In 2002, CIC was awarded a two-year grant from the Getty Foundation for the CIC Historic Campus Architecture Project. This project aims to identify resources for further research about significant buildings, campus plans, open spaces, and heritage sites of American higher education.
Initial activities for the project were completed in fall 2003, and included preparing an inventory, from approximately 750 active and potential CIC members, of places of significant historic interest, in relation to distinctive developments in architecture, landscape, American history, and the history of education, religion, engineering, and culture. Initially, more than 1,900 places of historical significance on private college and university campuses were identified, and 3,600 images relating to sites of architectural, landscape, and planning interest and significance were collected. The survey was completed by 362 institutions, representing a return of more than 50 percent of the original list of schools that were invited to participate.
Development of the website began in 2005, funded by a second grant from the Getty Foundation. Activities during this phase involved creating an online database, to be presented through the website, to contain all of the collected historic campus architecture images and survey information. The online database and website were completed in November 2006. The website is open to everyone, making the collected data widely available and providing an interpretive framework for it. The database makes possible cross-referencing between institutions regarding architectural styles, time period, geographic location, and numerous other criteria. Through a user-friendly search engine and a rich set of bibliographic materials, it also guides viewers to a wide variety of sources that they can use for further study.
Project Director: Dr. Barbara S. Christen, former Research Associate at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art and an architectural historian, has directed the project as Senior Advisor to CIC.
Project Advisory Committee: An advisory committee that guided the project includes Randall Mason, associate professor of architecture in the graduate program in historic preservation at the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania; Therese O’Malley, associate dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; Damie Stillman, professor of art history emeritus at the University of Delaware and editor-in-chief, Buildings of the United States series; Jeffrey A. Cohen, senior lecturer at Bryn Mawr College; John Strassburger, president of Ursinus College (PA); Thomas C. Celli, president of Celli-Flynn Brennan, Architects and Planners (PA); and Russell V. Keune, former director of international relations at the American Institute of Architects.
Project Site Design and Development: Catalone Design Company of Bethesda, Maryland, provided graphic and interface design for the website. For more information, see
www.catalonedesign.com. Greenstone, a software developed by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, was used to design the online database. The Greenstone software generates web pages dynamically in response to users navigating through the site, allowing for seamless search integration and the ability to instantly change the look and feel of the site. For more information about Greenstone, see
www.greenstone.org.