Lex Tate - An Illini Place: Building the University of Illinois Campus

Building the
University of Illinois Campus

LEX TATE and JOHN FRANCH

Foreword by

STANLEY O. IKENBERRY

2017 by the Board of Trustees

of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

C 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

from the Library of Congress

ISBN 970-0-252-04111-2 (cloth: alk)

ISBN 970-0-252-09981-6 (ebook)

Dedicated to all who plan, design, build, care for, and walk this Illini Place.

We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.

Winston Churchill, House of Commons,

London, October 28, 1943

T he Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois is among the most beautiful and expansive of any university campus in America. It is an inspiring place with stories to tell. For generations students and faculty have walked the broad expanses of green and entered imposing architectural structures, many of which were created long ago. They come here to learn, to search, to discover. They carry out research; they create, grow, perform, and mature. They engage in debate and contest ideas. They share and collaborate. They forge lifelong bonds; and some even fall in love.

This is the day-to-day life and work that takes place on the campus of a great university. When one walks across this vast campus today, the design and architecture appear more or less coherent. The Illini Union and Foellinger Auditorium anchor a grand quad at the core of what has become a vast enterprise. The campus stretches from the Beckman Institute at the north to the agricultural farms at the south, evolving for more than a century and a half, offering a home for students and faculty members from a vast array of disciplines. What happens here changes lives of those who go on to change the world.

The creation of the University of Illinois in 1867 signaled the emergence of a new kind of campus that would define the American research university as we know it today. The Morrill Act passed by the United States Congress in 1862 was signed by Illinoiss own President Lincoln. The act offered incentivesfederal grants of land or the proceeds from the sale of such landsto be used to create universities in each state, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.

The consequences were profound: who would go to college, what would be taught, the role of research and public serviceall were altered as a result of the Morrill Act. The introduction of science, engineering, and agriculture as part of the curriculum paved the way for expansion of the curriculum that ultimately included the many other disciplines and professions. College was no longer for the fewfor those preparing for the ministry, or sons of the wealthy. Under the Morrill or Land Grant Act universities were created to welcome the children of farmers and shopkeepers who studied alongside those from big cities like Chicago.

These new institutionsarguably born in Illinois in the mid-nineteenth centurygrew to form a national network of high-quality university campuses that today defines the unique character of much of American higher educationMinnesota, UC-Berkeley, Cornell, Illinois, Ohio State, Michigan State, Penn State, and countless others from coast to coast. If one were to point to a single event that shaped the origin and character of the University of Illinois, it would be the founding impetus provided by Mr. Lincoln and the Morrill Act.

Two University of Illinois presidents stand out as especially critical in the early years of the campus. The first regent or president was John Milton Gregory, who provided the strength of leadership, vision, and continuity (with his thirteen years at the helm) to ensure the fledging university would survive. It was President Edmund James, however, president of the university for sixteen years shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, whose leadership defined the commitment to excellence, academic vision and ambition, and scale and breadth of reach we know today. Very early in its history, Illinois was known as a great university, and that solid foundation survives today.

Events of each era shaped the development of the campus. Two world wars and the Great Depression stymied growth. On the other hand, returning World War II veterans, the baby boom, elevated aspirations for college attendance, new federal initiatives to fund researchthese and other developments shaped the environment for campus expansion and development over the years.

Illinois governors, legislators, and benefactors played a major role in shaping the development of the university campus, its facilities, and positions of academic leadership. Jim Thompson and Jim Edgar, along with legislative leaders of the era, including Stan Weaver, were a powerful force for good during my tenure. Private philanthropy also came to play a formidable role; among the most notable during my tenure were Arnold Beckman and his wife, Mabel. Son of a blacksmith from Cullom, Arnold was a chemistry student on the Urbana-Champaign campus who went on to complete his doctorate at Caltech. His storied career has been chronicled elsewhere, but his passion for Illinois and his gift of $40 million in the 1980s transformed science and technology at the University of Illinois.

While every university campus has some variety in its architectural style, the Urbana-Champaign campus during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s had no unifying theme or character. Inevitably, there are mistakes born of inconsistent planning and shortsighted decisions, but Illinois had vastly more than its share. The magnitude of the Beckman gift in the 1980s forced a complete rethinking of the architectural character (in the Georgian tradition) and the campus layout, beginning on the north campus and the renaissance of the engineering campus moving on to a profound re-visioning of the central and south areas of the campus.

Ultimately, universitiestheir plans and facilities and the priorities and commitments that underlie themreflect the values, aspirations, and choices made by the society of which they are a part. The University of Illinois is a great university because those who went before were determined to make it so. In the absence of that aspiration and foresight, universities like Illinois and their scholars and students would not exist, nor would their inventions and creativity.

Ours and every generation owes a debt to those who went before. An Illini Place enables us to grasp a sense of how it all began, the obstacles that were overcome, the opportunities that were seized, the people who made it happen, and the vision and values that sustained it.

May this history be a fitting prelude to the years that lie ahead.

Stanley O. Ikenberry
June 2016

S ignificant anniversaries demand significant celebrations. And so it is with the sesquicentennial of the founding of the Illinois Industrial University in 1867 in one building set on ten acres, with a Baptist minister regent and a board of trustees asked to chart a future on the boggy prairie of central Illinois.