Stanford University: The Campus Guides [Paperback]

Richard Joncas (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1568981694 | ISBN-13: 978-1568981697 | Publication Date: September 1, 1999 | Edition: 1

The unique settings and circumstances of American college campuses have given rise to some of the richest and most innovative examples of architecture and planning in the United States. These campuses are sites of many of the country's finest building programs, and showcase the best work of successive generations of architects. In spite of this, there has, until now, never been a comprehensive overview of the architectural heritage of America's campuses.The Campus Guides are beautifully illustrated, informative books on the design and history of American campuses. These titles will appeal to architects, historians, and travelers as well as to the students, prospective students, parents, faculty, and alumni for whom the campus holds many rich memories. Each book profiles over 75 major buildings and gardens on the campus and its surrounding community, and also provides visitor information. The guides feature color photographs newly commissioned for the series, as well as archival photographs and drawings. A perspective map illustrates an overview of the entire campus and significant landmarks; smaller detail maps locate buildings, museums, performance halls, religious structures, parks, and gardens. The New York Times praises the books, "which illustrate how academic goals were developed and expressed through campus design, and include artful maps, photographs, archival drawings, and historical narratives written by architects or professors of architectural history."

Editorial Reviews

Review

Welcoming prose, engaging photographs, carefully detailed book design. -- AIArchitect, July/August 2000

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568981694
• ISBN-13: 978-1568981697
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #571,569 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stanford as a collection of buildings, December 26, 2007

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readersf (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Stanford University: The Campus Guides (Paperback)

This is another volume is the Princeton series on U.S. universities, using a similar format: the campus is divided into "walks," with each chapter covering one walk and commenting on each building. As one reviewer here did not seem to understand, this is not the insider's guide to Stanford, nor even a full history of the University. That said, the reviewer made a telling criticism: in a campus defined by its setting, showing the buildings without showing the surrounding trees and open areas gives a false sense of the appearance of the place.

When compared with other volumes in this series, "Stanford" is a little better than average. The entries are brief and factual, without the rather elliptical architecture speak that characterizes some of the Ivy League volumes. Most buildings are represented by a small photograph. There are a very few full page pictures.

Based on the date of publication, this book was not written for the Princeton series, but was adapted for it. The maps appear to have been added more recently, and the method of presentation is different from the other volumes. Here, the buildings are considered not by location but by period, starting with the original structures (including ones destroyed in the 1906 quake) and proceeding up to the present. This means that adjacent entries are adjacent in date of construction, not location. Building 71 may be half a mile away from building 72. In the original publication, written for a Stanford audience, this was not a problem, but it may be difficult for those who do not know the campus. There are a number of errors in the maps, with some buildings not listed or not marked on the maps. Finally, a few entries seem wrong: Toyon hall is listed a dormitory for 150 men. Hmm... that's what it was when built, and perhaps (I doubt this) it is today. When I lived there 20 years ago, it was a dorm for about 230 men and women. Nice picture though.

In fairness, the chronological approach is more logical, even if it makes it harder to read the maps. It allows the reader to see how building one structure can change the look and the traffic patterns of a large part of the campus.
On the whole then, I recommend this book as a good way to see Stanford, so long as you understand the limitations of this kind of history. Just don't look for pictures of the tree or LSJUMB!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Snapshot of Stanford's Architecture, November 14, 2010

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Dr. Bojan Tunguz (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stanford University: The Campus Guides (Paperback)

The concept of a university campus is something that is very American and not easily communicated to people who come from other countries. As an international student at Stanford in the mid nineties I had hard time describing what it meant when writing back home simply because there is no equivalent word for "campus" in my native Croatian. Most American universities have been conceived as self-containing scholarly communities, an intellectual idealization of the Greek polis. This is one of the reasons why most of them to this day are located far away from the major urban centers, and many of them have actually been the nucleus around which the surrounding college towns had grown. This concept of a university is nowhere more clearly realized than at Stanford.

Stanford quite literally is a separate town (no, it is not located in Palo Alto). It was built on the private farm of Leland Stanford, an erstwhile governor of California and builder of the western part of the transcontinental railroad. The total area of the campus lands comes to over eight thousand acres which makes it the largest contiguous university campus. However, most of that land is undeveloped and a relatively small fraction of it is used for the regular university buildings. Even so, very few parts of the campus are within an easy walking distance from the surrounding communities.

From its early years Stanford has been known for its magnificent architecture. The central "Main Quad" is arguably one of the prettiest campus centers in the United States. As the university grew many new buildings have been built, with a very mixed architectural impact. At various stages of its growth very little attention had been paid to various aspects of overall architectural planning, but in recent decades there has been much more of an effort to make a more thoughtful approach to campus planning.

Even after I graduated I had made many trips to Stanford, and have always enjoyed taking long walks all over its campus. However, for the most part I had not been familiar with the history or the purpose of most of the campus buildings. This illustrated guide goes a long way in filling the gaps in my knowledge. The guide is broken down in several major sections that aim to replicate the main stages in the campus architectural development. Almost every building of any consequence has its own little section. The writing is very good, detailed and informative, and yet even people without any formal knowledge of architecture can fully appreciate it. The guide ends with the developments in the late nineties, and its just a snapshot of Stanford at that point in time. To me this actually makes this guide even more endearing, as it reflects Stanford as I had known it while a student there.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Stanford for everybody, November 20, 2003

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Jon L. Albee "Faulkner Wannabe" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stanford University: The Campus Guides (Paperback)

Let's face it. Most of us will never get to study at, or be hired by this prestigious Bay Area institution. That doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the beauty of its grounds and buildings. Stanford, in addition to being one of the very best universities on earth, is also one of the most beautiful.

Institutional histories tend to be excessively pedantic affairs. I know of no history of a university yet written that is an exception. They're generally dull, tedious things written for people who want to be sure that THEIR college is the best. And as another reviewer has noted, the style of writing is usually over-refined and staid. This book is no exception to those rules. But that said, it gives us a portrait of a university and its history through the grounds and buildings, bringing it to we who have no other chance to learn about Stanford but with our own eyes. So, the book may be dry and incomplete, but the university itself is gorgeous. That's what saves the entire effort.

Stanford started out life back in 1885 as an idea not unlike the ideas John D. Rockefeller had for the University of Chicago. And while Chicago became a world-class university directly out of the box, it took some decades for Stanford to catch up. It wasn't for lack of good buildings, as this book will prove. There are really two things that make Stanford exceptional in this regard. First, it transformed itself from a somewhat troubled early design, strapped by the heavy hand of the founder's wife and a devastating earthquake in 1906, into one of the world's great universities in less than 50 years. Second, when the vast majority of colleges and universities in the United States (and the world) were always seeking to make themselves into carbon-copies of Oxford and Cambridge, Stanford and its designers dared to try something new. Look at this book and then go to the university to see for yourself.