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hen Rufus B. von KleinSmid assumed USC’s top post late in 1921, there were only three permanent buildings and a collection of shacks on the University Park Campus to house more than 4,000 students and 10 schools and colleges.
Von KleinSmid launched what historian Kevin Starr has called “the golden age of campus architecture” with a series of graceful buildings in the Northern Italian Renaissance style.
The elegant façade of Doheny Memorial Library, designed by Samuel Lunden. |
Science Hall was begun in 1923; it was followed by the Student Union and Bridge Hall (both begun in1927), Mudd Hall of Philosophy (1929), the Physical Education Building (1930) and several others. The era’s crowning achievement was probably Doheny Memorial Library (begun in 1930) – a marvel of marble walls, travertine floors, art glass windows and allegorical bas reliefs.
Interestingly, Bovard Administration Building, another USC treasure that dates from the same period, wasn’t technically part of the Von KleinSmid construction boom. Work began in 1919 under President George Finley Bovard. The university’s third permanent building opened in mid- 1921, a few months before Von KleinSmid’s inauguration.
By 1946, when Von KleinSmid stepped down as president, the campus had 22 structures. On the retired president’s 89th birthday in 1964, the university paid tribute to his achievements by dedicating in his name the newly erected Von KleinSmid Center for International and Public Affairs.
Architect Ralph Carlin Flewelling’s Mudd Hall of Philosophy, with its signature clock tower and apse, bearing the inscription: “Truth Shall Make You Free.” |
Without doubt, USC’s greatest growth came in the 1960s under President Norman Topping, whom current President Steven B. Sample has called “the father of the modern USC.” Topping launched an ambitious fund-raising campaign – the Master Plan for Enterprise and Excellence in Education – that quadrupled the university’s endowment and added 50 new buildings to the University Park and Health Sciences campuses.
“Without physical expansion, the university could not achieve academic excellence nor could it serve the community as an urban and national institution,”wrote Manuel P. Servin and Iris Higbie Wilson in their 1969 book, Southern California and Its University.
The Topping building period began in February 1962 with groundbreaking on the five-story Olin Hall of Engineering. Several more research facilities followed, as did five major residence halls, including Birnkrant and Marks halls, built from 1962 to 1964. In one year, more student housing was provided than had been previously constructed during the entire history of the university, according to Servin and Wilson.
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