A Brief History of Campus Planning
The word "campus" is Latin, meaning a field and describes the green expansiveness which distinguishes many American university campuses including our university. The decision to move the University from downtown Seattle to its present site likely was influenced by a desire to not only have room to grow, but to achieve a true "campus". Paul Venable Turner in Campus- An American Planning Tradition writes:
"Another trait that typifies American college planning is its spaciousness and openness to the world." "But beyond these purely physical meanings, the word has taken on other connotations, suggesting the pervasive spirit of a school, or its genius loci, as embodied in its architecture and grounds. Campus sums up the distinctive physical qualities of the American college, but also its integrity as a self-contained community and its architectural expression of educational and social ideals."
 The Oval Plan of 1900  The Olmstead Plan of 1904 |
Planning of the campus has been an almost continuous process since its move from downtown Seattle to its present location in 1891. The first plans, the 1891 Boone Plan, the Oval Plan or Fuller Plan of 1900, and the Olmstead Plan of 1904 sited the first buildings on the campus including Denny, Parrington, Lewis and Clark Halls and established a respect for the value of the landscape, open space and vistas.
The evolution of the three plans moved from an informal organization of buildings on a curved path to a more formal oval culminating in the organization of the oval under the direction of the Olmsteads into a more formally organized "arts quadrangle". These initial plans might have grown from precedence established in some uniquely American campuses in the mid nineteenth century, in non-urban settings, establishing the University and its buildings truly in a field. Oddly though, this last of the first three plans turned in on itself and did not take advantage of the vistas that drove the siting of the first building, Denny Hall.
The plan for the campus which resulted from planning for the Alaska-Yukon Exposition in 1906 was inspired by the Beaux-Arts system of architectural planning which followed the Columbian Exposition in Chicago of 1893. As Paul Venable Turner notes in "Campus An American Planning Tradition", "...the Beaux-Arts movement was well suited to express the character of the new educational institution. Its principles of monumental organization facilitated orderly planning on a grand scale and were capable of including many disparate buildings or parts within a unified overall pattern." The strongest legacy resulting from the Exposition was the establishment of the Rainier Vista and a number of additional radials extending the campus from focusing inwards to an orientation outwards to Lake Washington and the Cascades as well as to Mt. Rainier.
The next question, as Norman J. Johnston puts it in "The Fountain and the Mountain, the University of Washington Campus 1895-1995 "....was how to meld the grandeur of the former exposition grounds with the uncertain planning of upper campus." The Olmstead firm was hired to prepare a plan which subsequently was rejected by the Board of Regents. The Regents Plan was prepared by Carl Gould in 1915, refined and developed further in the plan of 1920 by Bebb and Gould. These plans established the additional axis through what became the liberal arts quadrangle and the pivotal hinge space which became the site of Suzzallo Library and the original Meany Hall auditorium. The fundamental backbone of the structure of the campus was established.
 1940 Design Plan  1979 Design Plan |
Bebb and Gould and the successor firm Jones and Bindon continued to update and prepare new plans for the campus as well as design buildings through the 1940's. An update of the 1915 and 1920 Plan published in 1935 reaffirmed the basic design principles of earlier plans: "These (Liberal Arts, Science, and Central) quads are the center of academic life and the institution and the key to the entire campus plan." As Norman Johnston summarized: "It also called for some adjustments that eventually informed major campus development decisions (but not until after World War II): the location of a comprehensive student union building due east of Suzzallo Library, the assignment of the campus golf course south of Northeast Pacific Street to a health sciences complex and the development of the northeasterly campus ridge above and paralleling Montlake Boulevard for student housing." During this period a new University boulevard was proposed as the westerly approach to the campus from the University Bridge.
Medicine joined the University in 1946 at the same time the campus was facing post-War heavy expansion.. The 1948 Plan reaffirmed the plans for expansion such as the northeast ridge of dormitories, the health sciences development, expansion of construction surrounding the old Meany Hall, the increasing of density around the science quad, and development of the Campus Parkway as well as a continuation of the historic structure. The plan also recommended acquisition of the land east of the railroad right-of-way ( now the Burke Gilman trail) to Union Place and north of Northeast Forty-fifth Street. While the University acquired a portion for a service building, the rest was acquired by others for what became the University Village shopping center.
 1991 GPDP Plan  The Southwest Plan |
In 1983, a City-University Agreement was established which committed the University to prepare a new comprehensive master plan for future campus development for review and approval by the City. The University's General Physical Development Plan (GPDP) for 1991- 2001 established policies and plans for land use, design, open space and landscape, site development, waterfront, transportation goals and management as well as a ten-year development program. It was a plan approved by both the regents and the City Council.
Supplementary to the GPDP was the development and approval of a separate Southwest Campus Plan in 1994. Plans for the North and East campus sectors have been subsequently prepared as advisory, and are integrated into this Plan.
Since the development of the Regents plan in 1915, the plans prepared and the processes and policies pursued have all respected the fundamental concepts and structure which originally established the campus environment. In most instances plans have proposed means of both conserving and reinforcing the historic and valued components of that environment.
Changing technologies, new programs, the nature of research, and architectural style has affected proposals for new development. Some development, especially that built during the 1960's, caused conflicts with the historic structure, but often, as in the 1980's and 90's, new construction extended the campus structure in a compatible way, retaining the essential qualities valued in the campus environment.
This Plan, like previous ones, addresses the need to conserve and enhance our valued, historic environment, to address the contemporary need for new development, and to anticipate future needs and opportunities. This latter responsibility, anticipating the future, argues for the need to build policies which recognize the need for flexibility. While the mission of the University will likely remain the same, the means and activities for achieving that mission will change in unanticipated ways, as it has in the past. The plan should embody and embrace continuity and permanence, symbolic of institutions in our culture as well as maintaining an openness to change and experimentation, reflective of the creative search for new knowledge fundamental to the role of a University.
Also see how the CMP will build on past planning efforts.
Visit the UW Pictorial History.