College Employees Value Campus Environment, 'Chronicle' Survey Finds
When a Chronicle survey asked college employees what they value about their jobs, they put the physical environment in which they work at the top of the list. (Chronicle photograph of Washington & Lee U.)

Rise in Tornadoes, Floods Poses Risk to Colleges
What if the sort of extreme weather that has left the University of Iowa inundated in floodwaters is not a freak event? What if it is a sign of things to come? (Photograph by AP Images)

Art & Architecture Renovations Near Completion at Yale U.
Paul Rudolph's 1963 Brutalist icon is getting a makeover, plus an addition by Charles Gwathmey.

Guest Blogger: Marc Mayerson
Like swashbuckling movie heroes, facilities planners take on herculean tasks.

Guest Blogger Archive

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About Buildings & Grounds

Buildings & Grounds is written by Scott Carlson (left) and Lawrence Biemiller (right). Scott Carlson writes about architecture, facilties, energy, and sustainability, among other topics. Lawrence Biemiller writes about architecture and facilities and contributes to Notes from Academe. What's happening on your campus? Let us know.

Shop Talk: Buildings Criticized, a Building Canceled, and a Bowling Alley Found

An 1899 bowling alley at Georgian Court U. will be restored. (Brunswick Foundation image)

An incredible spare: The nation’s oldest operational bowling alley, located at Georgian Court University in New Jersey, will be restored this spring. The lanes have been dormant and nearly forgotten since the 1960s. The three-lane bowling alley, which dates to 1899, was a party spot for railroad tycoons and other Gilded Age elite. The Brunswick Foundation, the charitable arm of the Brunswick Corporation, a sports company founded on bowling and billiards, will pay for the renovation. When finished, the lanes will feature chalk for drying hands, slates to keep score, and wooden balls, just as in the old days.

One thing they aren’t making more of, especially in New York: The New York Times reports that Cooper Union, which gives free tuition to its students, has been able to survive in part because of some savvy land dealing. The most recent deal was the lease of a 36,000-square-foot parcel with a college building; a developer paid $97-million for a 99-year ground lease. The Chronicle also covered this story some years ago.

Deadline pressure: Following the departure of Sean O’Keefe from his post as chancellor of Louisiana State University, some donors are holding back the money they committed for a new building at LSU’s E.J. Ourso College of Business (right). But university officials insist that won’t stop them from reaching a deadline of raising $30-million for the project by March 31, reports The Daily Reveille. (They have to meet the deadline to get matching money from the state.) In December, LSU’s Board of Supervisors approved the design of the 150,000-square-foot complex by ikon.5 Architects.

And missed deadlines: The University of Washington at Seattle has stopped construction on an office building for UW Educational Outreach, reports the student paper, The Daily. “We halted the project because it was behind schedule, roughly six months,” said Richard Chapman, associate vice president of the Capital Projects Office. The delays led to increased construction costs. The building would have been 69,000 square feet, designed by Perkins + Will, and built by Ledcor. For now, the site will be seeded with grass and fenced in.

Everyone’s a critic: A letter to the Lexington Herald-Leader, written by an architect in town, sneers at new buildings planned for the University of Kentucky’s College of Law, which were designed by the firm of Robert A.M. Stern. Graham Pohl, of Pohl Rosa Pohl, said the proposed Federal-style designs were “dead ringers for a very dead architecture” that “reproduce a 225-year-old architectural style without imagination or creativity.” The style was used by the nation’s founders “to suggest legitimacy and erudition,” he writes. And what’s wrong with legitimacy and erudition? Mr. Pohl insists the university needs something new to convey authority. “In this century, judges are respected even though they no longer wear powdered wigs.” (Sorry, but we couldn’t find an Internet link to the letter; it’s available on Nexis.) The student newspaper, The Kentucky Kernel, asked the university architect, Warren Denny, and an architecture student about Mr. Pohl’s complaints. They said the design for the complex, which will cost $100-million, fits within the context of other buildings on that part of campus.

But not all are critical: Speaking of Bob Stern and law schools, Globe critic Robert Campbell approves of Mr. Stern’s design for Harvard Law School. The area never had a sense of cohesion, he says, and the design had to “gather itself and its surroundings into a coherent whole, giving the law school what it’s never had: a campus with a sense of place and a visual identity. … It’s always hard to judge a building before it’s finished, but the ‘Northwest Corner Building,’ as it’s known until a donor comes forward, looks like a promising success.” —Scott Carlson

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