A highlight of my Omaha childhood was a trip to the architecturally rich city of Chicago, which my parents promised every Crotty kid -- there were six -- once he or she reached the age of eight. Though the trip also included a visit to the Museum of Science and Industry -- the Prenatal Development exhibit was a wonder to this Catholic boy -- and a tailored suit at Brooks Brothers, the big draw for me was gaping up the legendary “Big John,” or John Hancock Center, then the world's tallest building outside New York.
Forty-five years -- and an undergraduate degree from the Chicago’s own Northwestern University -- later, I'm still obsessed with Chicago architecture, which is the most elegantly arrayed in the U.S. The thing about Chicago is that one can view the entire history of modern architecture -- from Burnham to Richardson to Sullivan to van der Rohe -- in one sweeping gaze from the shores of Lake Michigan itself.
This is why I was intrigued by a bold new glass-and-steel structure on the Chicago
Besides acting as a showy centerpiece of the university’s collection of metropolitan academic buildings, the $123 million Wabash Building is an important statement about the growth strategy of urban universities such as Roosevelt -- upward, not outward.
“Roosevelt University’s Chicago Campus has long needed more space for academics, student life and student housing,” Chuck Middleton, president of Roosevelt University said in a written statement to Crotty on Education. “The new building offers tremendous opportunity for future growth and its addition to the Chicago skyline is a statement of the University’s commitment to be an anchor institution that works on behalf of the economic success and community vitality of Chicago.”
After the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, the Wabash Building is the second tallest academic building in the US, and certainly the tallest self-contained campus. The LEED-certified structure stacks lecture halls, a student union, dorms, dining hall, administrative offices, a rec center, science labs and the entire Heller College of Business into one all-inclusive structure billed as a “vertical campus.” Heretofore known primarily as a “commuter college,” Roosevelt hopes its vertical campus creates more stickiness, so that students spend more time in and around the school’s beautiful lakefront location.
Indeed, with every conceivable amenity neatly packed into its 469-foot-tall frame, and a stunning unobstructed view of Lake Michigan at the north wing of nearly every floor, students at Roosevelt are hard-pressed to find reasons to venture outside at all. On a visit two years back to view the work of Les Lynn -- who’s Chicago Debate League brings verbal fisticuffs to the crime-ridden city’s most violent neighborhoods -- I took in the billion-dollar view from one of the Wabash Building’s student lounges. I was ready to enroll right then and there. Not even Manhattan plutocrats get this kind of vista.
Given its intimate confines, the VOA-designed Wabash Building also offers a host of new opportunities for multidisciplinary academic initiatives. In fact, interdisciplinary initiatives were in mind when New York City’s Baruch College opened its vertical campus in 2001, just a few blocks from my Gramercy Park digs.
“'I don't feel like I'm in Baruch anymore,'' said management student Albert Vega in reaction to his first semester there. ''The other buildings were gloomy. This feels much more advanced, more futuristic. Now you feel like you are in a really good school.''
Indeed, the largesse of a modern higher-education building appears to bolster a college’s first impression. In UCLA’s 2011 survey of thousands of college and university freshmen on what factors affected their choice of schools, 42.5 percent rated “a visit to the campus” as very important. For students of private universities like Roosevelt, 46.8 percent consider the campus a vital factor in their decision to attend.
“In higher education today, competition to recruit and retain the best and brightest students has never been stronger. Most colleges and universities are using their facilities to communicate bold differentiating messages to set them apart in the marketplace of educational opportunities,” said Brian Terrell, Managing Director and Higher Education Practice Lead at JLL, the real estate services firm that oversaw the Wabash Building project.
However, vertical campuses have more to spout than just curb appeal. For many universities, they act as a symbol of heritage and longevity, as well as modernity.
Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning won recent recognition for its aesthetic tribute to an industry as old as Pittsburgh itself.
“It’s a beautiful tribute to steel — in a city that was synonymous with it," David McLean, CEO of McLean Architects LLC, said to the Pittsburgh Business Times. Along the same lines, Roosevelt has neatly integrated the school’s signature and historic Louis-Sullivan-designed Auditorium Theater (where I saw my first Mummenschanz performance back in 1981) into the Wabash Building’s modern footprint.
Nevertheless, in spite of the Wabash Building’s bold presence, Roosevelt University Assistant Vice President Bridget Collier -- who lives with her husband and their baby on the 16th floor -- is confident that the South Michigan Avenue tower does more than just strike an interesting pose in a skyline short on posers and long on masterpieces.
"We are in the process of building the kind of program that will bond our students, not only to each other, but also very strongly to Roosevelt University,” Collier said. “Our goal is to connect our students so closely with the institution that they will say, 'It's great to be home' every time they return to Roosevelt from a break or vacation."
This attachment to one’s living space underpins a need of many heretofore “commuter campuses” seeking to re-brand themselves as destination schools.
“The importance of community to learning is implied but rarely stated as a significant context in higher education,” writes Deborah J. Bickford, Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Learning Initiatives at the University of Dayton. “Were community not important for learning, colleges and universities would have little reason to exist.”
Roosevelt students will no doubt relish not having to battle Chicago’s bracing winds and Lake Effect snow. Moreover, they will no doubt treasure the school’s proximity to America’s most stunning lakefront, with the city’s signature Millennium Park and Museum Campus just a short jaunt away.
Nevertheless, the question remains whether the ribald, amorous, and, shall we say, “non-scholarly” community – the kind that many grads remember most fondly years down the road – is possible within the confines of a compact, closely monitored vertical structure in which one encounters school personnel in campus elevators more times during the day than most students care to contemplate.
Let me know you think of Roosevelt’s high-rise university and other vertical campuses in the Comments area below. Moreover, if you enjoyed this piece, please retweet it or otherwise share it using the social media tools above.
