Rollins College Archives

Introduction

Anyone who has laid their eyes on Rollins College cannot help but praise its elegance. Since its founding in 1885, Rollins has been at the heart of learning, culture and architectural beauty in Central Florida. The establishment of the College on Lake Virginia provided the perfect location for a truly beautiful campus to unfold. Over the years, the college leaders and planners have succeeded in combining the man-made beauty of campus buildings with the natural beauty of the lakeside setting. The consistent use of Spanish Mediterranean architecture has created a sense of harmony and unity that is the essence of the campus, and those well-designed facilities and surroundings have provided an ideal environment for generations of students in pursuit of a liberal art education.¹ Such an architectural history is an important component of Rollins heritage, however, detailed records of college buildings are not well organized to make them readily available to researchers and general public. Therefore a collaborative research team, consisting of Eneid Bano (’07), Charles Stevens (’07) and Wenxian Zhang, is organized to conduct a comprehensive examination on the architectural history of Rollins campus.

The first proposed goal for the research team is to assemble a complete account of buildings on Rollins campus that would include the names of architects, years of construction, dedication and renovations, square feet, cost of construction, donor information, and usage histories. The second objective is to develop a comprehensive web site documenting the history of Rollins architecture over the past 120 years that would include facts and historical images. Based on the result of the project, we hope that eventually we are able to compile a new Rollins walking guide, as the campus landscape has experienced substantial transformation over the recent years, and the previous publications developed in the 1980s and 1990s have been out of date.

The Summer Research Process and Challenges

To compile the pertinent historical information on Rollins architecture, we began our research project in the College Archives, going through all primary documents as related to buildings, grounds and landscapes. In some cases this measure was an easy process, as the Archives have maintained specific files over the years for campus buildings and grounds, and A. J. Hanna, professor of history and vice president at Rollins, had conducted previous research and created fact sheets for some of the old buildings on campus. However for every structure that we ran across with all necessary information, there would probably be two buildings that were lacking sufficient amounts of information about them. From very early on, the collaborative team has faced major challenges in this area. Consequently we gained valuable firsthand experience of putting research skills learned from classrooms into meaningful practices.

When we ran across a box without sufficient information, we would have to turn to other supplementary sources. Digging through piles of historical papers was no doubt a burdensome process. Nevertheless, along the way the team gradually acquired a better understanding of the college history, and became perspicacious as where the information might be located, ranging from files for finances and maintenances to student affairs, residential life and development records. For example, after the initial search for information on the Dance Studio that is located next to Hauck Hall and Casa Iberia proved fruitless, we checked under the maintenance files and found a few things, which eventually led us to the finance files detailing the cost and time of construction that we needed for the project. Sometimes when the research team exhausted all resources in the College Archives and still had insufficient information, we then contacted the departments occupying the buildings in question and asked for the relevant information. On a few occasions we actually visited the buildings in person, taking notes and pictures of the structures for archival records, as in the cases of the Hamilton Holt School Building and the Lawrence Center. Although we were fortunate to receive generous support from the campus community with our requests, the scarcity of information on certain buildings impeded our efforts to create a highly detailed history of the buildings. In the end, we realized that original research was real hard work that needed both tenacity and team effort from every participant.

After compiling the pertinent information on all buildings currently on campus, the research team started to compile records of the buildings that were once part of the campus but were either demolished, destroyed or sold during later years. We found out that several major wood-structure buildings on campus were dreadfully destroyed by fire, a chilling fact that eventually convinced the college leaders to begin building brick structures on campus in the early twentieth century. We also found that many historical buildings that were once part of Rollins have been demolished by the College to make room for new constructions, with the exception of only few buildings that have been sold and are still standing to this day. Finding sufficient information on all those buildings presented further challenges for the research team. The main problem was that Rollins had purchased numerous buildings in its 120-year history. Most were small houses from the nearby residential areas that were used temporarily as dorms, offices or storage space and later moved or torn down completely to construct new and major buildings on campus.

Once the comprehensive records of Rollins architecture were compiled into an Access file and the narratives drafted, we began to work on creating a website dedicated to the architectural heritage of Rollins campus. After exploring several different formats, we designed our web pages with three columns listing individual buildings on campus that we believe would suite the purpose of our project. Under each column, building images would lead interested users to detailed information about the history of the structures. Besides the list for the current buildings, a page on the historical buildings on campus was also developed. In addition, the website would include campus maps and aerial views over the years, various college master plans, and information on architects who were responsible for major buildings on campus. Because the amount of work involved to cover all buildings both current and historical, we are not yet ready to bring the website live at the end of the eight-week summer project. On the whole, we have learned from this endeavor the important skills in computer digitization and web page development; and we are confident that when published, the website we created will become a valuable resource for Rollins students, faculty and general public interested in studying the architectural history of the College.

Main Research Finding: Hamilton Holt’s Vision of Rollins Architecture

While researching on the history of Rollins architecture, the collaborative team found that more than anyone else, it was Hamilton Holt (1872-1951) who put Rollins on the landscape of higher education in the United States. Despite his lacking of knowledge in educational theory and pedagogy, the eighth president of the College fostered a great legacy of expansion and growth during his administration (1925-1949). Shortly after his arrival, Holt launched the Conference Plan that centered the Rollins curriculum on individual students, founded the Animated Magazine, and brought many great personalities to Rollins including Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, and the American philosopher John Dewey. It was also under his leadership that Rollins established the Spanish Mediterranean architectural style of the campus.

Holt firmly believed that the proper physical environment was essential for any meaningful educational experience to take place, and Rollins needed a campus with spacious and open breezeways that would take advantage of its tropical setting. Envisioning Rollins as “the Open Air College of America,” he deemed that the Spanish Mediterranean architecture blended best with “plants, bamboos, and brilliant sunshine.”² Holt remarked in 1925, “We shall find the most beautiful buildings of the Mediterranean type in Florida, then find who designed them, then get that man to design every building on our campus necessary for the comfort of our students – and all in harmony and all parts of a unified whole.”³ That person was Richard Kiehnel of Miami, who in the late 1920s developed a campus master plan for Hamilton Holt.

Figure 1. President Hamilton Holt’s master plan for Rollins College as designed by Richard Kiehnel of Miami in 1929. Rollins College Archives.

The research team found out that the first building constructed under President Holt was the Rollins Hall (1929), which was designed by Kiehnel and Elliot. The same firm also designed the Pugsley and Mayflower Halls (1930), the Annie Russell Theatre (1932), the Gale, Lyman and Fox Halls (1936), the Cross and Hooker Halls (1937), the Woolson House (1938), the Strong Hall and Faculty Club (1939), the Alumni House, the Student Center and French House (1941). In addition, Kiehnel’s former associate George Spohn was responsible for the design of the Warren Hall (1946), the Sullivan House and Corrin Hall (1947) and the Orlando Hall (1948). Other major buildings constructed during the Holt administration include the Knowles Memorial Chapel (1932), and the Beal-Maltbie Shell Museum (1940). All those buildings were planned with the same unifying design of the Spanish Mediterranean architecture, which displayed a creative combination of rectangles as part of the general shape of the structures. Moreover, a round of loggias and cloisters connecting the various buildings on campus gave a resemblance of a walled medieval European city. As a master planner and builder, Holt plowed the seeds of the architectural beauty of the Rollins campus. The research team concluded that the Holt era was a very important chapter in the architectural history of Rollins. It was Holt who turned his vision into an enduring legacy that made Rollins one of the most beautiful campuses nationwide.

Summary

As with many other complex projects, much more work still needs to be done at the end of eight-week research period. Felt deeply attached to the project, Charles Stevens, one of the student participants, decided to take a student assistant position in the College Archives to continually work on the project. The next step will be finishing the work on the website and making it available to the campus community and general public sometime in the fall 2006, after all facts have been thoroughly reviewed by the College Historian, the Director of Facilities Management and the Vice President for Finances and Services. In addition, the research team will work with the Office of Public Relations to have a new campus walking guide or a booklet on Rollins architecture published in the coming academic year. We believe such a publication will not only allow new and prospective students get acquainted with the campus, but also help students, alumni and people from the local communities to learn more about the history of the College and its architectural heritage.

Now looking back, the archival research team is very proud the work achieved over the summer. Despite the time-consuming and labor-intensive nature of our work, we have enjoyed every aspect of the research process from reading the history of Rollins College and reviewing primary documents in the Archives, to digging facts, compiling master list, visiting departments across campus, scanning photos and editing web pages. In sum, this year’s student-faculty collaborative program has become a great learning experience for every participant of the archival research team. Not only we had a chance to apply the research skills learned from classrooms into real-life situation, but also gained a genuine opportunity to practice our writing and web page competence over the summer. Because this is a collaborative project, we also became more accustomed to group work and team-based approach to research problems. We learned how to effectively divide the work and share information with others on the team, and how to write historical descriptions without personal bias. Dividing the work allowed us to focus in greater depth about certain aspects of the project as we proceeded, and the weekly meetings helped us develop a more coherent plan concerning the overall goals.

Based on our experience, we believe it is vital to make the current generations of Rollins College aware of the history constantly surrounding them. Without history, a building is no more than brick and stone, a voiceless monument like that of Stonehenge. Through the summer research project, we have learned that a micro-institutional history of Rollins can be as delightful and complex as the macro history of a nation or states. Furthermore, we have acquired a basic knowledge of architecture, and become some sort of experts on campus buildings. But more importantly, we have developed a deep appreciation for the architectural beauty at Rollins. Now we can barely walk around campus without thinking of all we learned over the summer. Sensed a renewed connection to the College, we have realized that architecture is an important component of liberal arts experience at Rollins. We are so grateful for the opportunity to work on this important project, and hope our efforts will somehow contribute to Hamilton Holt’s enduring legacy at Rollins.

Acknowledgements

The archival research team would like to express special appreciations to Mr. Blair Neller, Dr. Thomas Moore, Mr. George Herbst, Dr. Lorrie Kyle, Dr. Jack Lane, Mr. Scott Bitikofer and Mrs. Trudy Laframboise for their guidance and support during the 2006 summer research project.

References

Catharine Rogers, A Walker’s Guide to Rollins College (Winter Park: Rollins College, 1988), 4-5.
Jack Lane, Rollins College: A Pictorial History (Winter Park: Rollins College, 1980), 53-54.

Ibid.