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From Seminary Square to Spanker’s Branch and Beyond: Campus Landscape Design at Indiana University

Where: Office of University Archives and Records Management;  4th Floor East Tower, Wells Library

Drawn from the collections of the Indiana University Archives, this exhibit includes architectural plans, correspondence and photographs.

Referred to often as one of the university’s greatest treasures, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt said the following in the introduction to his 1918 Commencement Address: “I want to say at the outset that I don’t think I have ever been at a more beautiful university commencement than this. I shall always keep in mind this scene here in the open by the University buildings, a university which, in what we are apt to think of as a new nation, is approaching its centenary, here under these great trees, these maples and beeches, that have survived over from the primeval forest…it is a sight I shall never forget; it will always be with me…”

While the campus as we know it today looks quite different from what it did in 1918, much of the natural beauty of the campus landscape has been retained over the decades through the ever evolving collaborative effort of numerous creative minds.

The vision began in October 1883, when the campus Building Committee walked the grounds of the new campus to select the site for the first classroom building, and in the following decades included the plans of designers such as George E. Kessler of Kansas City, the Olmsted Brothers firm of Brookline, Massachusetts, and others. Most recently, in February 2009 the Board of Trustees approved a 20-year development plan for the university submitted by SmithGroup/JJR based out of Washington D.C.

For more information on this exhibit, visit the University Archives homepage at http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=93.