Blackstone Hall - Annex with shed dormer, after 1960

Blackstone Hall - Exterior

This is a view of the north facade of Blackstone Hall with the third floor shed dormer addition, after 1960. As enrollment ballooned in the early 1960s, attic space, formerly fraternity meeting space, was converted into rooms for men students. "While such Beaux Arts designs are usually carried out with buildings in neo-classical architectural styles, Charles Frost and Alfred Granger (already the architects of the chapel and library next door, as well as of Lois Hall on North Campus) cast their anglophile architectural vocabulary over the buildings envisioned in the Morris Plan. The architectural precedents for Blackstone and Harlan are the Tudor-era college buildings at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. This red brick Tudor style, enlivened with decorative gables and limestone finials on the roof-line, is purposefully less formal than the Collegiate Gothic chapel next door. Blackstone and Harlan both feature Frost & Granger's distinctive brick balustrades, also found on Carnegie. President Richard Harlan's intent in building these men's dormitories was to entice fraternities to move from their off-campus houses onto campus, creating a stronger college community. The College newspaper in 1908 touted both the electric lighting and the oak-paneled lounges of the new dorms, which were the last word in technology and luxury. The first occupants of Harland Hall were the brothers of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity; Blackstone boarded the brothers of the Phi Pi Epsilon." (Neal Van Winkle on Blackstone and Harlan Halls in "Lake Forest College, A Guide to the Campus," 2007, pp. 49-50).

Milton Merner

After 1960

still image

TIFF

BLDG 1.18.2.7

228 pixels per inch

4000 × 3254 pixels

photograph

25.4 x 20.6 cm (10 x 8 1/8 in)