University of Southern California University Park Campus, Fall 2016
As my time as a student at USC came to a close, I prepared this collection of photographs of the University Park Campus. In the four and a half years I spent there, large areas of the campus underwent massive change. This trend will continue, with USC Village and the Michelson Center currently under construction and several other building and landscaping projects already planned.
The collection below showcases several lesser-known views and spaces within the campus. The goal is to document these places as they exist at this particular moment in time, as many will likely change drastically over the years. Images of the under-construction USC Village are largely excluded from this collection as they’ll be in the December construction update.
Viewed across 34th St. (which is overdue for repaving with concrete and brick and the addition of pedestrian lights and street trees), the Univeristy Club at King Stoops Hall is framed by majestic flowering Jacaranda trees in May 2016. The large Jacaranda and Magnolia trees at the left were removed later in the year as part of the new Trousdale campus entrance at Jefferson.
An unexpected perspective of the AHF building, from a restroom window on the third floor. The west facade’s brick pilasters are visible in detail and portions of the loading dock, southwest wing, and surrounding trees are also visible.
The lawn south of Watt Hall is a park-like triangle separating the school of architecture from Exposition Blvd. The large trees and sculptures currently occupying this space will be replaced by a new building for the Iovine-Young Academy beginning next year.
The courtyard behind Wallis Annenberg Hall is a nice quiet space near the center of campus, framed by the building’s south facade, which is aging well.
Across Jefferson Blvd. from campus, the Shrine Parking Structure races to completion with most of its south brick facade installed. The massive structure fills the entire block between the Shrine Auditorium and University Gateway Apartments, and will provide over 1300 parking spaces later in 2017.
The small park between Parking Structure D and the Davidson Conference center features large trees and a grass lawn, littered with yellow leaves here. The old “globe” light fixture dates this landscaping style relative to the updated spaces on campus.
The new plaza framing the recently-opened Fertitta Hall’s monumental main entrance features four large California Sycamore (Platanus Racemosa) trees that are turning color.
The four-story atrium inside Wallis Annenberg Hall is seen from the fourth floor, with the large media wall dominating the view. Taken around 5pm on the last day of the fall semester, the building is nearly empty.
A large Pyrus Kawakamii (Evergreen Pear) tree anchors the back corner of the College Academic Services building, the former home of the Thematic Option program. The ’50s-era structure (and its tree) will eventually be replaced with a more efficient building but retains a prominent location on Trousdale at 34th St., adjacent to the new campus entrance.
The now-four-year-old student health center offers a dramatic appearance complete with brick-banded landscaping, but the driveway to Parking Structure B bisecting the pedestrian walkway and necessitating a chain to restrict pedestrian flow indicates the persistent presence of vehicular traffic within the main campus footprint.
A view of USC’s baseball park, Dedeaux Field, from the right field fence. This is the proposed site of the swimming stadium for the 2024 Olympics.
Trees and shrubs line one side of the small walkway separating Dedeaux field from the tennis courts. The under-construction Michelson Center is visible in the distance.
Trees turn color around Kaprielian Hall, which is holding up moderately well for what was intended as a temporary building to define the edge of campus along Vermont St. when it was built in 1989.
Mark McGuire Way, viewed from the front of the baseball stadium, will meet a renovated Childs Way once the Michelson Center is complete next year, hopefully improving the pedestrian-oriented feel of this corner of campus that was formerly a massive parking lot.
Circular concrete walkways define areas planted with eucalyptus and pine trees around home plate of Dedeax Field.
Associates Park, between Bovard and the Physical Education Building (pictured), features a symmetrical layout with tropical plantings that offer one of the last remaining glimpses of a landscaping style in Los Angeles dating to the 1920s.
A thick canopy of trees encloses the park space in the school of music, creating a popular place to lounge or practice an instrument.
Portions of the new Trousdale campus entry at Jefferson are nearly complete, with landscaping nearly complete.
The newly-renovated portion of Watt Way adjacent to the new Kaufman Dance Center serves as a gateway to the new USC Village, visible across Jefferson Boulevard. The brick banding and fast-growing California Sycamore trees here match other recently-updated stretches of Watt Way, but a different landscape and hardscape palate on the USC Village portion will reinforce the discontinuities evident throughout Watt Way, as it’s interrupted by widely varying setbacks and landscape/hardscape styles.
An old dorm currently used by the Trojan Marching Band and for administrative offices, Stonier Hall features historically-interesting brickwork on the facade.
Jacaranda trees obsure much of the front facade of Stonier Hall, which features brick, concrete quoins and trim, and diaper pattern brick on the top floor.
The new courtyard of Fertitta hall features parallel brick banding aligned with each facade of the new building, and continuing to where Popovich Hall encloses the space. Ample seating is provided to serve the two cafes adjacent to this outdoor space, with a few boxed trees reminding visitors that the building’s auditorium is directly under the courtyard.
Birds of Paradise (Strelitzia Reginae) are an integral part of the new landscape palate for the campus, seen here on Childs Way in front of the brick facade of Lewis Hall.
Formerly a dormitory (known as Town & Gown) and now housing administrative services, Hubbard Hall features a quaint brick facade with white-painted concrete framing the front courtyard. The exterior’s colonial style is unique in its subtlety and simplicity, relative to other campus structures erected in the 1920s.
The facade of the Newman Recital Hall at the corner of the Allan Hancock Foundation Building features a sculpture of prehistoric mammals.
Animal sculptures top the back facade of the Allan Hancock Foundation Building, with shadows from the tree canopy.
The courtyard of Town and Gown, with the entrance to the Little Chapel of Silence in the foreground and Dauterive Hall rising in the background.
A heavily-landscaped walkway connects Childs way to the business and law schools behind the Allan Hancock Foundation Building near Town and Gown.
The south facade of Town and Gown sits across from the brutalist Law School.
A park space separates the business school from Exposition Boulevard.
Bridge Hall, sitting at the south end of Trousdale, will be fully renovated next year to better serve the school of business now that Fertitta Hall is complete.
Intricate concrete detailing at the main entrance to Zumberge Hall, memorialized as “Science Hall” in the ornate concrete lettering above the second floor, just out of view here and typically obscured by the tree canopy.
Detailed brickwork and concrete banding on the courtyard facade of Mudd Hall at the library.
Trees frame a view of the intricate facade of Mudd Hall along Trousdale Parkway.
A small lower lawn along the south facade of Watt Hall, with a view of the back of Harris Hall. I once built a wood structure handing off of one of the concrete sun shades here for an architecture class.
A large bunch of trees anchor the corner of Watt Way and 37th place in front of the uninspiring Powell Hall.
Leaves litter the lawn of a small green space between Powell Hall, the Salvatori Computer Science Center, and the Seaver Science Library.
Looking down Downey Way from McClintock St. The Michelson Center rises on the right while the steel plates covering the associated utility work in the street serve as a reminder that the asphalt paving, street parking, and Jacaranda trees associated with a 1960s-era landscape plan for a Jacaranda-lined ring road around campus will soon be removed and replaced.
A recently-landscaped area behind the Grace Ford Salvatori Building doesn’t quite align with an entrance to Wallis Annenberg Hall visible at the end of the walk.
Large California Sycamore Trees cast an intricate shadow on the east facade of the Bovard Administration Building & Auditorium.
A fountain and numerous palm trees sit in front of the north facade of Doheny Library.
A tidy row of Cost Live Oak (Quercus Agrifolia) trees lines the north side of McCarty Quad in front of Leavey Library.
Parallel rows of trees fill the top of an artificial berm along the east side of McCarthy Quad.
The tiny “Figueroa Building” fills an awkward corner between Marks Tower, the beach volleyball stadium, and Parking Structure X. Its square form and ordinary brick facade don’t feel out of place, though, with mature trees and old asphalt paving indicating a forgotten corner of campus that will surely change when the time is right.
A new “campus identity monument sign” anchors the corner of the campus fencing in front of Fertitta Hall at the corner of Exposition and Figueroa. This is the first of several of these signs and similar ones, which will eventually grace each campus entrance. The steepled monument sign style is already under construction at the new Trousdale entrance, the new entrance at McClintock and Jefferson (being added right now, in December 2016), and throughout the USC Village site.
Newly-planted trees spaced too closely near the entrance to the school of architecture (left) combine with an awkward transition between the 1940s Harris Hall and the 1970s Watt Hall to form an odd space that’s typically filled with bikes and abstract architecture projects.
The west facade of the Taper Hall of Humanities reflects a series of large trees from green spaces around the school of music.
The completed Kaufman Dance Center is one of the best representations of the new “Collegiate Gothic” campus style, blending well with the historic Romanesque Revival architecture.
The tower of the Bovard Administration Building & Auditorium is frequently featured directly from the east in university publications; this view from the southeast offers a slightly less common perspective complete with a closer view of the east facade.
8 replies on “University of Southern California University Park Campus, Fall 2016”
Thank you for these wonderful pictures! Your commentary and knowledge was insightful as well.
So sad you are leaving and won’t be able to give us your insights on the construction taking place at USC, your pictures and commentary have been outstanding!!
I look forward to the day when that ugly concrete building on Trousdale and 34th is gone, how it’s survived this long is beyond me.
I am bummed to read about the jacaranda tree’s coming down, I love their purple flowers. Hopefully they don’t replace them with the out-of-place desert tree’s they put in at the new Trousdale/Jefferson entrance, those look like they got electrocuted or something. 🙂
Thanks for all of your comments, Jim! It’s been fun to document the progress as it’s come along.
There are definitely some questionable landscaping decisions in the recent work, but for the most part I think the end result will be an improvement. The desert trees do seem out of place, although they can look pretty cool when they’re covered in yellow flowers twice a year.
Thanks for these pictures! The campus has really evolved over the years and I am looking forward to all the upcoming changes. Do you have any insight about the Jefferson building (located across from Webb Tower)? That building is a real eyesore and it has such a prominent location.
There were actually some rumors about a year and a half ago that construction of a new building at the site of the Jefferson Building would begin around fall 2016. I think that project fell through or was delayed; there’s currently a bit more landscape/hardscape work happening around the corner of it to finish up the offsite street improvements for USC Village, but I haven’t heard anything else about a new building there. At one time it was a proposed site for Wallis Annenberg Hall as well. On the plus side, the Jefferson Building’s green paint job makes it look slightly better than the McClintock building across the street 🙂
USC has gotten a bit quiet about announcing upcoming building projects lately (the new Iovine-Young Academy building behind Watt Hall is in the contractor bidding phase but has yet to be officially announced, for example), so there’s probably a chance that something could start there at any time.
Some lovely memories. In the late 1940s we lived in a wooden ramshackle house directly opposite the Phys Ed building on what seems to be now called Watt Way. It was the only building on what was a playing field. It was subdivided into four apartments and an attic.
Thank you for these wonderful pictures! Your commentary and knowledge was insightful as well.
So sad you are leaving and won’t be able to give us your insights on the construction taking place at USC, your pictures and commentary have been outstanding!!
I look forward to the day when that ugly concrete building on Trousdale and 34th is gone, how it’s survived this long is beyond me.
I am bummed to read about the jacaranda tree’s coming down, I love their purple flowers. Hopefully they don’t replace them with the out-of-place desert tree’s they put in at the new Trousdale/Jefferson entrance, those look like they got electrocuted or something. 🙂
Fight On!
Jim
Thanks for all of your comments, Jim! It’s been fun to document the progress as it’s come along.
There are definitely some questionable landscaping decisions in the recent work, but for the most part I think the end result will be an improvement. The desert trees do seem out of place, although they can look pretty cool when they’re covered in yellow flowers twice a year.
Thanks for these pictures! The campus has really evolved over the years and I am looking forward to all the upcoming changes. Do you have any insight about the Jefferson building (located across from Webb Tower)? That building is a real eyesore and it has such a prominent location.
There were actually some rumors about a year and a half ago that construction of a new building at the site of the Jefferson Building would begin around fall 2016. I think that project fell through or was delayed; there’s currently a bit more landscape/hardscape work happening around the corner of it to finish up the offsite street improvements for USC Village, but I haven’t heard anything else about a new building there. At one time it was a proposed site for Wallis Annenberg Hall as well. On the plus side, the Jefferson Building’s green paint job makes it look slightly better than the McClintock building across the street 🙂
USC has gotten a bit quiet about announcing upcoming building projects lately (the new Iovine-Young Academy building behind Watt Hall is in the contractor bidding phase but has yet to be officially announced, for example), so there’s probably a chance that something could start there at any time.
Great as always! keep up the good work
Some lovely memories. In the late 1940s we lived in a wooden ramshackle house directly opposite the Phys Ed building on what seems to be now called Watt Way. It was the only building on what was a playing field. It was subdivided into four apartments and an attic.