"America's Ugliest Campuses"

[Cosima___J]

Whoever came up with this list must need glasses. I find some of the buildings pictured to be rather attractive. John (jbuck), there's one you might care to comment about.

http://www.travelandleisure.com/article ... e-campuses

[living_stradivarius]

Seems like the blogger has something against squares and rectangles.

[jbuck919]

Seems like the blogger has something against squares and rectangles.

Don't knock it--the same source lists Stanford as one of the most beautiful campuses (as I'm sure it is). I think it was that list that Cosima was referring to.

Actually, I was never impressed with Princeton and Yale as beautiful campuses except in bits and pieces. In fact, I never applied to Yale for undergrad studies because the day I visited was rainy and its street-front buildings presented a forbidding aspect. I guess I'm a sucker for a natural setting, because of the campuses I have seen, the most beautiful seem to me to be Cornell and, at the very top, West Point. I would be hard pressed to name a discordant element of either the US Military Academy campus per se or the army post that surrounds it that detracts from an overall sense of a beautiful layout in a beautiful setting. Perhaps some of the utilitarian structures near the north gate, but very little else.

As for ugly campuses, they missed the truly hideous State University of New York at Albany, now known just as the University at Albany, with an inhuman-scale campus designed by the famous but awful architect Edward Durrell Stone (who also designed the undistinguished Kennedy Center). I often wonder how so many students survive four years in this desolate fortress without having their minds warped.

[karlhenning]

I've not been to the Albany campus for comparison . . . so I happily take as a working hypothesis that, at least somewhere, there is a campus less visually and logistically loathsome than SUNY Buffalo . . . .

Cheers,
~Karl

[John F]

As a college traveler (i.e. sales rep) for W.W. Norton, visiting campuses in 12 states (west of Ohio), I saw plenty of eyesores far worse than anything pictured in the article. I also visited quite a few campuses that are rated attractive and have to say that they didn't necessarily strike me that way. But of course I was far more concerned with what went on inside the buildings than how they looked on the outside.

[living_stradivarius]

Looks like a similar list came out in 2007. Harvey Mudd certainly keeps its title with Wally the Wart ( a concrete block) as its mascot.
http://drewd.com/2007/12/12/sorry-wally-the-wart

[jbuck919]

I took the long weekend to visit my father in Florida, the first time in three years I've been able to do so, since my mother's situation kept me from being away overnight. He is still going strong at 85, and he likes a tourist project, which is how I got to see the Kennedy Center, for instance. This time it was the long drive to St. Augustine, where I encountered the campus of Flagler College, a highly rated small liberal arts college that I had never heard of. Well-designed in-town campuses that have a sense of architectural integrity and compatibility with the urban landscape are a rarity. (Another example is George Washington University in DC.) The Flagler-era (you can look him up if you don't know who he was, as I did not) architecture in St. Augustine has obvious influences but is pleasantly distinctive.



[edited to replace failed image]

[piston]

UMaine campus pictures are invariably shot during the nice season:

[jbuck919]

UMaine campus pictures are invariably shot during the nice season:

Small wonder (not that this is picking on Maine in particular as opposed to many northeastern campuses).