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Workers construct what is now Brookings Hall on campus 110 years ago.

It is nearly impossible to walk onto campus and miss the two crane booms towering in the sky by Mudd Field. The sight of bare steel girders and the sound of jackhammers may disrupt the otherwise tranquil atmosphere of the Washington University campus, but these small annoyances are justified by the project they are for—Olin Business School’s new Knight Hall and Bauer Hall complex. It seems that the campus is always having construction somewhere—2011 saw the major renovation of Umrath Hall, the restoration of Cupples II and the completion of the newest building on campus, Green Hall, located near Kayak’s Coffee. The recent additions of the South 40 House, Eliot B House and College Hall in 2010 altered the look of campus. Where and when did this never-ending construction start?

At the turn of the 20th century, the school moved to its current location from its previous campus downtown. Wash. U.’s Danforth Campus was originally called the Hilltop Campus of Washington University. While the first buildings, Brookings, Busch, Cupples and Ridgley (Holmes Lounge) were relatively new, the 1904 World’s Fair took place on campus and in Forest Park, and the 1904 Summer Olympics (the first ever in the Western Hemisphere) were held at Francis Field. It was quite a busy start for a college campus.

As the school grew in population and size, the first major physical change to campus was the addition of the South 40 in 1958. At this time, the school had moved away from the old Collegiate Gothic style of architecture (based off of Cambridge and Oxford Universities in England) to a modern approach. The traditional dorms on the South 40 (now the oldest) are the originals from that time period. Later on, the style evolved. In the 1970s, Modernist concrete buildings like Mallinckrodt Center, Olin Library and (now-demolished) Eliot Hall were added to campus.

In the 1980s, the administration decided to revert back to the quintessential “college look” of Wash. U. as the school grew more prominent and recognizable nationwide. The first building to retake the Gothic look was Simon Hall, which opened in 1985. Since then, essentially all campus buildings have been constructed in this style. Within the past decade, the administration has prioritized maintaining the collegiate style and preserving the few original buildings on campus. At the same time, the school has worked hard to upgrade the buildings with modern amenities.

This new philosophy—to keep the beautiful old buildings and transform their interiors into modern facilities—has been called “adaptive reuse” by Assistant Vice Chancellor of Campus Planning James Kolker.

“The main idea is to preserve the historic buildings but have contemporary facilities within,” he said.

For example, Cupples II used to be a building for the School of Engineering but was completely renovated in 2011 with pool classrooms (a term for rooms shared by multiple schools) and modern facilities like elevators, wireless internet and state-of-the-art technology.

Even more radical was the restoration of Umrath Hall in 2012. The building was completely gutted—everything but the exterior walls were demolished and reconstructed. Umrath now contains the Classics department, the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and Campus Y.

“Even after the new [Olin Business School] building, we have a lot in store for the future of the University campus,” Kolker said. First up is the construction of the new apartments on the Delmar Loop, which starts this month and is expected to be finished in 2015. The new Loop apartments will feature a retail ground floor, which is planned to include a grocery store (a much-needed amenity for residents near the Loop).

“While there will be no dining hall,” Kolker said, “we want to encourage the apartment residents to eat on Delmar Boulevard and strengthen our relationship with the community.”

Next is the renovation of the Athletic Complex, the aging sports facility on campus, slated to be complete in 2015. In the future, freshman dormitory Rubelmann House on the 40, will be replaced by a modern dorm similar to its residential college neighbors, the Umrath and South 40 Houses.

The vice chancellor alluded to more projects that are still on the drawing board. One such building is planned for the graduate Brown School of Social Work, which would be built on the hill that leads from main campus to the buildings of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. There is speculation of upgrading the science buildings, though no concrete plans have been established yet.

Kolker denied any possibility of expanding the school past its current boundaries.

“The Danforth Campus is limited by the boundaries it has now—three sides of campus are restricted by the residential neighborhoods of Clayton and University City, and the fourth side is limited by Forest Park,” he said.

“However,” he added, “the administration is looking to connect the campus even better than it is now. The new building for the Brown School will help connect the main campus with the Art and Architecture School buildings. We’re also thinking of ways to better connect the engineering school buildings with the Art and Architecture school buildings.” Right now, the massive Hoyt Drive parking lot separates the schools.

The aggressive campus revitalization plan, while largely applauded and successful, has also seen its share of opposition. One of the biggest controversies was the building of the Danforth University Center, completed in 2008. To make way for the DUC, Prince Hall, one of the original buildings on the Hilltop Campus, had to be demolished. Along with Umrath Hall, Prince Hall originally served as a men’s dormitory. Price Hall was eventually converted into a student center and later a part of the Business School. The demolition of Prince was featured in local news and criticized by BuiltStLouis.net, a website dedicated to the preservation of historic architecture in St. Louis.

The author of the article, who claimed to be an alumnus of Wash. U., wrote, “I’m shocked and dismayed to find that Wash U has made a deliberate decision to destroy one of its historic buildings — one that is highly important to the integrity of the campus, part of the ensemble that makes Wash U one of the city’s finest spaces and one of the best campuses in the country.”

According to the article “New University Center to replace Prince Hall” published in Student Life in 2006, “Prince Hall was one of the nine original buildings on campus…its unwieldy design prevented it from successfully serving student and faculty needs.”

The administration and students who had classes in the building were generally excited for the DUC, which would (and does) house many student groups and organizations, along with a dining hall. Yet local preservationists were adamantly against the demolition. The author of the Built St. Louis piece, who is anonymous, continued,“Even the most faithful of these [new Collegiate Gothic] buildings fall short in several ways: in scale, in workmanship and detailing, and by their unavoidable lack of the patina of age. Scale is the most glaringly obvious. Prince Hall and its contemporaries are not small, but they are intimate…these are human-scaled buildings, and they give the campus its unique charm.”

In response to the DUC controversy, Kolker said, “We want to be extremely respectful of the historical construction but realistic for the present and future. We are completely aware of the historic value of these buildings and have and always will take that into account.”

At the time, students celebrated the proposition of a new university center. In the aforementioned Student Life article, then-student Hillary Aaron said, “‘I was supposed to have a class in [Prince Hall], and my teacher hated the building so much that he switched it.’”

The century-old campus, has seen an interesting mixture of additions, deletions and constants. Some buildings have remained since construction of the Hilltop Campus, familiar to thousands and thousands of students over the years. Others are in their infancy­—brand-new with the latest innovations.

Yet the constant is that all changes to campus have been made with the best interest of the students in mind. These physical changes reflect the internal changes within the University. New buildings are added to accommodate more students. Old buildings that do not serve the student body’s needs are replaced or upgraded to do so. And, of course, the icons of campus are kept and maintained so that they are as memorable to students today as they have been in the past.