Blackstone Hall --West facade, original state, with ivy

Blackstone Hall - Exterior

This photographic postcard view of the west facade of Tudor, Collegiate Gothic Blackstone Hall shows its original two floor state, with vines on the wall. Seen as well are both Blackstone and Harlan Towers, rising to three floors. The date of this picture is unknown. Perhaps from the 1940s, the view does not show a parking lot adjacent to the west facade, added later. "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. The wrought iron gate, formerly called Fraternity Gate, has never served a practical purpose, but extended the College's symbolic welcome to the students of Lake Forest Academy, then situated on South Campus. Although Harlan had resigned the presidency by the time the dormitories were comopleted, one was named for him at the insistence of Isabella Norton Blackstone, these buildings' principal benefactor. The widow of Timothy Blackstone, who made his fortune in the Chicago stockyards, Mrs. Blackstone in this era also donated the Blackstone Library in Hyde Park, the first neighborhood branch of the Chicago Public Library" (Neal Van Winkle on Blackstone and Harlan Halls in "Lake Forest College, A Guide to the Campus," 2007, pp. 49-50).

still image

eng

TIFF

BLDG 1.18.2.13

228 pixels per inch

4000 × 2636 pixels

photograph

13.7 x 8.8 cm (5 3/8 x 3 7/16 in)