 |
| Louisiana State University |
The current LSU campus is located on 2,000 acres (8.1 km²) just south of downtown Baton Rouge. A majority of the university's 250 buildings, most of which were built between 1925 and 1940, occupy a 650-acre (2.6 km²) plateau on the banks of the Mississippi River. Other campuses in the LSU system include the LSU Agricultural Center, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, University of New Orleans, LSU at Shreveport, LSU at Eunice, LSU at Alexandria, and the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans. In addition, LSU owns and operates the J. Bennett Johnston, Sr. Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices (CAMD), which is a 1.3 GeV synchrotron radiation facility.
The Olmsted Brothers Firm of Brookline, Massachusetts, designed the current campus around 1921 when LSU was planning to move its campus from downtown Baton Rouge. The Olmsted firm originally designed the campus for up to 3,000 students, but state officials asked the firm to scale the plan back due to budgetary constraints; subsequently, the new plan presented to the state by the Olmsted Brothers centered the campus around a cruciform-shaped quadrangle similar to the one that exists on campus today.
For reasons unknown, the Olmsted Brothers firm was dropped from the project, and an architect named Theodore Link, who was well-known for designing Union Station in St. Louis, Missouri, took over the campus master plan. Link collaborated with Wilbur Tyson Trueblood on the project, but remained faithful to the campus that the Olmsted firm had designed. Unfortunately, Link died in 1923 before the plan was completed. New Orleans architects Wogan and Bernard completed Link’s work and the campus was dedicated on April 30, 1926.
The first building actually constructed on the present campus was the Swine Palace, the former livestock barn that is now the Reilly Theater. Most of the current buildings that occupy the universities Quad where completed between 1922 and 1925. Because the original campus was designed to accommodate 1,500 students, space is now at a premium at LSU. During the 1990s, LSU officials created a set of design guidelines that call for all newly constructed buildings to have an Italian Renaissance flavor.
Architecture and landscape Louisiana State University
Although the Olmsted firm had originally envisioned a Spanish or Mexican style design for the University, Link designed the campus with tan stucco walls, red-tiled rooftops, and extensive porticoes in an attempt to emulate the architecture of Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. The design of Hill Memorial Library was loosely based on that of the Boston Public Library, which was the first public library in the U.S. The flanking academic buildings that formed the rest of the Quad represented the major disciplines at the university, and their placement was modeled after that of buildings on the University of Virginia’s campus, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson.
Nine LSU buildings, including the library and the academic buildings for dairying and physics, were constructed by George A. Caldwell, a native of Abbeville. Caldwell designed twenty-six public buildings in Louisiana.
The campus is known for the 1,200 live oak trees that shade the ground of the university. During the 1930s, landscape artist Steele Burden planted many of live oaks and magnolia trees, which are now valued at over $50 million. Many of the azaleas, crepe myrtles, ligustrum, and camellias planted in the quadrangle were added to the campus in the 1970s. Through the LSU Foundation’s “Endow an Oak” program, individuals and groups are able to endow live oaks across the university's campus.
Fifty-seven buildings on the LSU campus are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the campus is protected by the State Capital Historic District Legislation. The LSU Campus Mounds, which are part of a larger mound group spread throughout the state, are located near the northwestern corner of the campus and were built an estimated 5,000 years ago.