<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>Well, this is just a question I have been thinking about the past few days. Where would you rank Penn in terms of campus beauty relative to its ivy peers? I visited Penn and HYPS and distinctly remember being impressed only by Princeton and Penn. Princeton was by far my favorite in terms of its beauty, but I also thought Penn was notably nicer than Harvard and Yale. I know most people disagree with me there, but what do you guys think?</p>
<p>Thanks,
Robbie</p>
<p>depends on the metrics used</p>
<p>i happen to like princeton from a landscape standpoint but also feel it’s somewhat haphazard in layout</p>
<p>penn, being in the city, is nicely gridded yet has gems like college green which are verdant refuges in the middle of busy-ish streets</p>
<p>and then princeton doesn’t have a nice thoroughfare like locust walk</p>
<p>Penn’s gem is the thoroughfare Locust Walk which builds a great community more than any large “quad” could. It’s just not possible to get from one end of locust walk to the othe without seeing people, whereas it’s more possible (and tragic) with less linear campuses.</p>
<p>Yale is great if you’re into fake gothic (or ‘neo-gothic’ as it could more charitably be called).</p>
<p>Harvard is distinctly underwhelming but this is somewhat outweighed of course by the “omg its harvard!!!” factor. And Stanford may be “spanish mission” but it looks like a giant taco bell to me.</p>
<p>Though I loved philly, I just never liked the Penn campus itself when I was a Penn grad student. Granted, it had a few lovely buildings, but a LOT of really crappy ones. Locust Walk was nice for about a 100 yards and then what? I was a Wharton student and would walk out of the mindbogglingly ugly Huntsman building and across the bridge by those awful towers and by the really really scruffy grass lawn by the edge of campus into West Philly. Just TOTALLY depressing. Frats in the middle of campus – just gross.</p>
<p>I really longed for the beautiful courtyards and gothic towers of Yale where I went undergrad. I used to love studying in Yale’s majestic, cathedral like Sterling Library. I set foot once into the horror of Penn’s Van Pelt Library just once. Whoever approved that monstrosity – if they’re still alive – should be lined up against it and shot!</p>
<p>^ The nicest parts of Penn’s campus–and the bulk of it–are east and south of Huntsman Hall (College Green, Perelman Quad, The Quad, Harrison Walk, Bio Pond, Smith Walk, Museum courtyards, etc.). Also, Penn has some wonderful and majestic interior spaces such as the Fisher Fine Arts Library, Biddle Law Library, Irvine Auditorium, Houston Hall, etc. However, most of that probably would not be apparent to grad students–and especially to Wharton grad students who spend the overwhelming majority of their campus time in Huntsman Hall and walking through Superblock on their way into West Philly. 
To really appreciate the Penn campus–and actually ANY campus–I think that you have to experience it as an undergrad. Grad and professional students tend to stick to their own little “neighborhoods” within the larger campus.</p>
<p>Penn had the misfortune of undergoing considerable construction during a very bad era for institutional architecture, giving us the entire social work quad and, even worse since it’s right on the Green, Van Pelt. Then, of course, there are also McNeil, Steinberg-Dietrich, Meyerson (ironically), the old chemistry building, Williams, and assorted other eyesores that tend to ruin most of the good vistas on campus. Why do you continue to put us through this, Penn?</p>
<p>(Other than that, I like the sort of haphazard mix of architectural styles on campus, from College Hall to Fisher to the Quad, etc. Harvard and Princeton are architecturally consistent, and lovely of course, but I think that it seems a bit monotonous.)</p>
<p>I like Van Pelt library on the inside, it gets a lot of light. Mancune- when did you go to Wharton? Huntsman was completed in 2006 or 2007 if I recall. </p>
<p>Sterling Library is fantastic- the main reading room- I haven’t seen anything quite like it at any ivy except Columbia’s Butler main room. I think Harvard and Cornell have very impressive main reading rooms but I haven’t been to either in a number of years. Dartmouth’s library has been recently renovated and it is the same architecture firm that did Houston Hall/Perelman Quad at Penn and the Frist Center at Princeton.</p>
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<p>Umm, it’s all fake. Fake as in Disney Epcot Center fake. Built in the 1930s pretending to be from the 1330s. Pretending to the point where they threw acid on the buildings to make it look older after they built it (less than 100 years ago, whereas a real gothic building would be 800 years older). Sad.</p>
<p>You can argue that it is a NICE fake (indeed it is quite pretty), and helped aid you in your fantasy that you were at Oxford or Cambridge, but it was at its heart fake, indicative of an institution whose leaders were deeply uncomfortable with, perhaps embarrassed by, their school’s origin as a child of America.</p>
<p>Penn’s campus, while in superficial terms not as “pretty” as Yale, is far more authentic and American than Yale’s campus ever was and ever will be. Even its nasty 60s development part tells the story of America’s development through the mid 20th century–far more genuine than the Yale fairy tale. If you want a genuine architectural and artistic beauty, skip Yale/Epcot and see Penn’s Fine Arts Library, designed by the legendary Frank Furness, is more innovative, genuine, and unique than any building on the Yale campus (all of which are copies of Oxbridge gothic–go ahead and try to find a building that Penn’s Furness Library copies, you won’t find one in America or Europe.</p>
<p>If you don’t like Penn’s campus (as it seems you do not), then I encourage you to leave Penn’s Wharton School (which fits with Penn’s identity of being a school that never fancied itself as being above such ‘practical’ studies) and go to Yale’s sad joke of a business school (which eternally sits awkwardly and incompletely on the rest of Yale as the ■■■■■■■ afterthought 1976 add-on it is, and will forever live in the shadow of Wharton–and Harvard, Yale’s eternal superior). But don’t you dare insult America’s first University, a University that you do not, have not, and will not venture to truly understand beyond how it relates to your own nostalgic and narcissistic recollections of Yale.</p>
<p>Rtgrove a simply search would enable you to find a large amount of threads dedicated to this very issue. Posing this query in the Penn sub-forum will obviously result in bias.</p>
<p>I must say that I agree with ilovebagels to some extent. One of the reasons why I find a gothic building so magnificent is its age. Being familiar with both Oxford’s and Cambridge’s campus it was sort of sad to see Yale even though they’ve obviously spent a lot of money on it.</p>
<p>Fortunately, it is not as embarrassing as the National Cathedral in DC which is a complete copy of the Canterbury Cathedral with the difference that the other one is 1000 years older… It feels like the pyramids in Vegas.</p>
<p>Jersey:</p>
<p>Obviously there is bias here. However, there is also bias on the Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton forums regarding this topic. I could not find a Penn post about this (there were plenty of posts about campus beauty on other ivy forums though), so I wanted to hear Penn’s side of the story here.</p>
<p>I COMPLETELY agree with ilovebagels. Ok straight up, i was 99.99& certain of applying yale EA and go there once if i got accepted. Then i made the smartest decision of my life and went on a college visiting tour and went to most ivies and a few prominent non-ivies. Changed my mind within seconds. Truly was appalled by yale’s atmosphere and ‘campus beauty’ (or lack there of). As an oxford (UK) applicant who was selected for the interviews i got an opportunity to live in christ church college, oxford for a few days during my interviews and liked the atmosphere alot due to the traditions that lead to building of the college (and to be truthful, dining in the same hall and using many of the same routes that harry potter used too gave me a kick though im not a great fan of the books). Just hearing the tour guide say ‘its not actually old but in the early 20th century acid had been dropped on the buildings’ gave it away. a sense of make-belief shrouded the campus from then on in my mind and many parts such as the rectangular library where old artifacts are stored in yale just seems fugly to me! yale is proly great in education but u cant possibly compare that thing in new haven to the city campus in philly that penn makes u call home.</p>
<p>Rant and rave on, Pennsters. Check out this thread from the Princeton forum about a month ago:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/913003-rank-8-ivys-terms-campus-beauty.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/913003-rank-8-ivys-terms-campus-beauty.html</a></p>
<p>As in undergrad selectivity, Penn will always round out the arse end of the Ivy league in terms of campus beauty in the eyes of most beholders. No amount of tantrum will end that!</p>
<p>awww mancune, did ilovebagels’ comment hurt your feelings? Its ok, its ok.</p>
<p>I guess I don’t get the big deal about Yale’s buildings not actually being from the 1300s. What’s the big deal? Its architecture. They’re not fake buildings, they’re built in an older style. Its not like fairytale land where Yale is telling people that the Colleges were formerly castles.</p>
<p>Mostly, they’re extremely beautiful with great courtyards as well. I didn’t like Penn as much as others personally, but that’s a preference thing. I thought all the Ivies were reasonably beautiful, but Princeton was by far the best.</p>
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<p>Laymen will be laymen–and I doubt they have the sense to consider authenticity as an inherent virtue to be considered in architecture. That they would think this is of no surprise to me at all. On the plus side, as laymen they will be markedly impressed with this [PennConnects</a> : — Penn Park Images](<a href=“Penn Connects : A Vision for the Future.”>Penn Connects : A Vision for the Future.)</p>
<p>Also when I visited Yale everything seemed about 4/5 the scale I thought it was in the pictures. Didn’t exactly help counter the miniature, Epcot-y effect.</p>
<p>Also, New Haven. QED.</p>
<p>“QED” is such an ostentatious and vainglorious acronym…</p>
<p>Anyway, I agree with the earlier posters in that I appreciate Penn’s attempt to be itself and not emulate British universities. I don’t despise Yale’s architecture, I just prefer Penn’s as a whole.</p>
<p>walked in college green, down locust walk, and around the courtyards of the quad today…</p>
<p>forgot how nice they were =)</p>
<p>mancune: As an international Ph.D. student, I don’t really give a **** about the selectivity stuff and I don’t have any hard feelings towards Yale. However, I do think the typical american way of emulating European architecture (especially old!) is ridiculous. The whole reason why people appreciate these types of buildings is mainly their age, which make them seem so awesome. I think the the National Cathedral is the prime example of this idiocracy. I really recommend going to the UK and visiting the Canterbury Cathedral and Oxford and Cambridge. The National Cathedral is a complete copy of that cathedral. When you realize their difference in age is 1000 years, you can’t help but laugh at the latter. What made me gasp for air was trying to figure out how they built that huge thing.</p>
<p>I prefer much more the traditional american architecture seen around e.g. the old part of Philadelphia or at Harvard. However, I know that americans seems to love this “fake” stuff and think it’s great. I guess that’s why they have been built…</p>
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<p>Reminds me of a great little Eddie Izzard bit on European history vs American history</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - Eddie Izzard - Where The History Comes From](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6hijsqO8H0]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6hijsqO8H0)</p>
<p>So yeah. Yale is pretty-but-fake. Penn is…genuinely American, warts (namely, 1960s) and all.</p>