{"id":211608,"date":"2026-03-30T13:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T13:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/211608\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T13:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T13:02:08","slug":"it-wasnt-april-fools-just-mischief-that-shaped-usfs-early-campus-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/211608\/","title":{"rendered":"It wasn\u2019t April Fools\u2014just mischief that shaped USF\u2019s early campus trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Paul Guzzo<\/a>, University Communications and Marketing<\/p>\n

The landscaping around the University of South Florida\u2019s Fine Arts Building is neat
\n and organized \u2013 trees planted in straight rows along the sidewalks in a grid formation.<\/p>\n

But outside the adjacent Contemporary Art Museum, a small cluster of trees breaks
\n formation \u2013 zigzagging unexpectedly away from the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

Hard to spot at first, but once noticed, impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n

It looks like an error or natural growth \u2014 maybe even a long\u2011ago prank \u2014 but it\u2019s
\n neither.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s art.<\/p>\n

The pattern is a spontaneous installation its creators never imagined would survive.<\/p>\n

As the story goes, six decades ago, students quietly shifted flags marking where the
\n trees were supposed to be planted. The landscaping crew followed the markers exactly.<\/p>\n

To many observers, the tale has all the ingredients of an April Fools\u2019 stunt. But
\n the students behind it were firm: this wasn\u2019t mischief. It was intention \u2014 a living
\n installation by USF\u2019s charter class, a subtle disruption woven directly into the emerging
\n campus.<\/p>\n

\"trees<\/p>\n

The trees around USF’s Tampa campus typically line the sidewalks [Photo by Paul Guzzo,
\n University Communications and Marketing]<\/p>\n

\"no<\/p>\n

But these outside the USF Contemporary Art Museum are haphazard [Photo by Paul Guzzo,
\n University Communications and Marketing]<\/p>\n

Today, as USF celebrates its 70th anniversary, those trees still stand as a quiet
\n monument to the university\u2019s earliest creative spirit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an aesthetic decision,\u201d said Robert Stackhouse, an internationally renowned
\n artist and member of USF\u2019s charter class who participated in the activity. \u201cWe were
\n advanced arts students and very protective of our building. We didn\u2019t want our building\u2019s
\n landscaping to look exactly like everywhere else. We wanted it to be unique, like
\n us. And now it\u2019s part of USF history.\u201d<\/p>\n

A campus finding its shape<\/p>\n

When USF opened to students in 1960, the campus looked less like a university and
\n more like a desert mirage \u2014 three buildings, lots of sand, almost no sidewalks and
\n just scattered trees.<\/p>\n

Art students didn\u2019t have their own space. Instead, during USF\u2019s inaugural year, they
\n used classrooms in the Administration Building and were without dedicated studios
\n or performance venues.<\/p>\n

The following year, when Harrison Covington was named chairman of the Department of
\n Art, he moved them into the basement of the student center.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were in a windowless basement, right next to the ping pong table and billiards
\n room,\u201d Stackhouse said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Construction of the Fine Arts Building began in 1962 as part of USF\u2019s first major
\n expansion. It opened in June 1964, giving the campus\u2019s most colorful students a long\u2011overdue
\n place of their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cYears later, Harrison told me that the artists, thespians and musicians were our
\n football team back then,\u201d Stackhouse said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have any sports, but our productions
\n and art shows brought people to campus and kept us in the news.\u201d<\/p>\n

And at the time, Covington mimicked a hard\u2011nosed football coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe loved him, but he was a disciplinarian,\u201d Stackhouse said. \u201cHe always scheduled
\n master painting classes at 8 a.m.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tree-planting episode was made possible largely by circumstance.<\/p>\n

When access meant possibility<\/p>\n

Artist-in-residence and abstract painter Friedel Dzubas was given studio space inside
\n the new facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never would have been in any position to move the flags without that studio created
\n just for him,\u201d Stackhouse said.<\/p>\n

When Dzubas\u2019 residency ended, Stackhouse was allowed to use the same space for a three-month
\n term \u2014 giving him and his friends rare after-hours access to a building and grounds
\n still taking shape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey figured someone might as well make use of it,\u201d Stackhouse said. \u201cIt was on the
\n northeast corner of the arts building. My friends would come in to hang out, and we\u2019d
\n listen to Miles Davis\u2019 \u2018Sketches of Spain\u2019 over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, it was at that time, according to the USF Library\u2019s Special Collections
\n records, that the university began sprucing up campus with a major landscaping push
\n that transplanted mature magnolias, oaks and cedars around keyacademic areas, including
\n the Fine Arts Building.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne night, my friends showed up and said that flags had been placed on either side
\n of the walkways, noting where they would plant trees,\u201d Stackhouse said. \u201cWe went outside
\n to look and someone said something like we didn\u2019t want trees in a boring row leading
\n up to the arts building. So, we picked up the flags and placed them haphazardly. It
\n was our art project for the night. We wanted it to look more natural. Consider it
\n an artistic intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Stackhouse graduated in the fall of 1965, the flags were still waiting to be
\n replaced by trees. Once they were, as the mismatch became more noticeable, it was
\n assumed the trees were naturally growing rather than transplanted \u2013 as was the students\u2019
\n intention.<\/p>\n

From playful act to permanent mark<\/p>\n

Stackhouse went on to earn a master\u2019s degree from the University of Maryland and display
\n paintings and sculptures in art museums throughout the United States and internationally
\n before returning to USF for an exhibition of his work in 1981 and another in 1992.<\/p>\n

It was during that second one that Covington, who had since heard of the flag prank
\n from other graduates, pointed out the trees to Stackhouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was certainly surprised,\u201d Stackhouse said with a laugh. \u201cI remember once writing
\n my name between some bricks as a student, thinking I could come back one day and find
\n it \u2014 a little legacy. That didn\u2019t work out, but the trees did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Fine<\/p>\n

The Fine Arts Building in the 1960s [Photo courtesy of USF Special Collections]<\/p>\n

\"museum\"\/<\/p>\n

The Contemporary Art Museum in 1989 [Photo courtesy of USF Special Collections]<\/p>\n

Stackhouse also said that Covington told him the trees had influenced the planned
\n footprint of the neighboring Contemporary Art Museum, which opened in 1989 \u2014 prompting
\n architects to adjust the building\u2019s placement rather than remove the trees.<\/p>\n

A late-night act of spontaneous artistic expression may have quietly shaped one of
\n USF\u2019s signature buildings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess the architects looked at those randomly placed oak trees and said that because
\n they were natural growth, they shouldn\u2019t cut them down,\u201d Stackhouse said. \u201cInstead,
\n they designed the museum around them. I remember saying, \u2018Wow, I didn\u2019t realize we\u2019d
\n done something that monumental.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Campus lore confirmed<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s architect, Peter Gottschalk, said he can\u2019t recall whether trees impacted
\n his work, so that part of the story might be forever unsubstantiated, even if true.<\/p>\n

But the relocation of the flags has been verified by others.<\/p>\n

Peter Foe, who studied photography at USF from 1972 to 1976, said one of his instructors,
\n Jim Oliver, told him he participated in the flag\u2011moving and tree\u2011planting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that I had heard the story from a couple of other sources during my time at
\n USF too,\u201d said Foe, who also worked at USF\u2019s Contemporary Art Museum for more than
\n 20 years. \u201cIt\u2019s accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Kristin Soderqvist, who has been at USF for more than 40 years \u2014 first as an arts
\n student and now as director of sales and marketing for Graphicstudio \u2014 said she\u2019s
\n heard it from a number of Stackhouse\u2019s former classmates who recall when it happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you are walking across campus, do you ever notice the perfectly manicured landscaping?\u201d
\n Soderqvist said. \u201cEvery tree in a perfect line, crepe myrtles in happy rows, palm
\n trees standing at attention, until you get to the Fine Arts Building. Some of the
\n oldest oaks on campus seem out of place, a bit haphazard. Well, you can thank the
\n artist Robert Stackhouse and his friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a reminder that sometimes art doesn\u2019t hang on a wall. Sometimes, it takes root.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Paul Guzzo, University Communications and Marketing The landscaping around the University of South Florida\u2019s Fine Arts Building…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-211608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}