University of Chicago Law School - Architecture

Architecture


The law school was originally housed in Stuart Hall, a Gothic-style limestone building on the campus's main quadrangles. Needing more library and student space, the law school moved across the Midway Plaisance to its current, Eero Saarinen-designed building (next to what was then the headquarters of the American Bar Association) in October 1959. The building contains classrooms, the D'Angelo Law Library, faculty offices, and an auditorium and courtroom, arranged in a quadrangle around a fountain (mimicking the college Gothic architecture of the campus's main quadrangles). The year saw a number of celebrations of the law school's new home, including a filming of the Today Show (then hosted by Barbara Walters) and appearances by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Governor (and later Vice President) Nelson Rockefeller and Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld.

In 1987, and over the objections of the Saarinen family, the building was expanded to add office and library space (and the library renamed in honor of alumnus Dino D'Angelo). In 1998, a dedicated space for the law school's clinics, the Arthur Kane Center for Clinical Legal Education, as well as numerous additional classrooms, were constructed. The library, classrooms, offices, and fountain received an acclaimed and award-winning renovation, completed in 2008, notable for the preservation of most of Saarinen's structure at a time when many modernist buildings face demolition.

Read more about this topic:  University Of Chicago Law School

Famous quotes containing the word architecture:

    It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.
    John Ruskin (1819–1900)

    They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I don’t think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art.
    Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)