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.

8 replies on “University of Southern California University Park Campus, Fall 2016”

  1. 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

    1. 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.

  2. 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.

    1. 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.

  3. 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.

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