Loyola's Collegiate Gothic Architecture
By Dr. John Breihan
The gothic style of architecture originated in Europe’s Middle Ages. It is characterized
by vertical proportions, pointed arches, external buttressing, and asymmetry. At great
gothic cathedrals like Chartres in France and Salisbury in England, pointed arches
allowed for heavy stone ceiling vaults despite the fact that the walls were pierced
for huge stained-glass windows. These daring structures were made possible by external
buttressing that bore the weight of the vaults. Not only were the arched windows tall
in proportion, but gothic cathedrals often included lofty pointed steeples. Gothic
architects did not strive for symmetry, as is famously seen in the west façade of
Chartes Cathedral, where the two steeples do not match.
Cathedrals were not the only gothic structures in the middle ages. Parish churches
copied the designs of the cathedrals on a smaller scale, though usually with lighter
timber roofs in place of heavy stone vaults. Although they were usually constructed
of wood and plaster, houses also were built with vertical proportions, in tall windows
and steep gabled roofs.
Universities were invented in the middle ages; their most characteristic buildings
were residential colleges built as closed courtyards. Called “quads” at Oxford and
“courts” at Cambridge, medieval colleges consisted of four ranges of two- or three-story
buildings entered by a gatehouse that often resembled a castle gate. Within the court,
rooms of differing functions could be identified by differing windows: evenly spaced
for scholars’ bedrooms, close together for the college library, tall and airy for
the dining hall and chapel.
In Europe, the era of gothic architecture came to an end with the Renaissance. Tastes
changed in favor of a return to the more symmetrical and balanced classical Roman
architecture. The change of taste occurred earliest it Italy; in Northern Europe a
hybrid “Northern Renaissance” style continued into the 16th century, combining the
large windows and tall proportions of gothic with decorations (columns, pediments)
modeled on Roman architecture. In England this style is associated with the Tudor
monarchs, especially Queen Elizabeth I, and with her successor James I – hence the
titles “Tudor,” “Elizabethan,” “Jacobean,” and even “Jacobethan.”
Gothic architecture was revived in the 18th century as appropriate for romantic cottages
or for churches. St. Mary’s Seminary Chapel in the Seton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore
is one of the earliest Gothic revival buildings in America. Built in 1807, it served
as chapel for Baltimore’s first college, which later became St. Mary’s Seminary.
After the Civil War, American architecture was heavily influenced by Victorian architecture
in England. “Victorian gothic” stressed the verticality and asymmetry of the original
style, but in its massing and use of bright colors did not often resemble original
gothic designs. A good example familiar to all Baltimoreans is Mount Vernon Place
Methodist Church.
This changed in the 1890s with a generation of architects whose education had been
thoroughly grounded in architectural history. Among them were Walter Cope and John
Stewardson of Philadelphia. In 1895 they were hired to design an entire campus for
Bryn Mawr College. They based their designs on gothic colleges at Oxford and Cambridge,
including castellated gateways, long steep-gabled ranges of dormitories with tall,
narrow windows, and soaring pointed-arched windows for the library.
Instead of the dark brick and sandstone of Victorian gothic designs, this new “collegiate
gothic” was constructed of rough fieldstone walls with white limestone moldings for
entrances, window surrounds, buttress caps, and parapets. One striking innovation
was that American collegiate gothic buildings usually did not form closed courtyards
as at medieval Oxford and Cambridge, where students were literally locked up at night.
American students were given more freedom to come and go by looser arrangements of
college buildings around central lawns or along picturesque ridge lines. Cope and
Stewardson were eloquent proponents of their gothic style in preference to classical
(Roman) buildings, especially for college campuses.
Classic architecture expresses completion, finality, perfection: Gothic architecture
expresses aspiration, growth, and development. To the beholder, the Classic says:
This is the sum – Here is perfection – Do not aspire further. The Gothic says to him:
Reach higher – Spread outward and upward – There are no limitatations.
The new style caught on right away, particularly at nearby Princeton University and
Haverford College. Cope and Stewardson designed another whole campus for Washington
University in St. Louis. Other architects took up the style, including Charles D.
MacGuinnes, of the Irish Catholic architecture firm of Maginnes & Walsh, who designed
an ambitious new collegiate gothic campus for Boston College in 1907, when the college
moved from inner-city Boston to suburban Chestnut Hill.
As described by Jocelyn Salisbury (no relation to the cathedral!), Loyola College
followed the same pattern in moving from downtown Calvert Street to suburban Evergreen
in the early 1920s. New collegiate gothic buildings were placed on three sides of
a central lawn or quad in front of the existing Tudor mansion (now the Humanities
Center). In the tradition of American collegiate gothic, this was not a closed, fortified
quad as at Oxford or Cambridge but an “open quad” with generous spaces between the
surrounding buildings.