been handled by the Business Office, it was not until 1916 that Buildings and Grounds was considered a separate Department in the auditor’s accounts.

In 1924, the University began a significant program of physical expansion financed in part by individual benefactors and in part by the remainder of John D. Rockefeller’s $10-million final gift in 1910. As planning proceeded, it became apparent that the variety of problems to be solved and decisions to be made was not only beyond the capacity of the Trustees’ Committee on Buildings and Grounds, but would also put a severe strain on the Business Office. In an August, 1924, letter to Business Manager Trevor Arnett, Flook argued that the Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds could provide important assistance in the management of the new building program. “It is simply a question,” he said, “as to how far the Building Committee wishes to detail their responsibility to *** some other person. . . . Whoever the person designated, he should be familiar with the needs of the Academic Department occupying the Building, with the drawings and specifications. . . . He should be on the alert to forsee simplifications of plan, defects of planning, improvements of design and detail. . . . He should, for the Owner, inform himself as to the scheduling of the major materials and sub-contractor’s work, to be sure that the date of completion will be achieved. Such operations should clear through the channels having contractual relations with the Architect - the Owner’s usual contact - the Business Manager” (4:1).

In October, 1927, Flook’s proposal for an expanded role was largely realized by his appointment as Superintendent of Construction, a new post giving him direct supervision of the planning and erection of all campus buildings. Architects and engineer undertaking work were instructed to addre’ their correspondence directly to Flook’s office, where Flook would annotate carbon copies and forward them to the Vice-President and Business Manager. As part of this reorganization, Emery Jackson, an employee of the firm of Coolidge and Hodgdon, was apointed University Architect, and Lester Ries became Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds in charge of operations and maintenance.

For each building constructed during the expansion period, Flook consulted on the design with Jackson, the architects, faculty members, and a Faculty Committee on Symbolism appointed by the President to suggest subjects for ornamentation and approve models. Drawing on Flook’s reports, the Business Manager then made recommendations to the Trustees’ Committee on Buildings and Grounds. Ultimate decisions on the selection of architects and contractors, building plans, costs, materials used, equipment, furnishings, decoration, and inscriptions were made by the Trustees’ Committee with the ratification of the full Board of Trustees. Exceptions to this practice were buildings for such institutions as Chicago Lying-In Hospital and Hicks-McElwee Orthopedics Hospital that had come to the University with their own board of trustees.

Lyman Flook remained Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds until his retirement in 1953. The Department of Buildings and Grounds w discontinued in the 1960’s when construction was taken over by the Office of Physical Planning (established in 1967) and maintenance was absorbed by the Plant Department (established in 1969).

Twenty new buildings were constructed on the University campus during the expansion program of 1926-1931. The entire Midway facade was filled in, ranging from International House at the east to the hospital complex on the west, with Rockefeller Chapel, the Social Science Research Building, and Wieboldt Hall in between. The Oriental Institute was built northwest of Rockefeller Chapel as part of a planned but never fully realized Chapel Block. Two new buildings, Judd Hall and Sunny Gymnasium, were added to the School of Education. The inner quadrangles acquired Eckhart Hall and Jones Laboratory, as well as the Theology Group composed of Swift Hall, Bond Chapel, and the Cloister. To the north, a new Botany Laboratory, twelve greenhouses, and an animal research facility were constructed. Stagg Field was remodeled, and the Field House was added to campus recreational facilities. Construction south of the Midway included the Burton-Judson men’s residences and the Blackstone Avenue Power Plant.

The whole campus was dug up, not only in preparation for the new buildings, but also to permit the laying of an intricate network of tunnels emanating from the Power Plant that would bring heat and electricity to every building on the campus. Along with this construction, older buildings were remodeled, including the President’s House, several dormitories, and a group of stores on 61st Street redesigned in the Tudor style to serve students living south of the Midway. Cottages, barns, apartment buildings, and the old Del Prado Hotel were demolished to make room for new buildings. The old Quadrangle Club, converted for use by the School of Commerce, was moved to 58th Street and renamed Ingleside Hall. Professor William Gardner Hale’s house was rolled down University Avenue and relocated south of the new Quadrangle Club to provide a graduate club house and make room for Chicago Theological Seminary to construct its complex on the northeast corner of 58th Street.

The number or architects involved in this expansion program distinguished it from the two earlier phases of University construction. During the first period (1892-1900), Henry Ives Cobb had dominated design as the University’s chief architect. In the second phase (1901-1916), most of the work was done by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. In the third phase (1926-1931), Charles Coolidge continued as a campus architect through a new partnership with Charles Hodgdon, for many veers the firm’s Chicago representative. Other architectural firms participating in the expansion were Goodhue Associates (later Mayers, Murray, and Phillip); Holabird and Roche (later Holabird and Root); Charles z. Klauder; Armstrong, Furst, and Tilton; Zantzinger, Borie, and Medarie; Perkins, Chatten, and Hammond; and Schmidt, Garden, and Erickson.

This was also the final period of reliance on neo-Gothic styles in the University’s architecture. While a complete break with eclecticism would not be made until the construction of the Administration Building in 1948, the technological and financial strains of designing Gothic hospitals, laboratories, or gymnasia were increasingly apparent. Later University buildings would adapt to rather than adopt the Gothic mode.

With the exception of the Charles E. Merriam Center for Public Administration (Public Administration Clearing House), completed in 1937, no new buildings were erected on the University campus between 1932 and 1948. After World War II new buildings were needed to accommodate the radical developments in the physical sciences, house the University’s administrative staff, furnish residences for faculty and students, enlarge University High School, and provide additional facilities for the professional schools. Additions to the hospitals were accompanied by long over-due reconstruction and updating of old facilities. A building program was devised for the south side of the Midway Plaisance that drew in affiliated organizations working with the University on problems of research and education. These included, in addition to the Public Administration Clearing House, the American Bar Center, the Center for Continuing Education, now the Graduate Student Residence, and the Industrial Relations Center (Charles Stewart Mott Building).

After 1948 major changes took place in the University’s architectural style, its methods of financing new buildings, and the ways in which the building program was planned and administered.

Three important factors influenced the University’s architectural style: 1) the decision to abandon neo-Gothic in favor of a more contemporary approach; 2) the determination to preserve campus unity so far as possible by continuing to build in limestone, maintain where appropriate the quadrangular plan, and encourage the architects to integrate the new buildings with the old; and 3) a policy of employing renowned contemporary architects to design individual buildings, rather than giving, as in the past, almost total responsibility for the entire campus to one firm (see guide to Department of Buildings and Grounds Records, Sub-Series 1). Among the firms given commissions were Holabird, Root and Burgee; Eero Saarinen and Associates; Edward Durrell Stone; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Perkins and Will; and Harry Weese and Associates. Schmidt, Garden and Erikson, who had designed Chicago Lying-In Hospital in 1931, were architects for the alterations to the old hospitals, the new hospital units, and the Research Institutes.

Whereas before World War II University buildings were financed chiefly by the beneficence of individual donors And/or the Rockefellers, the post-War period saw an enormous growth in government, foundation, and corporate funding. For example, the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital (now the Franklin McLean Memorial Research Institute) was constructed under the supervision of and with funds from the Atomic Energy Commission; the Research Institutes were financed by the Atomic Energy Commission, the Office of Naval Research, and more than twenty leading corporations; the Center for Continuing Education was given by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation; and the re-modelling of the first women’s dormitories for use by the Department of Psychology was made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The administrative mechanisms for planning and supervising the building program were also changed. The Trustees’ Committee on Buildings and Grounds had been terminated in 1932, and its work was assumed by the Committee on Business Affairs. In 1949 the functions of the Committee on Business Affairs were taken over by the Budget Committee and any ad hoc committees it might see fit to appoint. Among these ad hoc committees were the Area Committee, formed in 1949 to address the problems posed by the deterioration in the surrounding neighborhoods, and the Committee on Campus Development. The latter was succeeded in 1958 by the Trustees’ Committee on Campus Planning. Thus there evolved two different but interacting and cooperating Trustees’ committees, one concerned with the building program and the neighborhood, the other with the campus.

Guidance and surveillance of architects for campus buildings had earlier been the responsibility of the Trustees’ Committee on Building and Grounds, working in cooperation with the Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds. In 1929, in response to the pressure engendered by President Burton’s building program, the office of Consulting Architect was created, and Emery Jackson, who had been with Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge and done much of the designing for Ida Noyes Hall, was selected to fill the post. Both Jackson and the Department of Buildings and Grounds had offices in Ingleside Hall. Jackson was succeeded in 1948 by J. Lee Jones, who held the office until he retired in 1964 to be replaced by I. W. Colburn. Jones’s office was in Rosenwald until 1963 when the Office of University Architect was created and located in the Young Building (Chicago Home for Incurables).

A further architectural appointment was made in the mid-fifties. Uneasiness about the conditions of the neighborhoods to the north and south of the University, combined with a sense of the magnitude of the building program, contributed to the Trustees’ determination to select an outside architect to prepare a long-range plan. Consulting Architect J. Lee Jones prepared a list of potential candidates from which the Trustees might choose. Eero Saarinen, who had had extensive experience in campus planning, and was highly recommended by Trustee Walter Paepcke, for whom he had worked in Aspen, was selected to develop a master plan for the University.

Saarinen paid his first visit to the University in 1954. In 1955 he presented a master plan at a joint meeting of the Trustees’ Area Committee and the Committee on Campus Development. He was subsequently engaged as a consulting architect to pass on the appropriateness of the work of other architects designing for the University. His firm also designed two University complexes, the Law School Quadrangle and Woodward Court and Commons. In 1958 Saarinen’s preliminary plan was revised and presented to the newly constituted Trustees’ Committee on Campus Planning. Saarinen’s untimely death in 1961 terminated this particular phase of campus planning, but the program for this period was climaxed in 1964 by the successful application to the Ford Foundation for a $25 million challenge grant for extensive additions to the physical facilities and the announcement in 1965 of the opening of the Campaign for Chicago.

In 1969 the Office of University Architect and a new office of campus planning were combined into the joint Department of Physical Planning and Construction. Problems of maintenance and management were delegated to the newly established Plant Department.

From the guide to the University of Chicago. Department of Buildings and Grounds. Records, 1892-1965, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)