Why does the University of Illinois campus at Urbana-Champaign look as it does today? Drawing on a wealth of research and featuring more than one hundred color photographs, An Illini Place provides an engrossing and beautiful answer to that question. Lex Tate and John Franch trace the story of the university's evolution through its buildings. Oral histories, official reports, dedication programs, and developmental plans both practical and quixotic inform the story. The authors also provide special chapters on campus icons and on the buildings, arenas and other spaces made possible by donors and friends of the university. Adding to the experience is a web companion that includes profiles of the planners, architects, and presidents instrumental in the campus's growth, plus an illustrated inventory of current and former campus plans and buildings.

Lex Tate is an adjunct lecturer in journalism and advertising at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and served as associate director of the University of Illinois Office for University Relations. John Franch is the author of Robber Baron: The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes.

"The colorful history of the University of Illinois (U of I) campus explored in this lavishly illustrated and pithy history. By virtue of its expert research, its thoughtful organization and writing, and its beautiful illustrations, it takes its place alongside other treatments of important institutions and landmarks of Illinois. The authors have achieved an admirable synthesis of treating the old and new, of the venerable structures (razed and remaining) and the modern construction and more recent architecture. An affectionate guidebook to this prairie cathedral and its plucky evolution." --Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society