<p>Anyone want to describe it to me? Or a place with good videos? Pictures? Any specifically?</p>
<p>Are there any notable architectural landmarks at Wesleyan?</p>
<p>Wesleyan’s oldest building (South College) dates from the 1820s and was part of a military academy. One can easily imagine the site being chosen by the original owners for its height and distance from from the river, a prime defensive position. Subsequent buildings continued the same architectural theme until a row of small-ish, rather spartan, brownstone buildings took their position.</p>
<p>They were set well back from High Street and with the addition of student-run literary societies and fraternities throughout the nineteenth century, a rudimentary quadrangle formed consisting of “Brownstone Row” on one end and “Fraternity Row” on the other.</p>
<p>High Street was also home to Middletown’s gentry and today reflects a grab-bag of architectural styles all reflecting period tastes: Greek Revival, Colonial, Italian Renaissance, New England Cape Cod all in procession. The fraternities took this as their cue and continued the same sense of whimsy in the style of each house. With the rather glaring exception of the power house that occupies one corner lot directly across the street from South College, High Street today is a snapshot of the way it appeared one hundred years ago.</p>
<p>Wesleyan’s biggest period of expansion was in the 1950s and sixties when it closed off Mount Vernon Street, making Foss Hill which was the site of the college cemetery and Andrus Field, the athletic field in back of Brownstoen Row, one contiguous property.</p>
<p>With the help of the Surdna Foundation (Andrus spelled backwards) and an architect alum, the Foss Hill dormitories effectively doubled the size of the college. The highest per capita costing dormitories of their time (and, perhaps still) they snake along the steepest ridge of “the hill” and, for the most part, can’t be seen from Brownstone Row. It was an engineering feat that would be repeated again with success on the Wesleyan campus : a series of small, modern buildings connected like mushrooms by underground tunnels.</p>
<p>The arts center does the same thing. It’s eleven acres of rather stark, modern buildings (completed in limestone in a break from traditonal brownstone), visible in winks and nods from High Street. No one is much bigger than a carraige house and are all connected by tunnels.</p>
<p>The Exley Science Center is probably the most blatant break from the past; a tall box with a waffle-iron design, it occupies the block directly across from the main library. What can I say? It looks like a science center. There’s more. I haven’t covered the gymnasium, the Butts, Usdan and the woodframe houses. But, basically you have the mainstays of campus: brownstone row, High Street, Foss Hill, the science and the arts centers.</p>
<p>[Wesleyan</a> University - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesleyan_U]Wesleyan”>Wesleyan University - Wikipedia) has some pictures, as well as <a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/virtualtour/[/url]”>http://www.wesleyan.edu/virtualtour/</a> when you click on campus maps (you can click on each building). [Wesleyan</a> University’s Photos - Campus Beauty | Facebook](<a href=“http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=16852&id=29396949994]Wesleyan”>Redirecting...), [Wesleyan</a> University’s Photos - Wall Photos | Facebook](<a href=“http://www.facebook.com/album.php?page=1&aid=19340&id=29396949994]Wesleyan”>Redirecting...), and [Wesleyan</a> University’s Photos - Campus on Friday | Facebook](<a href=“http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20317&id=29396949994]Wesleyan”>Redirecting...) all have pictures as well (posted by Wesleyan)</p>