Thursday, September 17, 2009

Tulane Places

In 1984, Malcolm J. Heard, Jr. and Bernard Lemann collaborated to create a comprehensive guide to Tulane University's campus buildings and research repositories. Incorporating drawings from the Southeastern Architectural Archive, the publication surveyed Tulane's expansion from its origins as the Medical College of Louisiana (1834), which became the University of Louisiana and ultimately Tulane.

Heard and Lemann included a university map that plotted the buildings within four discrete campus units: the Front Campus, the Newcomb Quads, the Middle Campus, and the Rear Campus. They identified each structure by architect(s)/firm(s), completion date, function, and distinctive features.

Nathaniel C. Curtis, Sr., working for Moise Goldstein & Associates, designed Joseph Merrick Jones Hall (1941), the SEAA's home. The structure originally housed the university library, named Howard-Tilton Library. Historic printers' devices -- such as the Golden Compass of Plantin Press -- were carved into the Freret Street entrance. In 1971, architect Harold E. Pique converted the building into Tulane's Law School. When the latter moved to its new building in the late 1990s, Jones Hall once again became a library, housing the university's special collections materials, including its expanding architectural archives.

Image above: Cover of Malcolm J. Heard, Jr. and Bernard Lemann's Tulane Places. New Orleans, Tulane University, 1984. Available at Tulane University Libraries.

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