2024-03-28T13:10:37Z
http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/do/oai/
oai:digitalcommons.conncoll.edu:archstudhp-1000
2018-11-05T19:50:57Z
publication:archstudhp
publication:honors
publication:arthistory
The Architecture of Connecticut College
McDonald, Thomas Blake
Honors Paper
2010-01-01T08:00:00Z
architecture
Connecticut College
Gothic
Modernist
<p>Due to their large file size, the images in this paper are not of sufficient quality for printing. For the version of this thesis with print-quality images, please contact the Linda Lear Center (learcenter@conncoll.edu).</p>
<p>The Connecticut College campus has changed dramatically in the last century. Originally a women’s college design as a series of Gothic quadrangles inspired by the examples of prestigious English universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, development changed course dramatically in the 1920s and 1930s, as inwardly focused designs gave way to a sweeping Campus Green modeled after Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia. While the Green continued to serve as the organizing spine of the campus, by the midcentury the College had introduced Modernist buildings to facilitate both coeducation and expanding curriculums. This thesis starts from the premise that these changes are meaningful. Each period of expansion tells us not only about the aesthetic vision of the architects who designed the individual buildings, but also about the values of those who commissioned the structures. Thus, the spaces of the Connecticut College campus, as well as the grounds themselves, are a useful medium for understanding the educational, social, and cultural values that informed the school’s history. Based on extensive archival research and on a close reading of the buildings and their relationships to one another, this thesis considers the physical forms of the Connecticut College campus and their role in shaping both student experience and the image the College presented to the world at large. Established well after the first women’s colleges of the late 1800s, Connecticut College opened on the eve of a transformative period in women’s history. The strict codes of conduct that had governed the Victorian era were beginning to slacken, and women were taking a more active role in the cultural affairs, evident in the battle to win the right to vote. While the original layout, appearance, and amenities of the Connecticut College campus were informed by an understanding of women’s needs that emphasized domesticity and sheltering of feminine innocence, perceptions of those needs were in flux throughout the first fifty years of the College’s existence, and led to dramatic changes in campus form Ultimately, the thesis makes two main arguments. The first is that, for the fifty years that it functioned as an all-women’s school, Connecticut College differed from the traditions of gendered higher education established in the Seven Sister schools, but also quickly diverged from models put forth by all-male colleges. After an initial building campaign of monastically inspired structures meant to safeguard its occupants, the College quickly developed a physical and academic identity based on women’s increasingly dynamic role in American society. While still attuned to the how collegiate space for women differed from that for their male counterparts, such as the construction of multiple cooperative, “practice homes,” and the adoption of a housefellow system by which professors served as protectors of student propriety from centrally located suites in every dormitory, overall the campus adopted a progressive position reflected in the steady shift towards modern design. The second argument focuses on the more recent periods of development, when, as the College struggled to regain a sense of history, it attempted to return to the notion of the campus as a family-like entity through several building campaigns. In the years directly preceding the College’s centennial, a series of structures that look to the schools’ earliest era of development in both architectural form and community-centered function confirm an institutional commitment to close-knit togetherness. Finally, these projects reinforce the extent to which the constructed campus continues to function as a tool with which to shape the character of the College.</p>
2010-05-19T07:00:00Z
Architectural History and Criticism
Architecture
https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/archstudhp/1
oai:digitalcommons.conncoll.edu:archstudhp-1001
2012-05-18T18:24:20Z
publication:archstudhp
publication:honors
publication:arthistory
The Plant Building: Gender, Urban Reform, and Skyscraper Design in New London, CT
Cahoon, Allison
Honors Paper
2012-01-01T08:00:00Z
<p>The City Beautiful and the City Practical movement –a contemporaneous alternative—were architectural and urban planning initiatives that began in the last third of the 19<sup>th</sup> century as a response to unprecedented urban growth. More specifically, these two movements were conceived as solutions to the “problem” of women on the street as new urban conditions came in conflict with gender ideals as defined by the Victorian separate spheres of masculinity and femininity. Most often, studies about turn of the century urban planning, as it included the Victorian city, the City Beautiful movement, and the City Practical movement, focus on large cities with dramatic, comprehensive urban planning solutions.</p>
<p>This thesis is generated from the acknowledgment that New London is not simply a lesser version of these major urban centers. Using a range of primary sources, including architectural plans, postcards, fire insurance maps, city directories, newspapers, and the building itself, this thesis analyzes the Plant Building in its physical and social context within New London. Research establishes the 1914 Plant Building, a typical five-story, mixed-use commercial structure, as an implement of the City Practical in the small city of New London, CT. Incorporating aspects of skyscraper design within its construction and framing its identity in newspapers and postcards, the Plant Building aligned itself with the skyscraper, a City Practical building type of choice. This study of State Street highlights that the physical relationship between the street and buildings changed through the Victorian city, the City Beautiful, and the City Practical, in response to how the atmosphere of the street was imagined as a function of society. Contributing to this urban reimagining was both the strategic architectural interventions on the street and the contextualizing media found in newspapers, postcards, and booster literature. Also this argument recognizes that gender is a predominant factor in the imagination of the street and so greatly contributes more to these three urban compositions than is typically recognized in these studies.</p>
<p>Ultimately, this thesis aims to address important historiographical issues. The understanding of the City Beautiful movement and the City Practical movement change if their definitions are expanded to accept the developments of State Street. New London demonstrates the extent that non-architectural materials can empower even a limited expression of architecture to enact social change and so reveals the importance of the studying the small city within the larger scheme of architectural history.</p>
2012-05-18T07:00:00Z
Architectural History and Criticism
Architecture
https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/archstudhp/2
oai:digitalcommons.conncoll.edu:archstudhp-1002
2013-05-23T18:58:31Z
publication:archstudhp
publication:arthistory
Domesticating Materials and Construction: American Prefabricated Homes, 1900-1960
Thomson, Alison
Restricted
2013-01-01T08:00:00Z
<p>The prefabricated housing movement in the first half of the twentieth century made use of a variety of new materials and industrial processes to produce a wide range of innovative designs and construction methods for residential architecture. At a time when homeownership was on the rise, and the “American dream” of a single-family home in the suburbs was growing in popularity, prefabricated housing companies marketed themselves as the best means of fulfilling this goal. For many architects and entrepreneurs the interest in prefabrication as a solution for housing problems in America stemmed from a desire to provide all Americans, of every socio-economic class with well-designed, affordable housing. As a result, many of these systems of prefabricated housing appear in company towns built across the country in the early years of the twentieth century. Regardless of the reasons for their involvement in the movement, proponents of prefabrication expected it to revolutionize housing and change the face of American domestic architecture.</p>
<p>This thesis examines several examples of prefabricated housing systems designed and put into production in the early twentieth century and analyzes how various approaches succeeded and failed in fulfilling the goals of this movement. It also looks at the preservation of surviving examples of these various methods of prefabrication, taking into account the durability of the materials and the changes that have been made to the structures over the course of their history. The chapters are organized by material. The first chapter discusses concrete prefabricated housing, looking at examples of how reinforced concrete, a relatively new material was applied to domestic architecture. The second chapter analyzes prefabricated houses constructed using metal. There are a variety of examples of houses using either steel or aluminum as their primary material that illustrate the use of another experimental material employed in home construction. The third, and final chapter looks at examples of wood prefabricated housing, assessing the application of the most traditional home construction material to prefabrication. Each chapter addresses the benefits and drawbacks associated with each material in an attempt to give a better understanding of the prefabrication movement of the early twentieth century as a whole. Investigating the contemporary circumstances of each example, including how the houses were originally marketed given the economic, political, and social conditions of the time, as well as the current state of preservation of surviving examples lends insight into the origins of the movement and its legacies.</p>
2013-05-23T07:00:00Z
Architectural History and Criticism
https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/archstudhp/3
oai:digitalcommons.conncoll.edu:archstudhp-1003
2015-05-22T17:15:31Z
publication:archstudhp
publication:arthistory
Designing for Community: The Social and Spatial Construction of Danish Housing Architecture
Stoll, Peter
Restricted
2015-01-01T08:00:00Z
<p>Discourse within the field of architecture has traditionally been limited in scope to debates on style, form, and morality. Going beyond this superficial level requires understanding the processes by which the built environment is socially produced. Drawing on Manuel Castells’ theory of urban social change, and a wide variety of primary and secondary source research this thesis investigates housing architecture in Denmark since the end of the Second World War. Specifically, it seeks to address a fundamental question about the character of Danish housing: how have the processes of social and spatial production in Danish housing architecture resulted in the notable penchant in Denmark for designing for community?</p>
<p>The chapters of this thesis are organized around this relationship between social structures and the built environment. In order to provide context for the chapters that follow, the first chapter discusses the long history of Danish vernacular architecture, from 3000 B.C. to the start of industrialization and early planned housing developments in the late nineteenth century. The second chapter investigates the connection between the Danish Welfare State and social housing, from the beginning of the Social Democratic movement to the advent of market-oriented policies in the early twenty-first century. The third chapter focuses on the emergence of co-housing as an alternative housing form during the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s in Denmark. The fourth and final chapter examines housing architecture in the context of the twenty-first century Danish Welfare State, as the country grapples with neoliberal influence and the need to build a sustainable future. A brief conclusion discusses the findings of this thesis and the implications for the field of architecture.</p>
2015-05-22T07:00:00Z
Architectural History and Criticism
Architecture
Urban, Community and Regional Planning
https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/archstudhp/4
oai:digitalcommons.conncoll.edu:archstudhp-1004
2017-06-12T18:55:11Z
publication:archstudhp
publication:arthistory
Building for the Future: Charting A Liberal Arts Education and its Effects on the Connecticut College Campus
Alibozek, Jessie
Restricted
2017-01-01T08:00:00Z
2017-06-12T07:00:00Z
Architectural History and Criticism
Higher Education
https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/archstudhp/5
oai:digitalcommons.conncoll.edu:archstudhp-1005
2019-05-14T18:46:43Z
publication:archstudhp
publication:arthistory
The Role of Architects in Contexts of Displacement: A Case Study Analysis of Collaborative Architecture with Refugees
Ezbidi, Jamila
Restricted
2019-01-01T08:00:00Z
2019-05-14T07:00:00Z
Architecture
https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/archstudhp/6