Danforth Campus
The Danforth Campus is the main campus at Washington University in St. Louis. Formerly known as the Hilltop Campus, it was officially dedicated as the Danforth Campus on September 17, 2006, in honor of William H. Danforth, the 13th Chancellor of the University, the Danforth family and the Danforth Foundation. Distinguished by its collegiate gothic architecture, the campus lies at the western boundary of Forest Park, partially in the City of St. Louis. Most of the campus (including almost all academic and administrative buildings) is in a small enclave of unincorporated St. Louis County, while all the campus  area south of Forsyth Boulevard (mostly student housing) is in suburban Clayton. Immediately to the north across Forest Park Parkway is University City. History. The construction of Danforth Campus was accelerated through a profitable lease of several buildings to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. During the fair, Brookings Hall, Busch Hall, Cupples I & II Halls, Francis Field & Gymnasium (site of the 1904 Summer Olympics), Ridgley Hall, Eads Hall, and Prince Hall (a men's dormitory) were used as administrative and exhibition spaces. At the fair's conclusion, the newly constructed buildings assumed their original functions as classrooms and  administrative offices. Additionally, Francis Field and Gymnasium were converted for use by the Washington University athletic department. The landscape design of the Danforth Campus was created in 1895 by Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot, a firm best-known for designing New York City's Central Park. In 1899, after holding a national design competition, Washington University's administrators selected the Philadelphia firm Cope & Stewardson to design the entire campus. Cope & Stewardson, a firm known for its mastery of Collegiate Gothic, designed Brookings Hall as a centerpiece of a new campus plan. The plan, modeled after the distinctive quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge  Universities, has guided the construction and expansion of the Danforth Campus to the present day. A large portion of the Danforth Campus is recognized as the Washington University Hilltop Campus Historic District, which achieved National Historic Landmark status in 1987. In 2019, a $360 million renovation project, called the "East End Transformation", was unveiled on the Danforth Campus, building on the original 1895 campus plan by Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot. The project included the creation of the Gary M. Sumers Welcome Center, which now houses undergraduate admissions; the Craig and Nancy Schnuck Pavilion, which houses a café, the Environmental Studies  program, and the Office of Sustainability; the Henry A. and Elvira H. Jubel Hall, which houses the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science in the McKelvey School of Engineering; and the James M. McKelvey, Sr. Hall, which will be completed in 2020 and open in 2021 and will house the McKelvey School of Engineering's Department of Computer Science & Engineering. All new buildings on the east end have been designed to achieve LEED-Gold certification and include solar panels on many of the roofs to generate renewable electricity. In addition to the five new buildings, the project relocated six acres  of parking lots underground, renovated and expanded the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, and created the Ann and Andrew Tisch Park. Campus buildings. Most of the buildings built between 1902 and the 1950s were designed by Cope & Stewardson and Jamieson and Spearl. James P. Jamieson was the chief architect for those built before 1940. Campus art and sculpture. The Barry Flanagan bronze statue, "Thinker on a Rock," widely known, simply, as "The Bunny", is currently on permanent loan to Washington University and features prominently near Olin Library, Graham Chapel and Mallinckrodt (Edison Theater). The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on  campus houses most of the University's art and sculpture collections, including pieces by Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Jenny Holzer, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Willem de Kooning, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, and Rembrandt van Rijn, among others.