University of Nebraska Lincoln - Cornhusker Yearbook (Lincoln, NE)

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7™y. jested cliant;cs and a readjustment of the plans incorporating more or less of these suggestions, and this piiKess repeated again and again, not only brings out ideas otherwise unavailable, but it makes all in- terested parties contributors and thereby secures their interest and endorsement and, later, their enthus- iasm and support. I do not think we can stress as fully as we would like, the importance of an adequate setting for our buildings. We devote untold thousands of wealth to the development of culture, and culture is the objective of all our etforts as University people, in this connection we are quite well aware that m is solely through the art and the literature of the civilizations that have gone before us that we hav. any possible way of judging them and it is only those peoples that develop an art and a literature ot their own that live in history today. Regardless of how conscious v may be of this fact it seems that we are overlooking for the most part the greatest possible opportunity in our failure to co-ordinate our many beautiful and monumental buildings into a composite whole that will adequately support their beauty. We have often observed that a cottage with a beautiful setting is a much more K ' autiful picture than a mansion without any setting at all. We have noted, for instance, that the City of Washington, which during its lifetime has doubtless had more attention paid to planning than any other city in America, never seemed to find herself until recently, at the time of the building of the Lincoln Memorial. An open mall or fairway was developed between that building and the Potomac River on the one end and the Capitol Building on the other. Then the city seemed to be immediately conscious of the impKirtance of tying together all the monumental structures of that are;i into one great picture which might be supported m time by the lesser lights of the landscape. Our conclusion is that in the building of our landscape it is not the housing problem that should dominate the scheme, nor should the kind of house to be built by future administrators of our Uni- versity affairs be made the subject of comment or discussion or planning. On the other hand it is the open spaces, the fairways, the malls and the vistas that should dominate the scheme and the building i ' .reas along should be incorporated as a setting for the whole. In this connection we invite again a careful study of the illustrations that accompany this story of our campus plan; that our people may know to what extent we have undertaken to apply to our picture the simple principles we have herein enumerated. Note in detail the flat tracing of the University zone, that it is well defined and well framed, and that it has a veritable series of fairways and vistas interlocking on numerous axes to form a compre- hensive group of picture? that together make up our landscape. Two of these vistas are illustrated here in perspective: I. The Stadium Mall (Fourteenth street to Stadium) II. The Quadrangle (Engineering group to Library) Many others equally beautiful are not illustrated. A. Eleventh street fairway, to Engineering group. B. Stadium Walk (with gateway) — Twelfth street vacated. C. Fifteenth street —from State Capitol to Librarv D. Fifteenth street from Library to State Capitol. E. Library to Women ' s Gym. F. Women ' s Gym to Library. G. Library to Engineering group. H. Engineering group to Library (illustrated). I. Fourteenth street to Stadium (illustrated). J. Auditorium to Administration building. K. Administration building to Auditorium. Note also the happy use of lower ground to the north of Auditorium .uul Women ' s Gym by a sort of sunken garden effect, to be made use of for athletic fields. After careful study of all, we cordi.iily mvite all friends of our L ' niversily to contribute any thought suggestive of improvement. Giio. N. Skymdur. Chatrman Campus Planning Committee University of Nebraska. MM y.v•vyi y. y• • y•«W4 y • % y•

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s III. In the development of a campus landscape it seems to us that the ideal method (and the necessary one) is to create a considerable number of these pictures complete in themselves, dominated maybe by a greater vista in the form possibly of a quadrangle or oval, depending upon the nature or topography of the area. Now in our studies of the situation at the University of Nebraska we found that during the life of the institution covering a period upwards of fifty years, that the governing board had many time? sensed the desirability of plans looking to the future growth and development of the institution, and were anxious to make plans that would be adequate to take care of future requirements and from time to time during that period we think a half dozen or more considerable schemes were laid out with that purpose in view. We found, too, that each of these plans had been in turn stored away in the vaults or cupboards of the Administration Building and lost, so far as services to successive governing boards was concerned. We found, also, that any movement in the premises looking toward the perfection of other and greater plans were listened to with great indilTerence and that a great amount of inertia had to he overcome in order that any progress at all might be made. In order, then, that the plan we had in view might not meet the same fate of its predecessors we began studiously to search for the cause or causes of their undoing, if any there might be, and we came to the conclusion : 1 . That all the plans that had been submitted were the work of architects and that an architect by reason of his culture and training has dominant in his mind the housing problem, his whole training having been directed rather toward the building itself than toward the setting of it. All his fees and all his livelihood having been based during all his experience upon a percentage of the cost of the building itself. We found that his energies had been, as a rule, directed toward the possible housing needs of the University for its several colleges for a term of years and the plans that he de- veloped therefore stressed that motif. 2. The plan seemed always to have been superimposed upon the University and was never the outgrowth of a studious effort on the part of those most intimately in- terested and contained no contribution that breathed a breath of the life of the University itself. Our conclusion has been that to plan the future area of a campus in such a way that it may live, it should be contributed to by every department of the University, inclusive of the governing board, the faculty, the alumni, the student body, and where located within a city, the Chamber ot Commerce, the city council and other affiliated interests. Our experience has been that widely-distributed photo stats of plans with requests that suggestions of change be made; the adequate digestion ot these sug- IMI y. S4v: • :4V• y4V

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EXECUTIVE