The University of Connecticut Historic District is a
historic district
A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...
including the historic campus of the Connecticut Agricultural School, now the
University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Hart ...
(UConn).
Site description
The Historic District is located
Storrs in the town of
Mansfield, Connecticut
Mansfield is a town in Tolland County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 25,892 at the 2020 census.
Pequot and Mohegan people lived in this region for centuries before the arrival of English settler-immigrants in the late 17th cent ...
, flanking Storrs Road (
Connecticut Route 195
Route 195 is a state highway in northeastern Connecticut, running from the Willimantic section of Windham to the town center of Tolland via the Storrs section of Mansfield. The road is the main thoroughfare to access the main campus of the Un ...
). The principal elements of the district are 23 masonry buildings erected between 1906 and 1942, in
Collegiate Gothic
Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for college and high school buildings in the United States and Canada, and to a certain extent Europ ...
,
Colonial Revival
The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture.
The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the archi ...
, and
Classical Revival
Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing style ...
styles. There are also 18 residential structures, some dating to the 18th century, and including the President's House, built in 1940. These are located in an area historically known as Faculty Row, which is now part of Whitney and Gilbert Roads. The master plan for the campus was drafted in the early 20th century by
Charles N. Lowrie, a landscape architect, and was followed to a substantial degree by subsequent development. The only non-university buildings in the district are those associated with the Storrs Community Church.
[ and ]
UConn is historically significant as the nation's first public university established specifically for the study of
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
. It was founded in 1880 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named for its donors (
Charles and Augustus Storrs
Charles Storrs (January 24, 1822 – September 1, 1884) and Augustus Storrs (June 4, 1817 – March 3, 1892) were American business partners and brothers who played a key role in establishing the Storrs Agricultural School (now the University of ...
) and
the village where its campus was located. The school remained small and focused on agriculture until the early 20th century. In 1906, the school began to expand both its physical plant and its curriculum, although the latter remained focused on agricultural subjects such as farm machinery and horticulture. This building program, largely completed by 1935, produced most of the assemblage of masonry buildings contained in the historic district. In 1933, the school was renamed Connecticut State College, and in 1939 it was given its present name.
The district was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1989.
Demolition
In the Spring of 2017, seven of nine houses on Gilbert road were demolished to create a park area.
See also
*
References
{{University of Connecticut
Mansfield, Connecticut
Federal architecture in Connecticut
Historic districts in Tolland County, Connecticut
National Register of Historic Places in Tolland County, Connecticut
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut