BiblioVault - Books about Pridmore, Jay

Building Ideas

An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago

Jay Pridmore

University of Chicago Press, 2013

Many books have been written about the University of Chicago over its 120-year history, but most of them focus on the intellectual environment, favoring its great thinkers and their many breakthroughs. Yet for the students and scholars who live and work here, the physical university—its stately buildings and beautiful grounds—forms an important part of its character.

Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago explores the environment that has supported more than a century of exceptional thinkers. This photographic guide traces the evolution of campus architecture from the university’s founding in 1890 to its plans for the twenty-first century.

When William Rainey Harper, the university’s first president, and the trustees decided to build a set of Gothic quadrangles, they created a visual link to European precursors and made a bold statement about the future of higher education in the United States. Since then the university has regularly commissioned forward-thinking architects to design buildings that expand—or explode—traditional ideals while redefining the contemporary campus.

Full of panoramic photographs and exquisite details, Building Ideas features the work of architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Ives Cobb, Holabird & Roche, Eero Saarinen, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Netsch, Ricardo Legorreta, Rafael Viñoly, César Pelli, Helmut Jahn, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. The guide also includes guest commentaries by prominent architects and other notable public figures. It is the perfect collection for Chicago alumni and students, Hyde Park residents and visitors, and anyone inspired by the institutional ideas and aspirations of architecture.

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Northwestern University

A History

Jay Pridmore

Northwestern University Press, 2012

Northwestern University: A History is a resplendent guide to the origins and development of this university. Writer and critic Jay Pridmore offers the definitive chronicle of Northwestern’s establishment—from its founders’ struggle to erect a campus in the wilderness on Lake Michigan’s western shore to its contemporary status as “an institution of the highest order” with three thriving campuses, esteemed faculty and students, and a leading endowment.

Accompanied by a wealth of color photographs, ephemera, and archival material, Northwestern University: A History brings to the fore the storied traditions and contributions of the administrators, faculty, and alumni who built Northwestern into the world-class institution it is today.

Originally penned to commemorate the university’s sesquicentennial, this new edition charts Northwestern’s evolution in the years of Henry Bienen’s presidency (1995–2009) and offers a new foreword by current president Morton O. Schapiro. Northwestern University: A History captures the rich panoply of the institution’s rise to the first ranks of scholastic excellence and will delight students, their families, and alumni alike.

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Northwestern University

Celebrating 150 Years

Jay Pridmore

Northwestern University Press, 2000

What was the relationship between Frances Willard, the first dean of women, and Henry Fowler, University president?Why did Northwestern's founders build a campus and a whole new town around it instead of locating in Chicago, where those founders first met? The answers to these questions and a host of wonderful stories are part of Northwestern University: Celebrating 150 Years. Published in celebration of the Sesquicentennial and filled with historical and contemporary photos, this full-color book chronicles Northwestern's fascinating history and relates many entertaining stories.

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