University of Chicago Southwest Quadrangle. Photo by Julia Bachrach.
UChicago students on a Chicago Studies Urban Hike. Photo by Julia Bachrach.
After five years of creating monthly blogs, I need to take a hiatus. When I retired from my position as Chicago Park District historian and launched a consulting practice in early 2017, I wasn’t sure how the second act of my career would unfold. The monthly blog postings helped me continue to hone my skills as a researcher and storyteller, and I am very thankful for the positive feedback I’ve received from readers. I’m especially grateful to those who have subscribed, and I plan to reach out to you from time-to-time with updates on projects and information about programs you may want to attend.
I’ve reached this crossroads because I will be extremely busy in 2023. In addition to other projects, I will collaborate with the Chicago Studies Program at the University of Chicago (UChicago) during the winter quarter. Over the past few years, I’ve also been working with architect Paul Steinbrecher on Heritage Landscape Strategy Reports for the U Chicago’s Facilities Division. So, it seems appropriate to blog about the history of the UChicago campus this month.
View of the University of Chicago and Midway Plaisance in 1907. University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center, apf2-02572.
The UChicago campus began rising alongside the Midway Plaisance in the early 1890s. The American Baptist Education Society wanted a Baptist college to be established in Chicago, and department store magnate Marshall Field agreed to donate land for the endeavor. Renowned American industrialist John D. Rockefeller, a devout Baptist, provided initial funding for the institution. Field and Rockefeller, along with three other business and religious leaders, adopted articles of incorporation for the university in the fall of 1890. The fledgling institution soon had an impressive Board of Trustees that included Chicago businessmen/philanthropists Martin Ryerson and Charles Hutchinson. The Board formed a Buildings and Grounds Committee to develop the campus. In 1891, the committee invited six architectural firms to submit sketches with a general layout for the campus. The group soon selected Henry Ives Cobb as campus architect.
Henry Ives Cobb’s Fisheries Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893. C.D. Arnold, photographer. Courtesy of Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archive, Art Institute of Chicago.
Born and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, Henry Ives Cobb (1859-1931) studied at MIT and Harvard University. After briefly working for the firm of Peabody & Stearns in Boston, Cobb was commissioned to design the Union Club in Chicago (later demolished). He moved here and founded a nationally renowned architectural firm. As noted by the Art Institute of Chicago, by the early 1890s, Cobb’s office had 130 employees, “the largest in Chicago at that time.” The firm’s local work includes the Newberry Library, Chicago Athletic Club, and Chicago Varnish Company Building (known locally as Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse). Around the time that Cobb was commissioned by the UChicago, he was also appointed to the Board of Architects for the World’s Columbian Exposition, and his fair designs included the Fisheries Building.
This rendering of Cobb’s plan for the UChicago campus appeared in “The University of Chicago,” The Architectural Record, IV, No. 2, December 1894.
Cobb’s UChicago scheme divided the campus into a series of seven quadrangles—a large, rectangular central quad with three smaller quads on each side. Quadrangles, or formal courtyard-like spaces, had long been an iconic form in campus design, and by utilizing this layout, Cobb conjured images of such prominent institutions as Oxford and Cambridge universities in England. He initially intended to design the UChicago buildings in a combination of the Venetian and Romanesque styles and construct them of granite. However, after he conferred with the Building and Grounds Committee, it was mutually decided that the campus would have English Gothic style structures built of Blue Bedford limestone. In 1894, Architectural Record noted that, in addition to reminding “one of Old English Universities,” Cobb’s campus layout would “remove the mind of the student from the busy mercantile conditions of Chicago and surround him by a peculiar air of quiet dignity….”
Nancy Foster Hall (Women’s Dormitory) and Southeast Quad. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-02470.
When the University of Chicago first opened in 1892, construction of the World’s Columbian Exposition was underway. Twenty-one years earlier, renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., had designed the 90-acre Midway Plaisance as the centerpiece of South Park, an expansive greenspace with Washington Park on the west and Jackson Park on the east. Although Olmsted had envisioned a formal canal flowing down the Midway, the waterway had not materialized, and the area had remained largely unfinished. In 1890, Olmsted prepared a detailed report examining potential World’s Fair sites. When he assessed Jackson Park, Olmsted noted that the adjacent Midway could be “cleared of its present standing wood” to provide exposition space and that, after the fair, it could be improved as parkland. Fair planners adopted this recommendation, and the Midway was designated as an area for various attractions, amusements, and rides, including the iconic 264-foot-tall Ferris Wheel.
World’s Columbian Exposition, Midway Plaisance, 1893. C.D. Arnold, photographer. Courtesy of Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archive, Art Institute of Chicago.
Because of its close proximity to the World’s Fair, the UChicago received substantial attention from visitors and local newspapers during the exposition. That fall, the Chicago Tribune announced that 500 World’s Fair guests were being entertained at Cobb Hall daily. The reporter suggested that, despite its unfinished state, the campus was becoming a “beautiful site.” The article noted: “Swamps and marshes have been made high lands, followed by a sodding of all the campus within the quadrangles.” Although the Trustees had not yet hired a landscape architect, they had begun to follow Cobb’s plan for the grounds by creating a prominent, treelined, north-south central axis.
View of the campus from the Ferris Wheel, 1893. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-02561.
By the turn of the century, more than a dozen UChicago buildings had been completed and plans for approximately 15 more were underway. Cobb had designed 18 buildings for the university altogether. One of his most iconic structures was the smallest—Cobb Gate, an archway embellished with grotesques and other neo-Gothic ornamentation. A gift of Henry Ives Cobb, the gate bears his name.
Cobb Gate. Photo by Nathaniel Parks. Courtesy of Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archive, Art Institute of Chicago.
This photograph of the 1898 class gift (a stone drinking fountain), shows the barren conditions of the landscape at that time. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-01634.
Cobb’s office became extremely busy, and in 1901, the Trustees decided to appoint a new campus architect. They selected Shepley, Rutan, & Coolidge, another Boston firm that had relocated to Chicago. With so many buildings under construction and a landscape largely devoid of plantings, the campus was becoming unsightly. As J.D. Rockefeller had recently contributed another $1.5 million to the university, the Trustees set aside $25,000 for landscape improvements. The Building and Grounds committee soon hired landscape architect O.C. Simonds to create a beautification plan for the campus.
A graduate of the University of Michigan, Ossian Cole Simonds (1855-1931) moved to Chicago in the late 1870s and began a career as an architect and engineer. While working on an extension to Graceland Cemetery, he became enamored with landscape architecture, and decided to change careers. Appointed as Superintendent of Graceland Cemetery, Simonds soon began experimenting with ways to give the grounds a more naturalistic appearance. These included transplanting native trees and shrubs from the Illinois countryside to the cemetery landscape—an approach quite unheard of at that time. Two decades later, his work was highly-regarded throughout the Midwest. As Martin Ryerson and other prominent Trustees had chosen the bucolic Graceland Cemetery as their families’ burial place, O.C. Simonds was not a surprising choice as UChicago landscape architect.
O.C. Simonds’s UChicago plan was published in an article entitled “Beauty Scheme for the University of Chicago Campus,” Chicago Tribune, April 15, 1901.
John Charles Olmsted. Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives.
Abandoning Cobb’s vision for quadrangles, Simonds took a naturalistic approach to designing the campus. His plan called for a web-like circulation system that followed existing (unplanned) desire paths, and irregular masses of shrubs and vegetation that would shroud the architecture. The Trustees officially adopted the plan and began implementing it by installing shrubs and other plants. As improvements were underway, however, several Trustees and professors began complaining about the chaotic appearance of the landscape. As a result, Charles Hutchinson asked John Charles Olmsted to come to Chicago, “look the ground over,” and “see what he thought of it.”
Nephew and stepson of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., John Charles Olmsted (1852-1920) studied at Yale University prior to entering the family business. He had become a full partner by 1884, when the family and firm moved to Brookline, Massachusetts. J.C. Olmsted was quite familiar with Chicago. He had helped design the World’s Colombian Exposition landscape and afterwards prepared plans to transform Jackson Park and the Midway back to parkland. Frederick and his wife, Mary Perkins Olmsted (widow of Frederick’s brother John Hull Olmsted), had a son of their own, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (1870-1957), who spent a summer working on the exposition while studying at Harvard University. F.L. Olmsted, Jr., joined the firm in late 1895, and, after his father retired a couple of years later, became a full partner to his half-brother. After a brief period as F.L. & J.C. Olmsted, their firm became known as the Olmsted Brothers.
Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. Courtesy of Palos Verdes Library District Local History Center Collection.
J.C. Olmsted traveled to Chicago in September 1901. He toured the UChicago campus with Charles Hutchinson, who intimated that several board members had strong objections to Simonds’s proposed circulation system and other aspects of his naturalistic approach. Olmsted later reported, “I agreed that a curvilinear system of roads and walks, irregular beds of shrubs and scattering trees with undulating lawns would not be as suitable as a strictly formal design.” After J.C. Olmsted had returned for two more site visits, he presented the Olmsted Brothers’ findings in a detailed 36-page report dated March 20, 1902. Noting his great respect for Simonds, Olmsted felt that criticizing his work was a “very disagreeable duty.” Olmsted nevertheless wrote: “Mr. Simonds has failed to realize that the buildings are many times more important than the grounds and that their layout and massive, imposing architectural style, absolutely demand, from an artistic point of view, a corresponding simplicity, formality and dignity in the treatment of the ground.”
Preliminary Plan for Washington University. Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot, 1895. Courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Interior, National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.
Within a few weeks of receiving the Olmsted Brothers’ report, the Trustees dismissed Simonds. In mid-May they contacted the Olmsteds, asking them to serve as landscape architects for the university. In his letter to the firm, Henry Rust, the UChicago’s business manager, suggested, “It is understood that the formal system rather than the park or natural system is favored by you and by reason thereof considerable of the work already done under Mr. Simonds direction will have to be undone.” The Olmsted Brothers were clearly a good match for this project. The firm had extensive experience laying out college campuses utilizing formal plans. Their many campus designs that feature quadrangles include Stanford University, Vassar College, Columbia University, the University of Mississippi, and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
The University of Chicago, Preliminary Plan for Campus. Olmsted Brothers, December 31, 1902. Courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Interior, National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.
The Olmsted Brothers produced numerous plans, studies, and reports throughout the remainder of 1902. Following a directive from Hutchinson, they had meetings with John Merle Coulter (1851-1958), a renowned UChicago botany professor whom they helped plan a “biologic pond” as an outdoor research laboratory and a respite for students. (Located within Hull Court, the site is now known as Botany Pond.) Noting that the pond would have a special character, the Olmsted Brothers wrote, “We assume that…the border of the pools and brook will be planted with water plants and appropriate water side shrubbery. Were it not to be planted, we should make an entirely different and more formal design.” They indicated that they expected Shepley, Ruttan & Coolidge to design a small bridge to cross the pools. (The architects produced such a bridge as the class gift of 1922.)
Botany Pond. Photo by Julia Bachrach.
After the Olmsteds met with architect Charles A. Coolidge in Boston in late September to discuss numerous details that needed clarification, they completed a preliminary plan for the UChicago campus. The Trustees determined that they could not afford to implement the entire plan at once. Instead, they decided to start with the northwest quadrangle near newly completed Hitchcock Hall. The Olmsted Brothers produced the revised preliminary plan for the campus on December 31, 1902. Providing a formal and dignified setting for the English Gothic complex, the plan also allowed for gatherings ranging from small outdoor classes to convocation ceremonies.
This photograph shows one of the most important elements of the Olmsted Brothers Plan--the tree-lined north-south axis with its circle drive in center, 1913. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-02754.
For roughly another decade, the Trustees continued working with the Olmsted Brothers to implement their plan. With its rectangular layout and straight lines, the campus of quadrangles seems quite simple, but its creation was, in fact, quite complex. I think the accomplishment of this design is well summarized by historian Jean F. Block in a 1982 conference paper entitled “John C. Olmsted: Landscape Architect for the University of Chicago, 1902-1914.” Block wrote: “Working from the belief that the nature of the buildings determined the general approach” to designing the campus, the Olmsted Brothers “made careful analyses for human needs—for foot and vehicle traffic, for delivery of supplies and disposal of wastes. Arrangements for caring for these needs were developed within a framework of artistic criteria—for simplicity, formality, dignity, and such visual pleasures as axial vistas and architectural centerpieces.”