<p>I've just posted pictures from recent visits to Swarthmore, Goucher, and Earlham and will be adding some from Franklin in the next day or two as well. You can see them by clicking on my name (Carolyn) to your left and then clicking on "See Carolyn's webpage." Hope they are helpful!</p>
<p>I can't get the pictures that require AOL to work (I have an IM screen name; it must just be down at the moment), but you totally deserve a whole basket of cookies for the site.</p>
<p><em>adds to favourites</em></p>
<p>The pictures would not work for me either; received a picture error message from aol. Thanks for the great information, though!</p>
<p>same with me carolyn. Site keeps getting better and better though. Good work.</p>
<p>Whoops, sorry folks. Please try again --- have just fixed all of the links and the photo's are now up on the actual site without having to link elsewhere. A special thanks to Calmom for pointing me in the right direction.</p>
<p>Just saw everything, the pictures look beautiful . I agree with Curm, site is getting better and better. Chocked full of good and useful information.</p>
<p>Carolyn</p>
<p>OMG, you posted a photo of Swarthmore's ugliest dorm: Willets. In all of the viewbooks, history books, and websites, this building has almost never appeared in a photograph!</p>
<p>That's exactly why I posted it Interesteddad. I wanted to show that Swarthmore isn't ALL gothic beauty and give folks some views that they won't get in the Swarthmore viewbook. :)Tried to do that with all of the schools I visited, in fact.</p>
<p>The funny thing is that my daughter and I had searched and searched for a picture of Willets (it's a very likely freshman housing possibility), but come up empty. We figured it must be "butt-ugly" to be nearly 50 years old and never photographed.</p>
<p>When we finally saw it in person, it wasn't that bad. Gray stone covers a lot of architectural sins! It was orginally suppose to look like the nearby stone cottages with slate roofs that you also photographed, but the expense of duplicating that in the 1950s proved to be prohibitive, so they went with "modern" architechture.</p>
<p>I love the way the most recent buildings fit into the campus. Kohlberg, the new academic building you photographed, is gorgeous. I particularly like the Kohlberg garden in one of your photos. All the free standing stone structures in that garden are the remnants of the foundation of the old building that was torn down -- a nice tie between the old and the new.</p>
<p>I also think the New Dorm (aka Alice Paul Hall) is stunning, but the students are mixed on it.</p>
<p>ID, I actually thought about asking you to write commentary for the Swarthmore pictures--- now, you have! :) I also didn't think that Willets was bad - I peaked in the windows and the rooms looked decent. They also seemed to be doing some renovations in the lobby.
One thing that tickled my funny bone that I wish I had gotten a close up on was the HUGE adirondeck chair on the main lawn. You can kind of see it on the lawn in the photo of the chapel. Made me laugh out loud when I saw it.</p>
<p>"OMG, you posted a photo of Swarthmore's ugliest dorm: Willets. In all of the viewbooks, history books, and websites, this building has almost never appeared in a photograph!"</p>
<p>Wow! It looks like an overgorwn version of Belvedere Brooks! ;)</p>
<p>It's not as ugly as Brooks, which looks like it belongs in a 1960s nouveau-riche subvision of outside of Meridian, Mississippi.</p>
<p>The scale of Willets is actually fairly small and it's completely hidden by trees. Basically just your typical 1950s "modern architecture" box that is salvaged only the gray stone cladding.</p>
<p>Swarthmore also has a 1960s "Mission Park" style dorm, but again the small scale, gray stone cladding, and location deep in the Crum Woods keep it from being an eye-sore. I actually think the 1980s-era dorm, Mertz, is the least attractive from the outside. It's the one they tried to make blend into the old architecture.</p>
<p>By the way, Franklin and Marshall pictures are also now up.</p>
<p>I did want to add one thing: I was surprised when I visited Swarthmore right after Goucher to see how many of the buildings on both campuses reminded me of buildings on the other campus. Goucher doesn't have the gothic castle thing going on, of course, but it does have the same "English manor" feel. Goucher also has the same green feeling as Swarthmore, but with more wooded areas. And, of course, there's a big difference between Towson and Swarthmore! :)</p>
<p>The stone construction is a distinctively mid-Atlantic "thing", just as wood clapboard was the material of choice in New England and brick in the South. I assume it dates back to the prevalence of local quarries in the area around Philly.</p>
<p>It was not really a "gothic" style as much a reflection of local building materials in the 18th and 19th centuries. Trotter and the Friends Meeting House are probably the best example of traditional Philly-area architecture on Swarthmore's campus, both built in the 1880s. The "gothic" stuff all came later. The Bell Tower was a gift from the Clothier family -- founders of local Phila department store, Clothier and Strawbridge's. It was built in the late 1920s. </p>
<p>Those "Hansel and Gretel" cottages you photographed were built in the mid-20s, originally as a women's dorm and as five adjoining sorority lodges. That was short-lived as the students voted to abolish the sororities less than 10 years later. One of the Lodges was the first home of the Afro-American Students group before they moved to bigger digs in an old mansion owned by the college.</p>