The diversity of Penn\u2019s campus architecture serves as an archive of the University\u2019s centuries-long history.<\/p>\n
From the Gothic style of College Hall to the contemporary facade of the Vagelos Laboratory for Energy Science and Technology, the buildings on Penn\u2019s campus are not designed in one homogenous style and instead reflect the historical period in which they were created.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That approach was developed throughout the history of the University\u2019s West Philadelphia campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to find leading architects of their time and let them pursue a design that reflects that period \u2014\u00a0as opposed to trying to draw references and doing a sort of pseudo-historical work that refers to something from the past,\u201d University Architect Mark Kocent said.<\/p>\n
David Brownlee, an art history professor emeritus, described the campus as \u201ca museum of architecture\u201d instead of adhering to one specific aesthetic.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Get the DP delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n
Sign Up<\/a><\/p>\n After the University first shifted to its West Philadelphia campus in 1872, Penn installed<\/a> Thomas Webb Richards as chief instructor in architecture.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe gave us the collection of buildings around College, starting with College Hall, and what\u2019s now called Cohen Hall, and a huge hospital complex across the street \u2014\u00a0all in a what at the time was a was a pretty up-to-date Gothic Revival style,\u201d Brownlee said.<\/p>\n He pointed to the \u201cgreenstone buildings\u201d on Penn\u2019s campus, which \u201cwere clearly inspired\u201d from what Richards saw in British magazines. \u00a0<\/p>\n By the 1880s, the University was already shifting toward building design centered around interior function. The \u201cfirst great change\u201d was with Fisher Fine Arts Library, which opened in 1891 and was Penn\u2019s main library until 1962.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brownlee said Fisher was designed with the \u201castonishing focus on being a library and analyzing what a library needed,\u201d explaining that the architects constructed \u201ca building that satisfied each of those needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Around the turn of the century, architects began applying the same approach across campus.<\/p>\n The University initially retained Cope and Stewardson, a firm specializing in Collegiate Gothic style, to teach architecture to students, Brownlee said. The firm soon began designing new buildings for Penn\u2019s campus. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey saw in the making of architecture a challenge to be as inventive and creative as they could with the use of historical forms, but not to copy anything,\u201d Brownlee said. \u201cStarting in the 1890s, working with provosts [William] Pepper and then [Charles Custis] Harrison, they built a building for every school in the reorganized University.\u201d<\/p>\n Law buildings needed large reading rooms, medical buildings required laboratory space, engineering buildings warranted room for machinery, and veterinary buildings necessitated animal-accommodating facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPenn, both in its school of architecture and in its making of the campus, strove to be different,\u201d Brownlee added.<\/p>\n Perhaps unsurprisingly, campus design has a large impact on the University environment, William Whitaker, the director of Penn\u2019s Architectural Archives at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design said.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone who builds a campus and builds a university wants the students to be able to achieve a high level,\u201d Whitaker said. \u201cSo much happens outside the classroom to make education a powerful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n He explained that Penn\u2019s architecture is tied not just to its own history, but to Philadelphia itself, saying the campus \u201ctells its history in bricks and mortar.\u201d<\/p>\n Specifically, the usage of brick serves to connect architecture across campus \u2014 which Whitaker said reflects Philadelphia\u2019s history as a city heavily built from the material.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kocent added that contemporary architects are still asked to study masonry and other materials to use around their sites, describing those shared features as the \u201cDNA of Penn.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n At the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, for example, the glass building\u2019s height and composition were designed in relation to neighboring Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall and the ARCH. The slopes of the building\u2019s atrium reference nearby rooflines.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kocent said a materials consultant was hired to consider \u201cevery possible chemical formulation of the mortar, the brick, the terracotta,\u201d for the ongoing renovations<\/a> to Fisher, to ensure the restored library will be \u201cas close as possible to the original building.\u201d<\/p>\n