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Editor's Note: With the completion last year of
the College's $30 million North Campus Project, which
included the building of Kohlberg Hall and the complete
renovation of Trotter, major construction projects have
halted on campus.
But not for long.
A comprehensive long-range planning effort currently
under way will lead to a new set of goals and priorities for
the next century that will doubtless include further
renovations and building projects.
A subcommittee of the College Planning Committee (CPC)
has examined the College's physical plant. Its preliminary
report, presented to the CPC last spring, identified five
potential areas of improvement: renovation of and addition
to the DuPont Science Building, renovation of Parrish Hall,
a new residence hall, renovation of and addition to McCabe
library, and a new facility for student activities.
Swarthmore's current position of academic and financial
strength allows for measured and thoughtful planning, with
the expectation that the College's future needs will be met.
But it wasn't always so, as College history buff Elizabeth
Weber '98 learned during many hours of research in the
Friends Historical Library. We also asked architect Margaret
Helfand '69 to contribute her professional opinion of the
"the campus that never was."
In 1930 it was clear that
Swarthmore was on the verge of a building boom. The size of
the student body had doubled since the turn of the century,
to nearly 700. The dining room could not hold the
ever-increasing number of students; the library was in
desperate need of more space; the men's and women's
gymnasiums needed replacing; the observatory was situated
far too close to the new Clothier Memorial Hall; Worth Hall
had been designed as half a quadrangle, which would surely
someday be completed; and funds had already been donated for
the Edward Martin Biological Laboratory.
With so many projects anticipated, President Frank
Aydelotte presented two master plans for the long-term
development of the campus to the Board of Managers, so that
new buildings would be placed in an aesthetically pleasing
way and underground utilities could be located
efficiently.
But Aydelotte could not foresee the extent of the Great
Depression. The Lamb-Miller Field House opened in 1934 and
Martin Biological Laboratory in 1937, but fund-raising
campaigns of the scale needed to complete the plan had
become unrealistic. The money that had been donated already
for the relocation of the observatory was used instead to
improve the existing facility and to renovate space for the
departments of Mathematics and Psychology. A temporary
addition was built behind the library. The Swarthmore
Preparatory School folded during the Depression, and the
College eventually bought the Prep's buildings, renaming
three of them Palmer, Pittenger, and Roberts halls, easing
the space shortage.
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World War II further delayed completion of the master
plan. Incomes rose, but building materials were needed for
the war effort. The Board of Managers approved the expansion
of Beardsley Hall in 1943, but the local War Planning Board
vetoed the project, and so Beardsley was not enlarged to its
present size until after the end of the war. Plans for an
art deco-style North Campus Project lay dormant.
At the end of the war, planning began again in earnest.
With some students sleeping in the gym, the need for a new
dormitory was obvious. A larger library and a new science
building were also high priorities. The Board of Managers
believed that with higher income taxes, wealthy individuals
who could donate entire buildings would become increasingly
scarce; however, with incomes rising at the end of the war,
they decided that a general fund-raising campaign should
begin as soon as possible.
But the designs drawn in 1946 would never appear on
Swarthmore's campus. Swarthmore leased and then purchased
the Mary Lyon School buildings, again easing the housing
shortage without constructing a new dormitory. Unexpected
inflation eroded the value of the funds that had been
raised, and building costs did not fall back to their prewar
levels. Faculty salaries began to rise again after a 15-year
freeze, further reducing the funds available for
buildings.
Eventually all three of the buildings proposed in 1946
were built, but in the intervening years, their appearances
changed beyond recognition. The women's dormitory, which
completed the Worth quadrangle, became Willets, opening in
1959. The science hall north of Parrish became the DuPont
Science Building, which opened in 1960. And the library on
the east side of Parrish was McCabe, finished in 1968.
Since 1946 there appear to be almost no designs drawn for
buildings that were never constructed. In part this is
because the College had selected Vincent Kling as College
architect by 1957 and saw no need to solicit alternative
designs. Kling designed DuPont, Sharples, McCabe, Dana, and
Hallowell. And in recent years, buildings haven't been
designed at Swarthmore until the funds for their completion
have been committed.
Elizabeth Weber '98 majored in economics and is
working at the Census Bureau in Washington, D.C. Her article
"Swarthmore and the NSA" appeared in the September 1997
Bulletin. She gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Mary
Ellen Grafflin Chijioke '67, curator of the Friends
Historical Library.
Margaret Helfand '69 finished her undergraduate
education with a degree in architecture at UC-Berkeley. She
is the principal of Margaret Helfand Architects in New York,
lead architects and planners for the recently completed
North Campus Project, including the design of Kohlberg Hall
and renovations of Trotter Hall.
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