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CIC LAUNCHES WEBSITE FOR HISTORIC CAMPUS ARCHITECTURE PROJECT

WASHINGTON, DC – The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) today announced the launch of a new website, the CIC Historic Campus Architecture Project (HCAP), the first nationwide architecture and landscape database of independent college and university campuses (www.cic.edu/hcap).

The CIC HCAP website provides extensive information about significant buildings, landscapes, campus plans, and heritage sites of American higher education. Through a user-friendly search engine and a rich set of bibliographic materials, it also guides viewers to a wide variety of sources that they can use for further study. Supported by two generous grants from the Getty Foundation, the HCAP website documents nearly 2,000 campus sites of historical significance that have been provided by nearly 370 institutions. One of the resources that visitors will find on the website is a collection of more than 4,300 images relating to the featured sites.

“CIC is delighted to announce the launch of the HCAP website,” said CIC President Richard Ekman. “It is an attractive, information-packed window into the physical world of independent colleges and universities in all of their variety. The campus is more than just a place; it’s an emblem of what the institution values and how it brings its community together, a physical manifestation of educational philosophy. The thousands of photographs and drawings that CIC has assembled for this project, and all of the descriptive materials that go with them, form a treasure trove for understanding the places where students have learned and professors have taught from colonial times to the present.” Ekman added, “CIC expects that people with a variety of interests in independent colleges and universities will find new and valuable materials here. Campus planners, alumni, admissions officials, and prospective students and their families, to name just a few of the audiences for HCAP, can choose to look at the most prominent features on one college campus or one hundred of them.” Web users can search the collection by building style and type, architect, time period, state or region, and in many other ways.

CIC Senior Advisor Barbara S. Christen, an architectural historian, directs the project. Christen pointed to “the wealth of texts and images of buildings and sites on the HCAP website.” In addition to buildings of every type found on a campus, the site includes many landscape sites and campus plans. She emphasized that the website has been designed to help researchers along with other users, and is available to the general public. “Architectural styles, designers, building types, changing functions over time, and the historical, educational, and religious contexts of each institution can all be easily explored using the search functions that CIC has built into the website.”

“The Foundation is proud to support CIC’s ambitious documentation project,” says Joan Weinstein, Interim Director of the Getty Foundation. “Through Getty’s Campus Heritage Initiative, we have worked since 2002 to assist colleges in the United States to manage and preserve the integrity of their historic buildings and landscapes. With its wealth of material, the HCAP website has the potential to advance the interest in campus preservation to a wide audience across the country.”

Advisors to the project include Randall Mason, associate professor of architecture in the graduate program in historic preservation at the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania; Therese O’Malley, associate dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; Damie Stillman, professor of art history emeritus at the University of Delaware and editor-in-chief, Buildings of the United States series; Jeffrey A. Cohen, senior lecturer at Bryn Mawr College; John Strassburger, president of Ursinus College (PA); Thomas C. Celli, president of Celli-Flynn Brennan, Architects and Planners (PA); and Russell V. Keune, former director of international relations at the American Institute of Architects.

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The Council of Independent Colleges is an association of more than 570 independent, liberal arts colleges and universities and 60 higher education affiliates and organizations that work together to strengthen college and university leadership, sustain high-quality education, and enhance private higher education’s contributions to society. To fulfill this mission, CIC provides its members with skills, tools, and knowledge that address aspects of leadership, financial management and performance, academic quality, and institutional visibility. The Council is headquartered at One Dupont Circle in Washington, DC.

The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic organization devoted to the visual arts that includes the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Getty Research Institute. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience from two locations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Malibu. Additional information is available at www.getty.edu.

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