page_title: Campus of the University of Washington
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Campus of the University of Washington / History
caption_attribution_description: University of Washington quad in Spring
context_page_description: The campus of the University of Washington is located in the University District of Seattle. Campus buildings are categorized by the major street or vicinity on which they are located on campus. In 2011, Slate magazine and Travel+Leisure described the Seattle campus as one of the most beautiful university campuses in the United States.
context_section_description: The University of Washington, Seattle campus is situated on the shores of Union and Portage Bays, with views of the Cascade Range to the east and the Olympic Mountains to the west. The main campus is bounded on the west by 15th Avenue N.E., on the north by N.E. 45th Street, on the east by Montlake Boulevard N.E., and on the south by N.E. Pacific Street. East Campus stretches east of Montlake Boulevard to Laurelhurst and is largely taken up by wetlands and sports fields. South Campus occupies the land between Pacific Street and the Lake Washington Ship Canal which used to be a golf course and is given over to the health sciences, oceanography, fisheries, and the University of Washington Medical Center. West Campus is less of a separate entity than the others, many of its facilities being on city streets, and stretches between 15th Avenue and Interstate 5 from the Ship Canal to N.E. 41st Street. University Way, known locally as "The Ave", lies nearby and is a focus for much student life at the university.
  The oldest building on campus is Denny Hall. Built of Tenino sandstone in 1895 and named in honor of Seattle pioneers Arthur A. and Mary Denny. It served as the core of the University for many years. The Theodor Jacobsen Observatory, the on campus observatory situated just north of Denny Hall, was built from the left over sandstone used in the construction of Denny Hall. Although it is rarely used today, the observatory is the second oldest building on campus. After other structures were erected near Denny Hall with apparently little overall planning, the Board of Regents determined that a master plan was needed. Early plans, including a preliminary proposal by John Charles Olmsted, stepson of renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, had little impact.
  Instead, it was the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition that defined much of the campus's future layout. The exposition plan, also designed by John C. Olmsted, defined the University's major axis on the lower campus. Oriented to the southeast, it follows the East Asian concept of shakkei or borrowed scenery, providing the University with its primary vista of Mount Rainier on clear days. Most of the University's science and engineering buildings line this axis.
  After the exposition, the Board of Regents sought a master plan that would unite the newly developed lower campus with the original buildings of the upper campus including Denny Hall. Rejecting a further proposal from Olmsted, the regents instead turned to local architects Carl F. Gould and Charles H. Bebb. Their proposal was accepted, and came to be called the Regents' Plan. It specified a northeast-southwest axis on upper campus around which would be centered the University's liberal arts departments. This axis joins the lower campus axis laid down during the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition at an open space left behind after a large temporary structure built for the fair was torn down. This space was later paved with a distinctive red brick and has come to be known as Red Square. Some of the buildings from the exposition were kept by the university and have been retrofitted over the years since. One of these is Architecture Hall.
  Bebb and Gould's plan also called for all future construction to adhere to a Collegiate Gothic style. This style is best exemplified on the University campus by the early wings of Suzzallo Library, the University's central library.
  New construction in the 1960s saw a deviation from the Collegiate Gothic style as specified in the Regents' Plan. Business facilities on the upper campus, science and engineering structures on lower campus, and a new wing of Suzzallo Library, were all built in a modernist style, as was a unique, glass-walled building housing an experimental nuclear reactor. The reactor opened in 1961; a small radioactivity leak in 1972 resulted only in a temporary shutdown, but security concerns eventually led to it being decommissioned. It was deactivated in 1988, dismantled in 2006, and the building was demolished in 2016.
  An apparent attempt to harmonize future developm
caption: Cherry trees in bloom in the Quad.
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