How a Getty Foundation preservation grant led Haverford to reflect on its campus architecture—and its image.
by Kate Campbell

In a steady drizzle with temperatures clinging in the low 30s, Christopher Frey harnessed himself into a steel workbasket attached to a 60-foot telescoping boom and advanced on one of the most daunting missions of his career.

Scaling the historic buildings of Haverford’s campus, Frey, an historic materials consultant, was on a hunt to collect, of all things, paint chips and mortar samples. Bagged and labeled, these half-inch-square sections painstakingly carved and pried out with a simple utility knife would offer a glimpse into the original colors and materials that once adorned the College.

The two-year study and repair of Haverford’s academic and residential buildings began in October 2002, and ended in May 2004 with a massive collection of data on how the structures once looked and which colors choices and mortar formulas would be accurate for a preservation project to restore the façade.

Surprisingly, instead of hushed and somber, Haverford’s earliest design influences were dramatic and deep. With each building eventually repainted in shades originally borrowed from countryside and quarry, the campus likely will evolve into a hint of its initial intensity.

“The whole process was really eye-opening,” says Frey, sitting in his Doylestown, Pa., office surrounded by a microscope, computer, and stacks of notebooks. “When you go through school you learn about paint palettes from different historical periods, but to see the mastery of color during the investigation was another thing altogether.”

“When I began to see natural colors turn up—it was exciting because it was unexpected,” says Frey, who majored in history at Dartmouth and went on to specialize in the architectural conservation treatment of historic buildings at the University of Pennsylvania’s historic preservation graduate program. Frey and George E. Thomas, Ph.D., of CivicVisions, conducted the Haverford study. Thomas, a preservation consultant, is an adjunct faculty member at Penn and has written and lectured widely on 19th-century and early 20th-century American architecture.

“The public perception of what Victorian color was—is not always accurate,” says Frey. “The pastel-like painted ladies of the Jersey Shore don’t really reflect what the majority of Victorian architecture was about—an intentional use of organic colors which were found in nature and in natural building materials. Without question, Victorian colors were dark—materials were dark stone, schist, dark red, and brick. Those natural colors were incorporated into the paint scheme. I expected to see natural colors—the design intent has to be sympathetic to the surrounding stone. But it was more vibrant than I expected.”

Archaeological Detection

The study, which included 36 campus buildings, was made possible by a grant from the Getty Foundation’s Campus Heritage Initiative. The program is highly competitive, says Robert Melnick, visiting senior program officer for the Getty Foundation.

“It’s a sign of the excellence of the proposal that Haverford was chosen,” says Melnick. “We found the resources on campus interesting and were excited that it was a extraordinary and cohesive collection of Quaker architecture. There was a real need that was expressed and a good work plan. It was clear the campus was behind this project and that the buildings really mattered to Haverford.”

It was not just the state of the buildings, said Melnick, but the diversity of architecture that emerged as critical factors in choosing Haverford. “The wonderful thing about Haverford is that there’s a sense of being in a pastoral setting. Haverford wouldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t for that landscape setting.”

The well-maintained history, he says, demonstrated long-term resource stewardship. One of the more surprising details the Haverford study revealed: the layers and variety of paint discovered. “At Haverford you have an example of history being painted over for years,” says Melnick former dean of the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts. “You never know what you’re going to get when you begin. It becomes a form of archaeological detection.”

The Getty Foundation, part of the J. Paul Getty Trust, an international cultural and philanthropic organization, relies on a range of national experts during the decision-making process. The panel includes art historians and preservationists who make final recommendations to the Foundation. In the four years since it began, this national initiative has now served about 60 schools.

The $170,000 grant is significant, not just for Haverford, but for the other schools that have gone on to receive it.

“A number of years ago it became clear to us that there was a growing need to support campuses as they pay attention to their historic resources,” says Melnick, a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

“These campuses are repositories of great architecture and those resources were not getting the attention they might have because schools are under pressure to place their funds elsewhere. By the time you add that up, preservation wasn’t getting the attention it should,” he says. “We’re already seeing that it’s helping schools make decisions about future changes.”

Another advantage of the Campus Heritage Initiative—it may spark a dialogue about the future of vigilant growth.

“When you see large attention paid to those resources, the buildings, and the landscape, you realize it becomes a tool to think about future additions and changes to the campus,” says Melnick. “I feel very strongly we need to both remember the past and be responsible to the future. It’s a way to pay attention and take better care of the buildings we have. And when you’re sitting down, making major decisions about the future of the campus, on that decision-making table ought to be the interests of preservation.

“People would never think of a new building without talking about the need for restrooms or lighting. As a campus moves forward, preservation of its particular heritage should always be part of the conversation.”

Searching for Identity

Indeed, partnering with Getty gave Haverford the research muscle needed to establish the historical significance of its buildings. But in many ways it also stirred a long-settled complacency over identity.

“The Getty study has revealed that this is not what the original campus looked liked at all,” says John Mosteller, Haverford’s Director of Foundation and Corporate Relations. “The monochromatic scheme was imposed on the entire campus in the 1980s and looks ‘appropriately’ Quaker because it’s understated and sleepy.”

This faux-Quaker aesthetic, he says, denies the complexity and history of what the Quakers found acceptable.

“It projects a different image than what the College is trying to attract,” says Mosteller. “What started as a school for 30 local boys is today a place where we are purposefully trying to recruit a diverse student body. Those students have to walk around this campus and ask themselves, ‘Will I fit in here?’”

The Getty results will help Haverford focus on restoration, but perhaps more importantly, they serve as a draft for further development. Making the historic renovations only as planned repairs come up offers time to choose which projects are priorities.

“The collection of buildings and their relationship to the landscape will help inform our strategies on master planning,” says Mosteller. “The exhibition was part of the education process. What’s not understood yet is how important cosmetics are to retain and recruit. I think we have a lot of educating to do. There are opportunities and unrealized potential here,” he says. “It’s a very new idea to view the buildings of an institution as an asset to advance its mission from the historical point of view.”

George Thomas agrees. When everything was painted “Haverford white,” in the 1970s and ’80s, he says, the school risked a perception of monoculture.

“It showed the trustees resisting the change of the culture of the times,” says Thomas, who co-authored Building America’s First University: An Historical and Architectural Guide to the University of Pennsylvania. “And there is a consequence of the choice. One of the things that we now see is architecturally; Princeton and MIT are about making big statements. Haverford wants to attract a diverse, differentiated community … if the College is really after a diverse community, there are ways to represent that. A student drives onto the campus and make up their mind in three minutes.”

Laying the Groundwork

Historic preservation is not about freezing buildings at a specific moment in time, Chris Frey says, but about responsible change management.

“Each building presents its own unique record of changes over time—we’re trying to give Haverford the tools to go forward. You have to weigh whether or not it’s critical to have a pure historic renovation,” says Frey. “We tried to provide Haverford with options.”

In the earliest stages of the research, Frey and Thomas meticulously catalogued each building while walking through the campus over a two-day period. While photographing exteriors, the two men talked about the best places to extract samples and estimated the number needed. In the end, an average of 35 samples would be mined from each structure.

The Quaker influence, says Chris Frey, is evident particularly in the design and aesthetics of Founders Hall. But more expressive colors and design begin to emerge in the influence of Victorian architecture on campus in the second half of the 19th century—beginning with Magill Library and Barclay Hall—and then more extensively in the residential buildings along College Lane and College Circle.

“If you’re standing at the Green you will see the balance of two buildings that frame Founders,” says George Thomas. “It’s a communication of meaning. It’s an agriculturally related domestic building—this is the moment when Haverford was trying to keep its agricultural meaning. But then look at the collegiate gothic chapel as library—this shows it’s shifting to the mainstream. The next big piece is Barclay—high, collegiate gothic polychrome slate roof in the order of what other colleges are building—a residential community, a lifestyle.” And that assessment, of course, comes without regarding Barclay’s regal tower, lost to fire years ago.

It was daunting to assemble a project of this scope, Frey admits.

“But it’s been the greatest opportunity that I’ve had professionally because there are so many different types of buildings,” Frey says. “We wanted to get a sense of how the buildings looked over different times in history."

The most demanding building, says Frey, was 9 College Lane. An original section of the building with some additions showed evidence of three different historical periods.

The most delightful building to study, he says, was the president’s house. Because so many changes were made to the residential buildings, the Victorian homes were more complicated than the academic buildings. “We tried to determine which elements dated to the addition periods, and how the colors changed for all elements, original and added during different historical periods. We were looking for evidence of aggressive weathering or fire damages.”

Catalogued in four plain notebooks on his office bookshelf are Frey’s fastidious notes including numbered, hand-drawn ink illustrations of the buildings where he had chiseled out paint and mortar samples.

“Sampling insures you have all the right information and you cover your bases,” he says. “I cross-check and double-check the physical evidence and correlated the information to historic photographs. Managing nearly 1,300 specimens was overwhelming—but it gives us a sophisticated technical study.”

Structural Jeopardy

One blistering July afternoon last summer, John Diaz edged his golf cart into a spot behind the Ira DeA. Reid House to inspect a patch of peeling paint. The Haverford associate director of physical plant knew it was no emergency—but the College had spent the last several years entrenched in a campus-wide restoration project. The weeping strips of paint, tucked close to a sloping roofline, presented a problem that required some very exacting color-matching standards to mend.

Turns out the small area of paint at Ira DeA. Reid House had been poorly prepared, Diaz guesses, and likely was applied without using a primer and going down to bare wood.

“I didn’t like to see that,” says Diaz, who has worked at Haverford for 20 years. “But we go back to the Munsell chips and it was easy to take off the defective paint. The Getty grant sets up standards for all these historic buildings. It’s nice to have that outlined to go forward. Even more importantly we now have recipes for the masonry mortars that are invaluable.”

Used by many preservationists to match historic paint chips as precisely as possible with paint made by current companies, the Munsell Color System used in the Getty study is a standardized technical reference and color-matching system. Haverford has used M.A.B. exterior paints for most of its projects.

After the match work is finalized, most paint repairs are straightforward. But many of the Getty Grant projects were more intricate. It was an exciting time for Diaz, who worked with Frey and has managed all the repairs. They spent time at Magill Library with Diana Peterson, Haverford’s manuscripts librarian and archivist, poring over historic drawings, photographs and other archives in hopes they would uncover the original look of the buildings.

“We wanted to know what the College looked like originally, particularly in regard to the Carvill Arch,” says Diaz. Vines creeping in a mass over the arch had veiled some of the structure, leaving the team to discover what was hidden. With the research complete, an engineer prepared drawings and the reconstruction of what remained of Haverford’s original greenhouse began.

“What triggered the repair of the Carvill Arch was that it was structurally in jeopardy because the moisture was destroying it and the pointing and mortar repair over the years was not uniform and not appropriate,” says Diaz. “We were close enough, so we thought we might as well do the whole thing.”

Built in 1839 and hence saturated with moisture, the arch required skilled masons, working three men at a time for about three months, to complete the job. They began by drying out the Carvill Arch. Ultimately, the base and top were waterproofed and the pointing of the arch was done with Saint Astier’s Natural Hydraulic Lime imported from France and purchased from a Quakertown, Pa., distributor. A new stainless sub-structure for the arch was also installed (which is not visible behind the brick-and-mortar façade).

“It was exciting because it may be one of the few installations that we’ve done without cement and it’s self-healing,” says Diaz, who first became interested in historical mortar during renovations of Founders Hall in 1993. “It gets rid if the water by itself and it’s more pliable and malleable. It’s the way things should be done,” says Diaz. “We didn’t want to use artificial samples. We had to let them dry and cover them with burlap and then wet them each day. It was laborious and detailed and conscientiously done,” he adds.

Using the formulas described in the Getty grant, Diaz created detailed batch sheets, now a permanent and priceless resource for future restoration projects at the College.

At Magill Library, the windows facing Founders Green were made to look historically accurate, complete with a delicate rippling in the glass. Diaz replaced sashes with mahogany wood, added new bronze chains, pulleys, and sash locks. The sashes were painted a darker color according to the scheme provided by the Getty grant.

Largely satisfied with the projects, Diaz still finds some hurdles with long-term restoration. “The most frustrating thing is that you still negotiate (with each repair). It’s not totally pure as far as the results are concerned. It relates to functionality, aesthetics, and appearance. The nature of paint is that is more correctable—mortar is not.”

A Strong Sense of Place

The meticulous results of the Getty grant have launched a comprehensive historic preservation drive at Haverford. Still, the College wrestles with the question of just how much architecture and landscape fuel identity.

“Your academic program is the reason why people come here,” says Haverford President Tom Tritton. “They want to learn. I’m very content the academic center of the College is our purpose. But we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about our identity and what messages we project either intentionally or unintentionally. It’s been said before that ‘beautiful spaces create beautiful thoughts.’ It is the complex interplay between all the things that are important.”

Haverford must explore what message it conveys through its campus and perhaps how it creates a brand identity for the school. But Tritton is not easily swayed by the jargon of commerce.

“I have to say I don’t like the word branding,” says Tritton. “It seems very corporate and we’re not. We have a strong sense of purpose of what were trying to accomplish. What I think we don’t have is as strong a sense of place. Our historical heritage needs to be protected. It’s a social obligation to take care of things that really belong to everyone. But we also need to express contemporary values. It’s a hard balance to strike.”

Whether a prospective student is swayed by soaring modern architecture or soothed by a bucolic setting, Tritton says, is arbitrary.

“That sense of place is more of a subconscious factor when they’re deciding where they should go,” says Tritton. “That’s what makes it fascinating. These kinds of perceptions are personal. There are only two entrances to our campus—and either way you come in, what you’re struck with is the serenity and beauty of the landscape, natural environment, and the grace of the buildings. It’s fortunate you don’t see one of the world’s truly ugliest structures, the Field House, until you are already inside. If that was the first thing you saw it would create a completely different impression.”

Haverford administers a student questionnaire both for students who choose the school and for those who go elsewhere. “We hear fairly regularly about the beauty of the campus,” says Tritton. “But it’s rarely the principal reason for why they made their decision.”

A campus master plan shows a view of buildings surrounded by green space. Future structures won’t intrude upon the natural areas, says Tritton, and those buildings will reflect green design principals. The campus was designed with harmony and coherence, says Tritton, and future plans will follow that blueprint.

“I’m optimistic about what Haverford has begun,” says George Thomas. “It’s not about the grant, it’s about the dialogueit engenders. It’s not just about appearance—it’s about the social dynamics. Haverford’s ahead in the race because it’s asking questions.”

* * *

On his way into Magill Library for a few hours of study, Derek Ettensohn ’06 took a minute to chat about the influence of Haverford’s campus. The English major, just back from a visit with friends at Middlebury College, says it’s tough to pinpoint exactly why the grounds and buildings resonate with him. He was glad to be back, though. And the pastoral setting, he says, does impact his proficiency.

“The buildings here have a homey feel, the stone and light colors I think are less intimidating than a campus with a lot of daunting, tall buildings,” says Ettensohn.

Even when it comes to his preference in Haverford’s libraries, Ettensohn gravitates toward Magill’s dark and gracious corners instead of the more modern design of the science library. “Magill has a more intimate feel,” says Ettensohn. “The look of the campus has impacted me positively as far as being comfortable and that makes me much more productive.”

Kate Campbell is a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Boston Globe, and People magazine.

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