The Perfect Building: But Needs Renovation & Underpass Access

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

---

---

SCUP Link

Montgomery County Community College (MCCC) found an historic building but it was separated from campus by a freight railroad line, requiring a mile walk for students. MCCC staff and corporate partner renovated the first floor of the building and discovered and reconstructed a previously filled-in underpass that et students take a shortcut under the tracks. This is a brief but interesting article at University Business by Melissa Ezarik. “I think it’s triggered a camaraderie there.” Students are staying on campus longer and can often be found in local restaurants and volunteering downtown. “The community is so appreciative," notes president Karen Sout. More.

---

Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Mills College Heritage Landscape Planning

SCUP's Campus Heritage Network is an ongoing research project funded by the Getty Grant Foundation. SCUP is working to derive lessons learned from 85 campus heritage-related planning projects funded by Getty from 2002–2007. SCUP staffer Claire Turcotte, administrator of the project and also a member of the research team has produced a summary of the landscape heritage report filed with Getty by Mills College. You can find that summary here, as well as a PDF of the complete report and a link to Mills College heritage buildings in the Council of Independent Colleges' (CIC) online database from its Historic Campus Architecture Project.

If you are at all interested in campus heritage preservation, you should join the Campus Heritage Network to stay connected to others with the same interest.

Since 1868, Mills College founders, and those who followed, shaped the campus with Picturesque-era exotic and native plantings and distinguished architecture. In 2006, Mills College sought guidance on how to best preserve, enhance, and further develop this unique campus setting. Funded by the Getty Foundation and Mills College, this landscape heritage study distills the values of the college founders and how these were expressed by nationally recognized landscape architects and architects over 140 years.

The project singles out iconic resources and recommends how to balance future development with historic preservation. The project included historical research, analysis, and planning, and it culminated in design solutions for two key campus precincts to address current and future needs. The study demonstrates that the use of historic resources is integral to sustainable planning and design. The public lecture series, integration of the study into college courses, and publication of a book increased awareness and excitement about this study’s findings and recommendations. The result is a campus environment that expresses the unique identity of the institution.

---

Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Historic Buildings/US General Services Administration

The GSA has a fairly complex and useful Web portal presenting information about the more than 1/4 of its buildings that are listed on or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. There is a searchable database and you can "explore" by architectural style, state, or historical timeline.

New Book: Historic Preservation: An Introduction to Its History, Principles, and Practice

As part of our community building for SCUP's Getty-funded Campus Heritage Preservation Initiative, we recently met with two of the editors of this book, Ilene and Norm Tyler, which is how we learned of it: "A primer that covers the gamut of preservation issues, from underlying philosophy to rehabilitation economics. Historic Preservation provides a thorough overview of the theory, technique, and procedure for preserving our architectural heritage. The perfect introduction for both architecture students and the interested layperson, it covers preservation philosophy, the history of the movement, the role of government, the designation and documentation of historic structures, establishing a historic district, sensitive architectural design and planning, and the economics of building rehabilitation."

The Economic Upside Of Historic Preservation

Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, Michigan are neighboring college towns, well, "university towns." This article isn't specifically about the universities, but is a nice exposition on the value, economically, of heritage preservation.

"I cannot identify a single example of a sustained success story in downtown revitalization where historic preservation wasn’t a key component of that strategy. Not a one," Rypkema says. "Conversely the examples of very expensive failures in downtown revitalization have nearly all had the destruction of historic buildings as a major element."

Bowdoin Museum of Art Expansion: No 'Default to White'

A beautiful building. A challenging expansion project. Author James McCown says of this building that "no small building in New England so exquisitely epitomizes the Beaux-Arts style. It's exterior has not been changed since 1894, which definitely makes it a valuable campus heritage building. Of its expansion, McCown writes:

It is an eloquent refutation of one of the most dispiriting tendencies of the past few decades—what I call the "default to white." Faced with the daunting task of expanding a landmark building, many architects, fearful of offending some delicate sensibility, have sought refuge in a sort of Calvin Klein beige-and-white minimalism. 

Not so here.

Preserving Cultural Landscapes

This thoughtful article could be useful for those interested in campus heritage preservation:

Just as the concept of cultural landscape can mitigate polarized views of nature versus artifice, so it can bridge divisive opinions on the relative importance of "architecture" versus "history."

The segregation of these terms into categories was codified by National Register criteria and other documents emanating from the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and reflects long-term attitudes among preservationists in the United States. This bifurcation can wreak great mischief, for it reduces "history" to intangibles—associations with persons, events, and the like—robbing it of any physical dimension.