This year is the 200th anniversary of a milestone in the history of the American campus: the planning of Union College in Schenectady by the French architect Joseph Ramee. Ramee's design was the first comprehensive plan for an American college or university, integrating buildings, open spaces and parkland in ways that have shaped American campuses ever since. Among the many campus designs it likely influenced was Thomas Jefferson's for the University of Virginia and Frederick Law Olmsted's for Stanford.
Ramee (1764-1842) began his career in Paris in the 1780s. Forced to flee France during the Reign of Terror, he spent the rest of his life moving from place to place, in Belgium, Germany, Denmark — and briefly in the United States — before returning to France. Ramee was invited to America in 1812 by David Parish, the son of one of his German clients, who had bought large tracts of land in northern New York, making ambitious plans for industrial and commercial development. Ramee was to be the architect for these enterprises, but few of Parish's plans materialized and Ramee had to seek other commissions. The most important of these was for a new campus in Schenectady.
Union College, founded in 1795, had acquired in 1804 a dynamic young president, Eliphalet Nott. With increased student enrollments, Nott decided to move the college from its building in the old town of Schenectady to a spacious hilltop site to the east. When David Parish introduced his French architect to Nott in 1813, Nott recognized Ramee's ability to plan on a scale commensurate with his own ambitious vision for the college.
Ramee began drawing plans for the college buildings, working mainly in Philadelphia, then returned to Schenectady in April of 1813 and remained there for a couple of months, conferring with Nott as the plans for the campus developed. At first Nott had envisioned three main buildings, a large central structure and two dormitories, North and South Colleges — which were quickly constructed and still survive. But then Ramee and Nott decided to create a grander plan, with many structures arranged around a large courtyard, with a domed rotunda at the center, and linking the buildings with arcades. Nothing like this had been seen in America before.
Ramee produced drawings exploring ways of arranging these buildings and spaces, and well as plans for the individual structures and the landscaping of the grounds. In 1932, many of these drawings were discovered in an attic at the college. Ranging from rough sketches to detailed working drawings and watercolor renderings, they reveal the evolution of Ramee's design and constitute a fascinating group of early American architectural drawings.
Ramee's master plan for Union College influenced later American campus planning in various ways. In 1817, Jefferson, developing his plans for the University of Virginia, elicited the advice of the architect Benjamin Latrobe; who was familiar with Ramee's design. Latrobe proposed the rotunda that became the centerpiece of Jefferson's campus. Especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the University of Virginia became a model for many American campuses featuring domed structures, thus perpetuating a form that had appeared first in Ramee's design.
Another innovation of the Union plan was the arcaded linkage of buildings around courtyards. An echo of this may be seen in the buildings of Stanford University in California. Designed in the 1880s by Frederick Law Olmsted and the university's founder, Leland Stanford, the master plan integrated all the structures within an innovative system of arcades. Ramee's plan for Union was likely one of its sources — especially in light of the fact that Leland Stanford was originally from Schenectady.
The Union College campus was not fully executed as Ramee specified. But the college has always respected Ramee's plan, and especially in recent years the growth of the campus has been guided by a desire to preserve its distinctive and historic character.
This weekend, Union is hosting a series of events to honor Ramee, including an exhibition of the architect's drawings for the campus and a publication about them. A symposium will examine his plan and its relevance in the 21st century.
After 200 years, the design that became a model for the American campus is finally receiving the recognition it deserves.
Paul V. Turner is a Union College alumnus, an architectural historian and emeritus professor at Stanford. He is the author of "Campus: An American Planning Tradition," "Joseph Ramee, International Architect of the Revolutionary Era" and "The Grand Design: Joseph Ramee's Drawings for the Union College Campus."