Records of the University Architect

These records, which fill 27 boxes, including one half-box and one legal-size box, date between 1926 and 1977. They have been divided into two major subseries: Building Programs (Boxes 1-11) and Construction Operations (Boxes 12-27). The records incorporate a wide variety of materials ranging from building space requirements and descriptions by University faculty members of their research and teaching space needs, to correspondence, minutes, and reports, contracts, specifications, proposals in response to bid requests, reports of on-site engineering tests (caissons, compression, et al.), and detailed records of expenses and payments. Not all these varieties of documentation are found for each building represented in these records.

Building Programs

Files relating to Andersen Hall contain correspondence, drafts of planning programs for teaching and research and corollary space requirements, architectural sketches, committee meeting minutes, and equipment lists and costs.

The Block Gallery files include programs of requirements and correspondence.

Files on the graduate student dormitory, Engelhart Hall, contain questionnaires to graduate students, correspondence, programs for space design and cost schedules, correspondence with the City of Evanston and Evanston City Council documents, minutes of building committee meetings, and some architectural specifications.

Foster-Walker Hall materials include minutes of committee meetings, correspondence, reports, architectural outline specifications, job memoranda, space and cost allocations, and small sketches of the buildings and its site.

The O.T. Hogan Biological Sciences Building folders contain minutes of building committee meetings, correspondence, estimates of cost and space, small sketches of the building and the site, job memoranda, architectural outline specifications, and a substantial amount of reports, notes, and correspondence dealing with space use and equipment for laboratory animals. Since a grant application was made to the National Science Foundation for financial support of this building there are also some pertinent correspondence and reports between the University and the NSF.

The Leverone Hall folders include correspondence; drafts of building programs of requirements; minutes of building committee meetings; and considerable correspondence and other materials dealing with the location and arrangement of the business library, space and equipment needs, and costs as well as small sketches of the building and its site.

The Mudd Library folders contain correspondence, minutes of building committee meetings, much material relevant to departmental libraries, programs of requirements, architectural outline specifications, estimates of space and costs, and small sketches of the building and its site.

The Pick-Staiger Concert Hall folders include correspondence, minutes of building committee meetings, and reports from various consultants on space and equipment needs as well as space arrangement and cost estimates.

The Regenstein Hall of Music folders contain correspondence, minutes of building committee meetings, materials relating to space requirements, reports and correspondence from consultants, cost estimates, and small sketches of the building and its site.

The Science-Engineering Complex was never constructed. The folders of materials regarding this project include correspondence, reports and building committee minutes, and programs of space requirements.

The Social Sciences Complex also was not built. The folders contain departmental lists of space and equipment requirements, correspondence, minutes of building committee meetings, and small sketches of building layouts and arrangements.

The Theatre and Interpretation Center files include programs of physical requirements and arrangements, correspondence, minutes of building committee meetings, estimates and reports from several consultants, space and cost estimates, small sketches of building layouts and relationships, and lists of equipment requirements with costs. These files also include material on the proposed Owen L. Coon Speech Building, never constructed.

The Zeta Tau Alpha sorority files contain detailed construction specifications from the office of the noted architect James Gamble Rogers.

Construction Operations

These folders, arranged alphabetically by building name or functional designation and topical headings, generally contain bid specifications and proposals, reports of tests and construction work, and correspondence. Other materials include the following:

The Bramson, Browning, and Pedrick folder with material pertinent to University loans considered for the construction of faculty homes.

The Civil Defense folder includes space and food requirements for several projected shelters in University buildings as well as related correspondence and licenses.

The Engelhart Hall folders contain only statements of expenditures, including many subsidiary invoices, and applications to the University for payment.

The parking folders contain material pertinent primarily to the University's Chicago campus. Included are items relevant to studies on the need for automobile parking, zoning applications, and parking structures.

Several of the construction operations folders deal with demolition, e.g., Fayerweather Hall, rather than construction, and some concern remodeling, e.g., Scott Hall. The National Association of Physical Plant Administrators materials certain to meetings attended by John C. Sanderson, the University's Director of Plant Properties.