I love Penn's campus, and when I began school here I was amazed by the beautiful architecture around me. My high school was no neo-Gothic College Hall, my house was no Gregorianmodeled Quad. This campus and these buildings were everything I imagined an Ivy League campus to be: a place full of high class and old school tradition, complete with historic architecture to match. 

It was not until I started studying architectural history here at Penn that I started to look beyond the obvious examples of Penn's architectural achievements and appreciate the stylistic diversity of Penn's campus. I had overlooked many of the "modern" building designs in my appraisal of Penn's beauty, pawning them off as boring, simplistic and even ugly, until I actually took the time to look (and learn) about them.

Let's take, for example, our collective home away from home, Van Pelt Library. "Oh that ugly thing," many students may say, "it's just an eye sore, a product of the redevelopment that happened here in the 60s. I don't like it, but it does the job, I guess." It seems that many students are quick to judge architecture around campus, easily separating things into two simple categories of 1) old and pretty and 2) modern and ugly.  Before jumping to  to conclusions, it’s useful to examine the design schemes of this “monstrosity” of a building and how it shapes our beloved College Green.

The design of the nearly two-block-long library was originally conceived after World War II as the cornerstone of a new quadrangle. Before, College Green had been a triangular green that opened straight onto busy Walnut Street. The redevelopment plan abolished Woodland Avenue (what is now the diagonal walkway in front of The Button) and pedestrian-ized Locust Street, greatly reducing the urban feel of the campus. The gigantic Van Pelt, commissioned in 1960, would serve as a wall between the city and the school to create a sort of “gateless” gated community at Penn’s center. The rectangle was completed a bit later with the Meyerson building. Architecture firm Harbeson, Hough, Livingston and Larson (H2L2) received the project in 1960, all pupils of French-American architect and Penn professor Paul Cret.

Contrary to what one might think at first glance of Van Pelt, the architects were not avant-garde, Modernist-trained architects…like you might expect. In fact, following their mentor, Paul Cret, H2L2 were brilliant professionals trained in Classical architecture and design. Experts in the Acropolis and Roman Temples designed Van Pelt? You bet.

Turns out that H2L2 was on board with the Modern taste of the era and was up for the challenge to intelligibly adapt their principles of good Classical design for their modern projects, like Penn's library. And so, while to the uniformed eye Van Pelt may appear to be completely “modern,” merely a block surrounded by insistent concrete vertical support columns, it is actually a play on the Athenian Greek temple model of a rectangular building surrounded by a colonnade. It is Modern architecture with Classical logic. Suddenly, Van Pelt looks more dignified, no?

Now look up at the building from below. The cool thing about Van Pelt is that the building actually tells you EXACTLY what's going on inside behind its walls. For example, the alignment of the upper levels' slender windows dictates precisely where the stacks of books line the interior of the building and where you are supposed to sit in a carrel so you have just the right amount of light to read. From the outside, the building’s design explicitly tells you that this is a bookkeeper and a workspace. Similarly, the bottom glass story exposes the first two floors of the library to the exterior, declaring them as public space, open to everyone.

Also, you may or may not have taken the trek up to 6th floor Van Pelt’s Rare Book Collection, but it is a very unique and special feature of our library. The architects of Van Pelt signal the preciousness of this collection and space in their exterior design.  From below you can see that the 6th floor of Van Pelt is surrounded by an open-air porch, meant to be a space where the University can hold celebrations and parties. Very subtly, Van Pelt's design dictates its function, but sometimes it takes a step back to see. Subtle intelligence indeed.

And one more thing. The entry way. Next time you go to swipe your card through the turnstile, pause a second as you approach the entrance staircase and a look at the sculpted panel along the entrance. The concrete panel is made from a sand-cast mold, designed by public-art artist Constantino Nivola (1911-1988), and called “The Family of Man.” It was added to the library façade following the 1997-1998 renovations.

While Van Pelt might not be exactly what I imagined an “Ivy League” library to look like, I’ve come to look at it in an entirely different light now that I have, well, looked at it. Despite its monstrous size, it really does settle into the green quad quite nicely, neither dwarfing or dominating any of its other historic neighbors.

As much as we all like the Quad and College Hall, give the modern stuff a second chance. Stand back and actually look at buildings like Van Pelt before you sequester yourself in the stacks. Take a moment to appraise its intelligent design and the way it has shaped the development of our campus atmosphere.  It's not all bad, I promise.