Restoring Reason, Beauty, and Trust in Architecture, Part 20: Reflections on Building Notre Dame's Campus

Episode Topic: Reflections on Building Notre Dame's Campus 

Doug Marsh, vice president emeritus for facilities design and operations and University architect at Notre Dame, has shaped the campus over his 30 years of leadership. With projects like Campus Crossroads, the Arts Gateway, and global academic centers, he has overseen a 55% campus expansion while advancing sustainability and safety initiatives. Uncover highlights of his career, from guiding Notre Dame’s Campus Plan to leaving a lasting legacy of beauty, functionality, and innovation.

Featured Speakers:

• Doug Marsh '82, University of Notre Dame

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/11325f.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Restoring Reason, Beauty, and Trust in Architecture. 

Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.

• Learn more about ThinkND and register for upcoming live events at think.nd.edu.
• Join our LinkedIn community for updates, episode clips, and more.

Transcript

Welcome and Introduction

Speaker 10 0:16

Good afternoon to all of you

Speaker 2 0:18

in this auditorium and to the 200 people online. This is a school record, Doug, oh boy. 200 people online. this is what happens. We have famous speakers speaking at this, uh, this school. this is a very, uh, wonderful day. A very joyful day, in the life of the school. Happens every year at this time. It's a career fair and, uh, the beginning of many of our students facing, uh, the prospect of exiting the school and becoming architects in the world. And so, there are a number of things to acknowledge today. I think I want to begin by acknowledging all of you in this room who are either, graduates of the school or visiting us from different, uh. From different offices around the country, will you please rise and, and we'll,

Speaker 10 1:03

uh, celebrate you. The the second

Speaker 2 1:15

person I'd like to acknowledge Dan Cook, I can see him down there. He is the person who's, going to, uh, walk into the very large shoes of, uh, Doug's at, at the office of, uh, of uh, uh, campus planning and operations. So, Dan is also a distinguished alumnus of the school and his son, Ben, was one of our students here long, a very short time ago. So the memory of Ben is, is floating around this building someplace. So welcome, a great welcome to you. and then of course it's, uh, it's Doug Marsh's Day and, um. I will, I will, try to, uh, give Doug a longish introduction. Mm-hmm. And by that I mean that I will not say very much about his CV because he is both an alum and a friend and a guiding light around this campus. But I will say just that he is a, a graduate of class of 82, and also that he has been the director of our, our campus, uh, he's essentially our campus architect, if I can use that. A generous term, has been that for 30 years, which is actually a remarkable accomplishment in itself as this is a school of architecture. and so many of you are either graduates of the school, of the school, teachers in the school, visitors and admirers of the school, students in the school, and so on. I just want you to say two or three things about why Doug's presence here today and his presence. On this campus for the last, uh, 30 years in this position, this campus architect was so very fundamental. This is career day or the beginning of it anyway. And, you've heard us often enough speak about, careers other than just being a great designer in architectural office. And I think that the notion of being able to graduate from the school and take a job as, as a developer, as a builder, as a, the head of, of operations of a, of a corporation or an institution, as a, as a point official, as an elected official. Do you remember Thomas Jefferson? Anyone? as, as a person who can affect the cause of architecture in a remarkably important way, I think that's a, on a career day such, such as today, is. We should really be giving more credence to those, to those possibilities of, of understanding how architecture can become more and more and more influential in the world. And you chose a path, Doug, that, that might not have been as a, as an architect for a while. You worked as an architect, but the Doug, that the, the, the, the path that you chose as a, as a, um, as a professional following your, your individual practice as an architect brought you, I think to a position where you could develop and do a lot more about the course of architecture than you have ever have, could have done as a, as a, as a, as an individual practitioner or the head of a practice. The second important question about, Doug's contributions, is that we're also living in a very unique moment in the history of architecture where we've recognized both for modernists and professionals alike, that it's not desirable of possible anymore to be designing in the practice of single buildings. That single buildings have been the demise of the civilization. In the sense that we've building, building, building, building and building without understanding how buildings come together, how they make public space, how do they affect the landscape, how they make, you know, uh, harmonious, uh, ensembles of things in places that, that generate, uh, life at its best. And also we have, we have, sort of demonized the idea that, that, that we can be talking to each other as a community about how we make place and places that are permanent, useful and meaningful. and so the idea that then you become a campus architect and you're in the business of leading architects is a remarkable accomplishment because you did not design any of these buildings, but all of these buildings are yours in ways that nobody could ever imagine in this room about how yours they are, because you've been able to, to, to, to, pursue the, the, the initial idea, the programming, the campus planning, the programming, the initial idea. The development of these ideas, the construction of these ideas down to the use ideas of these ideas, because you're also the director of operations, which is even more meaningful in, in, in, in, in this, in this cycle of how one makes a built environment. So it's a remarkable thing to think that we have among somebody who has not only made or is making buildings, but it's actually working in ensemble to make places that are beyond the, the usual conception of what a 21st century architecture is about. And the last and third thing, which is probably the one that that strikes closest to our heart, is that this 30 years, as this lecture would attest to, has also generated a campus, a whole place that is actually the physical interpretation and expression of what Notre Dame is as an institution. And this is really, really important. It's almost seems self-evident in the history of American campus making that campuses are expressions of the values of the institutions that generated them. Except in the last 50 years, campuses has to have turned into trash heap heaps around the country. And the word trash heap is very generous. It's very difficult to, to distinguish a campus from the city. You know, there is a mixture of, of architectures, of intentions. There's competitions between buildings. There is no formation of public space, and there's no sense about the value of how an institutions and institution can be formed to make a place that, that expresses and describes it. And we all know, of course, that it means, for Notre Dame, it means high competence. High value in, in, in being a, a, an expressive and powerful person, but also. Respect for others. Community action, you know, open, uh, debate and, and democratic, institution making and, and decision making and doing all of that, that level of excellence, that kind of incredible presence in the world, humbly. And I don't think I could possibly describe what you've done here, that might actually say that it's really an accomplishment of extraordinary proportions done humbly in the spirit of doing good in the world. So thank you for being here. Thank you for everything you've done, and I hope that we'll have a chance to not only see your work in, in, in your presentations, to also talk to you and ask questions after you're done. So, welcome.

Speaker 10 7:44

Well, thank you. Thank you. Extraordinarily generous and warm and

The Legacy of Father Edward Sorin

Speaker 3 7:55

kind words, stefanos. It's simply, an honor, beyond, uh, any. I could have imagined to be here with all of you in this building, this space with friends, family, colleagues, coworkers, extraordinary team I have, and most of all, most special our students. It's an honor to share reflections of our campus, particularly through the lens as I start of the, I consider three great builders of Notre Dame leaders who were visionary in every sense that oversaw at least one transformational moment in the history of our beloved campus. Of course, that has to begin with our founder, father Edward Soren. Soren was many things, had many attributes, many strengths, incredibly creative. Of course, courageous, went through all kinds of challenges. His dream fulfilled and despite having to our knowledge, no training in architecture or planning turned out to have a real innate skill of it as evidenced by this early map of campus. Talk about placemaking as Stefanos appropriately started to describe Here at Notre Dame, at the top is a cluster of buildings that soar and formed, and they're cradled by these two lakes left behind the glacier, and then he draws this mile long vista Notre Dame Avenue. He writes it in there, and then he creates another place At the very bottom, he plats this otherwise unsettled part of the northern edge of this little village. Still called, you know, south Bend, not really a city yet, and he, and he plats out properties, single family homes. For folks to come and live and help him build this great university. That's the street grid that's there to this day. You could see barely make out. Maybe the front row could see Napoleon and St. Vincent and Francis Street, and he inscribed. You could see partially in the curve,

Speaker 10 10:14

named it after himself. Sorens. Well, back on campus. There were two principal buildings at the time.

Speaker 3 10:25

The building to the left was the first church he constructed, but Soren always wanted to have a gothic church, a truly gothic church inspired by everything he'd seen from his days in France. And so a few years after this photo was taken, construction began in front of, so south of the, that this church to eventually construct the basilica that we have today. It took 25 years actually to complete that dream. To the right is main building two. The first building that he constructed to act as the university essentially was just too small. He took it down, constructed this six story structure, put a tin roof on it, a tin dome tin, representation, Mary at the top. But that was gonna be the principle building forever. And at the time, think about it, it was the entire university in here. It was where the students took their classes, but it's also where they slept. It's where they took their meals. It's where they studied chemistry. It's where the teachers taught and officed. It was the first collection of botanical specimens, uh, in, in that, in that space. It was the first art museum. But of course, those of us know the story well. A fateful day in 1879, just about this time of the year, roofers, it's always the roofers repairing a coal tar pitch. Pole that had formed in the main building, left an ember behind from their work decamped for the day. But that ember burned eventually into the structure and took the building down. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but obviously the building was destroyed and it looked like the dream was over. Notre Dame burned to the ground. Ground was across eventually headlines across the country. Soren himself actually wasn't present for the fire. In fact, he wasn't even president by this time. It turned over the reigns to Father Corby. Soren was in Montreal, ready to take the next transatlantic trip back to France, probably looking for more funds to help grow. Notre Dame Corby sent rider very quickly up to Sorin, to to Montreal to stop Sorin. He came back with a handful of days and he walked among the ruins very quietly. Stoically. Thinking what had happened, but more importantly, what he would do next. He gathered those who had remained into the new church and he faced the altar and he knelt at the steps and he prayed. And when he was done praying, he stood and he faced the congregation

Speaker 10 13:07

and said this, this was my fault when I was a young priest to, and I started Notre Dame, I named it for Mary, mother of God. She's told me I dream too small and she burned it down. Tomorrow we will start rebuilding and we'll be

Speaker 3 13:31

bigger and better, and when we're done, we will cap it with a golden dome and a golden statue of Mary, so that forever on all who come to Notre Dame will look up and know to whom we owe our great blessings and fortune. Then he began to organize everybody in teams. One team consisted of 300 people assigned to make bricks. He built a kiln at the shore of St. Mary's Lake, and they mined mud and marl out of the bottom of the lake. And they made over the course of the next few months, 2 million bricks, million to rebuild the building from. He himself went to Chicago and hired an architect, Edward Willoughby, and they collaborated very quickly to put a design together for the replacement building. And by May 10th, the foundation was laid. The cornerstone that's there

Speaker 10 14:30

today was laid and teams began to assemble those bricks and make the new building incredibly by September.

Speaker 3 14:44

Enough was done. They could reopen school Soren's fear was if he missed the school year, then indeed the dream may actually have expired. People would never have come back. And it had been over. Yeah, the wings came later. The rotunda that supports the dome came a few years later, but he got enough done and a record amount of time. I've given this talk in variations before. Whenever this slide comes up and my boss is in the room, I never make eye contact. Shannon Cullen are, are wonderful. Executive vice president always has this quizzical look on his face. Like, Marc, if Soen could do this in four months, why is it taking four or five years to do a Billy by half that size? So I never have a good answer for him. So let's just go on. We have a treasure trove of incredibly wonderful, archive photos of campus, and this is one of my favorites. It's a favorite because it tells a campus of two stories. This budding central core look at how visionary Soren was in his response to the fire. He, he's still not quite done with the new church. The Basilica's got another five years before he is got enough money to finish it for the steeple. But then behind it, you could see the dome had been built. Finally. And then to the right of that is his first performing arts center, Washington Hall named for his favorite president. But look at the

Speaker 10 16:14

simplicity of the foreground. This is where Walsh Hall is today. It's still a farm to table operation.

Speaker 3 16:25

It's hand to mouth surrounded. This, this core is surrounded by hundreds of acres that still raise crops, that feed livestock, that feed the students and the, and the, and the teachers. And it could still be be gone. That's how humble this setting is. Yet Soren saw,

Speaker 10 16:42

uh, saw beyond that incredibly visionary electricity came to North America at

The Vision of Knute Rockne

Speaker 3 16:52

the end of the 19th century and it came to South Bend eventually. And somebody gets the grand idea of circling our ladies' head in a halo of electric lights, this newfound thing. And these five intrepid soles get tapped to climb the dome. You could see two of them are on her shoulders, 217 feet in the air with the task of getting that done. And three others are hanging on to the left there, with their, with their, uh, life in their hands. Here's up close. You could see just the cocky nature of this guy. Almost peeve that somebody would bother to take a photograph. clearly the day well before osha, arrived. Well, this, fool, was matched by this one. A few, few decades later. I've had the opportunity in my tenure here to oversee two re beings of the dome and our lady. and it is a special treat to have the opportunity to climb some precarious scaffold safe under OSHA's supervision, yet precarious nonetheless, to get up there and to look and touch and feel her. It, uh, it was a moving experience, particularly because of the artisans that were assigned to do this. Folks from Conrad Schmidt Studios, who do all of our beautiful artwork in the Basilica and our restoration work, their latest accomplishment. As the repainting of the inside auditorium of Washington Hall. You should go see it if you next time you're walking on campus. Extraordinary here. This young woman is taking three micron thin sheets of gold and burnish them on inch by inch, working sometimes six days a week throughout the summer of 23, because, not because we asked her a, but because she knew how important it was to us to be done by the, the time school started. That skillset also matched by these extraordinary craftspeople to steel workers of our area who built this extraordinary structure around Mary in the dome that never touches any of it so that it can be regilded. But by, by the end of that summer, that scaffold was taken down and Soren's view and Vista. Restored to remind us and all who come down Notre Dame Avenue and see it from all different angles to whom we owe our great blessings and fortune. The next great builder, I contend only has one structure to his credit, Mr. Newt Rockney, who came to us as a 22-year-old undergrad in chemistry in 1910, turned out he was a really extraordinarily good student and is two sport athlete, apparently preferred baseball over football by the time he graduates. Four years later, he gets two job offers that he accepts. One is to be a teacher of chemistry with Father Newland, who taught in and ex, uh, ran his labs in Crowley Hall. And of course, we attribute the invention of artificial rubber to, to Newland. He also gets the job as an assistant football coach under the legendary, just Harper, truly the father of Notre Dame football in those days. Harper, Harper's team was known as the, as the ramblers because they literally rambled coast to coast, traveled by train in those days, and they play anybody anywhere, all the great teams, the uscs out in, in, uh, the Coliseum in la or they'd play Navy, in, po the polo Grounds or Yankee Stadium. by the time 1918 roll rolls around, Jess Harper takes another job and rock's promoted to the, to the top job, and he goes on. Of course, we know a 12 year coach wins three national championships, and I think this, this coming seasons is the, this last year we just concluded was the hundredth year of his first. uh, of his first national championship. Rockney saw a business problem at hand. He had a very simple stadium to play in Cartier Field In those days, the ticket gate was the source of revenue. Radio was barely a media we're a long way from, of course, television. So teams relied on people coming to the games to fund their travel and their expenses. No team wants to come to South Bend, the middle of nowhere, play this upstart, little scrappy team that seems to knock them, knock them off in, in their stadia every once in a while, not for 15,000 people, in the stadium. So Rocky sees a need and he goes and finds that Michigan builds this enormous new stadium. And he learned that. Uh, Osborne Engineering Company out of Cleveland, Ohio did that project. He hires them to design plans for Notre Dame, which essentially is a replica of Michigan Stadium, just smaller, didn't need a hundred thousand person capacity. And he takes the plans to the president of the university at the time, father Matthew Walsh, coincidentally, and he says, I need this, and tried to justify it several times, but Father Walsh said this rock, we've, we've got some other priorities. We've gotta get all of our students on campus. Some of our students are in fact, downtown. And in fact, you saw last year we celebrated the hundredth anniversary of a pretty, pretty, historic moment, south Bend's history with, uh, our students fighting the KKK to send them packing. That was a signal that Father Walsh needed to bring those students onto campus, and he wanted to build three new dorms. Lions, Howard and Morrissey. And then he also needed to build a dining hall to feed them the South dining hall. So he told Rock, when those are done, bring your plans back. Well, those got done by 27 or 28 and the the project was green lighted. Rocky took his team on the road of all of the 29th season so that Notre Dame Stadium could be constructed and then opened to great fanfare in October of that year. Look at where it lies with respect to the rest of campus. You can almost hear them having a conversation. Let's put it way out there. Campus will never come here, and in fact, it's separated by a road. Eddie Road is going on the west side of the stadium. Look at all those cars.

Speaker 10 23:59

If they only knew about tailgating. Well, time went on. 15 years later, the

Speaker 3 24:09

campus began to encroach. So Cushing Hall was built and Hurley Hall was built and that put pressure on Eddie Road. And so Eddie Road was closed in this photo, you can see just at the bottom right, Juniper Road was moved to the, to the east side of the stadium, and it was there for another 60 years. So the campus could continue to march

Speaker 10 24:33

eastward and, and, and fill out in time. Eventually, of course, the campus engulfs

Father Ted Hesbergh's Transformational Leadership

Speaker 3 24:46

Notre Dame Stadium, particularly highlighted by the Capstone project, completed now incredibly eight years ago with the Campus Crossroads Project, which brought academic. Student life and meeting space, conference space to the, to the heart of this zone of campus. Unlike and activating the stadium, unlike any other athletics venue has done in the country, we owe that to rock's vision. And of course, any conversation about great builders at Notre Dame has to include the second founder of Notre Dame, as he is often referred to Father Ted Hesberg. Here he is at the groundbreaking with the Board of Trustees for the building that eventually bears his name, Hesberg Library, first called Memorial Library. Father Ted inherited a a, a university in 1952 as president. That wasn't thriving, and in fact, it barely escaped World War II in terms of its financial, uh, stability. And the academy wasn't very strong. In fact, I'll read a brief quote from Hess's bio autobiography, God Country Notre Dame, about the condition of the university he found when he became president, our student body had doubled. Our facilities were inadequate. Our faculty quite ordinary. For the most part. Our deans and department heads complacent. Our grad, our graduates loyal and true in heart, but often lacking in intellectual curiosity. Our academic programs largely entrusted with accretions of decades. Our graduate school and infant are administration much in need of reorganization, our fundraising organization, non-existent, but our football team, national champions. I love that he knew he had to have a transformational moment early in his leadership. So he dreams of building the largest university library in the country at a half a million square feet. Something that would really signal to the world that we want to be taken serious and something that would draw a great faculty back to Notre Dame. He, he had no business thinking about it'cause he had no resources. But it worked out coincidentally, that the Ford Motor Company's Foundation was looking to invest in upstart universities. Schools like an early Stanford or Johns Hopkins University, or a University of Notre Dame. In fact, they came to Father Ted and they offered, offered him a two to one grant. They would give him$6 million if he raised 12. And in true father te Ted fashion, he said, no, he'll use that. To go three to one, he'll raise 18 to get to the six because he could not only then build the building, but he also could attract the faculty, fill it. And in record time. In the first formal fundraising campaign of the university's history, he raised that money

Speaker 10 28:02

and it allowed him to build the building. And here it is. 14th story structure on the

Speaker 3 28:11

Indiana Prairie, likely the tallest building between Chicago and Cleveland at the time. It was a remarkable vision and incredible moment made only more special by his decision to put the Lord on the south elevation. The mural, the word of life mural, where Jesus is surrounded by saints and and scholars to be the backdrop that. Is the most photographed, I contend, especially on the happiest and most important day of every school year here, here at Notre Dame Commencement Sunday here. Father Ted is late in life looking out from his office on the 13th or from that library looking out over the campus. He helped create, he was teamed in leadership with Father Ned Joyce throughout the 35 years of their, their leadership. Father Ned was the executive vice president and oversaw construction in those days. They were prolific builders. They built 35 buildings in those 35 years. Here they are early in their leadership looking over the architect's latest models. Now, the, the campus architect, if you will, at those times was L or B Associates out of Minneapolis. They, in fact, were running the operation in terms of new building design for by and large, most part, for 40 years. Uh, starting with the early part of the fifties, one of the ideas they came up with was this cluster of new residence halls surrounding this space mountain, like chapel north of this new library. Now, not all of it got built. Of course, two of them did, uh, grace and Flanner that of course, uh, in the nineties we converted to to office buildings, but it was also in those early sixties, I think they were change orders to the library. We got a couple other gifts. We got the step and center up to the right. I'm often kitted about that building because I actually love that little building. It's been an inspiration for me for 30 years. I see it outside my window, every day, and our students love it. The 450 different events get planned and, and, and organized inside that building every year. Bottom, the building to bottom. You know that that's the old computing math building. It's the headquarters of it, TC or our, our, uh, it, it team to this day. But it was for a long time the place of the first and only computer on campus. I contend that it was inspired by the IBM computer punch card. Now, if, if you're, if you're younger than 50, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Our students are like, what is that? But this is how we programmed computers back in those days. There was a transformational moment during Father Ted's tenure that we were grateful to have missed. This is from our archives

Speaker 10 31:18

at this time. Think in the fifties,

Modernizing Notre Dame's Campus

Speaker 3 31:20

you know, tradition was pushed aside post World War Modern was good. It was time to do something about the main building because it was in great disrepair. In fact, the fifth floor had to be condemned in the fifties because the joists were starting to sag so much and cracks starting to form. And it was like that for the next 40 years. It wasn't until the mid nineties we opened it up, part of a comprehensive renovation, modernization of the main building. We found what had happened in the haste of putting the main building together in 1879. It appears that carpenters took the cutoffs of Joyce and studs and RAFs and nailed them together to make full members. Maybe they're running short of supplies or running short of time, but that's what they did. That's fine for a while, but we know over time those connections are gonna weaken, and they did, and that's why we had to condemn that floor. I can assure you all that's been replaced. We did that in the nineties and, and that should not reoccur, but the buildings was in such bad condition that there was thought to take it down and take it down and replace it with a new modern structure. And some folks have suggested this might have been even a placeholder for a new library instead of where it ended up. But Mary, rest assured was gonna stay in place. You could see her and spatially in the same spot on top of a 200 foot tall obelisk in front, in the, in the front of this new, very contemporary, uh, plaza. And so we're grateful that we can only imagine Father Ted maybe throwing out the architects, from the room that this did not materialize. But certainly the last 30 years have been also a period of great change in transformation here at Notre Dame.

Speaker 10 33:20

I think what started it all was a

Speaker 3 33:25

gentleman that I think is connected by phone and that is our incredible alumnus. John Burgie, class of 56, world renowned preeminent architect who would join the board of trustees in our early 1990s. And he saw a need. He saw a need to form a group inside the university that actually could better represent the growth and continued design of our campus, rather than have outside firms tell us what we should do. He also advocated for the formation of a committee from the board to help guide that work so that we could get back to our roots, informed by our history and our tradition informed by Soren's original plans. To make sure we were consistent with those and that we were about making places in a campus or cohesive rather than one building at a time as Stefano

Speaker 10 34:30

had had, has described. John, I owe a

Speaker 3 34:38

credible amount to you. If you're listening, I wanna thank you publicly because you're an extraordinary mentor to me, and you were also incredibly patient. John taught me what it meant to be a successful university architect. I had high standards, but he was incredibly patient, as they said. We spent a lot of time on this campus together talking about it, and they realized that we had to come back to our vocabulary. What we do well, what's Notre Dame known for?

Speaker 10 35:12

And so there was an opportunity. With a new program, a desire to build

Speaker 3 35:20

a new bookstore and visitor center. And this was the moment in time, this was about 90, 19, 96, 97, to think about going back to those roots. And so we studied very carefully the buildings that are most beloved at that time. Think about Dylan Hall and Alumni Hall. And he helped identify a firm, the Slam Collaborative, to do that. And so this was the first foray, first response to that of, of bringing those, those talents in-house and marching forward to begin a series of projects that were much more informed by our past. He also advocated the formation and the preparation of a campus plan, A new master plan, if you will. This is the latest version, 2024. You can get this on our website. On the university's website, on their facilities. But, and I invite you to do it as a short read, unlike many other master plans, but it, it, it basically deca describes our planning values, what's important to us here at Notre Dame. They should be timeless, that they'll carry on and years, years following, even Dan Cook's tenure as leaders, WW as a leader on the team, which will be long in coming. But if we stick to those planning tenets, Notre Dame will not change for the worst. It will always be guided by these incredible principles. One of the recommendations of the first generation, that plan was to close Juniper Road and move and realign at, at uh, uh, Angela Road that had, sort of awkwardly been designed in the, in the forties to come. In this sort of weird suburban swoop, linear curve, linear fashion, if you will, because it was gonna block our further development and we had over 200 acres isolated on the east side of campus. And so with a lot of work, some bit of pushback and rem mons from the community, but eventually we showed them our plan. And that was to keep Notre Dame small, to keep it compact, keep it walkable that we were not doing this to invade into those surrounding neighborhoods, but to actually to protect them and, and to have our traffic drawn to the campus through these new perimeter roads rather than, through the, through the heart of campus, through, other networks of roads that that intersected with those. And we eventually got it approved. It wasn't that

Speaker 10 37:55

long ago campus looked like this, where

New Residence Halls and Research Facilities

Speaker 3 38:01

the De Barlow quad was really. Really, uh, left to chance. There was this again, awkward road, these weird intersections, to the south of Eddie Street about where it is to this day. There was this five corners intersection. There was a bar literally on every corner. Now I know I have some classmates listening from 82. They would may maybe call those the good old days, but, we've straightened those roads out. And so, that is the intersection, now is where the home of Trader Joe's is located. And that's the anchor for, this extraordinary$300 million economic development, project that we know as Eddie Street Commons in the triangle that has spurred further, reinvestment into this neighborhood that, again, not long ago, looked like this. Dominated by absentee landlords who are more than happy to rent substandard housing to our students. An extraordinary metamorphosis in a matter of 20 years home to new home, uh, new housing, but also homesteaders who have been their generations seeing hope and reinvesting in their own properties and seeing the catalyst that this has created and the energy from campus all the way to downtown has been truly remarkable. Back on campus Father Monk Malloy, our President Emeritus Deci decision to anchor the campus with the new performing arts center, five venues to welcome the world and South Bend to to our, to our campus to come and see an extraordinary performance or a film inside this incredible venue, or come and hear a lecture. In this wonderful building or see the student work that's often displayed in the halls that's just really inspiring and spine tingling. Or come to our world class Museum of Art now anchored, uh, as the first gateway building entry, building off Notre Dame. Excuse. It's gonna be off of Eddie Street and Eddie Street Commons, an extraordinary collection. And just to the very upper left where you see the stadium start the O'Neill Hall of Music where you can go and actually in a theater about the same size here. World class music performed by our incredible students, our faculty, and including in the program of sacred music. And if we continue to fly above the stadium and go on the other side, once, once was a road is now a quadrangle home to four

Speaker 10 40:46

residence halls. Graham Hall just finished this past year. And we may have battery problems, so I'll just, uh, McCourtney Hall just finished the second version of that, the second

Speaker 3 41:13

wing of that home to 200 gimme 450,000 square feet of class, a research space that will help our research teams begin to develop answers for some of the biggest problems our world faces. I'm often asked, well, what is the plan? How does the plan guide you? What, what do you think often about when you're working with your colleagues to place the next building and often go to a drawing like this where we purposely have highlighted the great open space of campus, the, the quad wrangles. The major axes and counter axes. We've also intentionally highlighted in, in yellow the, the 34 residence halls, which of course is the core of life here at Notre Dame. And we've bracketed them in this version, showing two rectangles that I, I think, act like arms that embrace those buildings and then, show the proximity to the academic buildings. So this adjacency is not by chance, this has been decades in the making. Going back to Soren, when, when Soren College was built in Walsh Hall, where's built that adjacency That helps us, promote the pedestrian nature of Notre Dame so that no walk is too far from one class to a residence hall or back. Key to achieving this success. Sort of a success of planning like this, is to think about the entire building stock. These are examples of buildings that have replaced others that served us well for decades, but over time came to their end of their service life where we could put better design bigger buildings, thus densifying the campus, bringing more people to a square foot to prevent the campus from sprawling at the edges. And so we've been able to do this over the last probably 15 years in terms of these five examples, and we'll

Speaker 10 43:20

continue to do, look for more opportunities currently in, in progress are

Sustainability Initiatives and Carbon Reduction

Speaker 3 43:28

two new residence halls replacing Fisher Hall, which was my, my dorm next to the South Dining Hall and, and Pangborn Hall. Come next, uh, summer, summer of 26, the new coil hall, a men's hall, and a new women's hall there. Marie, uh, Therese Mary Groin Hall will be opened to a new community, uh, here, 2, 2 2 new communities here at Notre Dame. We also, during this period of time, have think really refocused ourselves in terms of a reinvestment strategy. The last thing we want to do is to leave behind for future generations an unfunded, massive deferred maintenance need. And you read about this in, in media where schools have, have fallen into this trap and they can never get out of it. There's can never be enough money to repair some of these, some of these campuses. Notre Dame is committed not to let that happen. And so, during this era, particularly with guidance of the committee from the board that John helped found. We began a very concerted plan working with our teams in finance to make sure we have the money to do it. This is an example of, of a hall we take offline every year. Last year it was Green Phillips Hall just reopened this past fall where we inject significant sums into those buildings and solve big problems, including accessibility. All these buildings on the North Quad, for instance, are mid-level changes, mid-level entry points that that is not open to to everyone now. Now they will be. We're about ready to launch. Come commencement right after commencement, the largest single renovation project in the university's history. We're gonna renovate South Dining Hall. Now it may seem like some of you, well you just renovated. Well, I've just renovated back in 96 and 97. I often say if you're renovating, you're renovations is probably a time to retire. That's what's gonna happen. I can assure you though, I, and I know there are a lot of fans of South Dining Hall, I'm one of them. We're gonna keep the two dining halls intact, we're they'll get a a sort of a refresher. What's gonna happen though, is the guts of it, where the action occurs, where the cooking is done, where the meals are served, are gonna change remarkably. This was in fashion at the time, uh, in the nineties. It's no longer it'll be replaced by a deli beautiful space where there's actually clear story windows, up at the very top, of the center part of the building and will reveal those. And, uh, it'll be a remarkable transformation. It'll be two years of really tough work. Let me just say students that you, you eat there, be patient with us please. it'll be a good project. But, and we'll keep the dining hall open during the period of time, but it'll, it'll be, it'll be a big lift.

Speaker 10 46:31

This also the last 30 years has been a,

Speaker 3 46:34

a, a point of time, particularly in the last 15 of an awakening about the university's role in sustainability. And lado seed from Pope Francis really helped spur our plan on. This is a, this is a chart I'll, I'll quickly explain. This is about the university's scope one and two carbon emissions. This is what comes out of the power plant in terms of carbon and what's comes out of our utility partners, a EP in the elec, in the electricity we buy. The plan that we adopted back in, uh, in about oh 5, 0 7, was the purple curve. We never got at the very end, 2050 to zero. That wasn't acceptable. We went back and we have attacked it with much more diligence and the, the green area highlighted by the red line is where we're at in our path to get to zero. And our goal is by 2030 to be at a 65% reduction of our, of our 2005 baseline. And so we're making great progress. How are we doing that? Number one, geothermal. You've, you've seen the 2,500 wells you've been around campus the last several years. Drilled to 350 foot depths to then tie together and use the earth's temperature as a heat bank to store excess heat in the summer and to pull it outta the ground and heat our buildings in the winter. It just happens to be that we're in a, in a great geologic zone to do that and a great temp, uh, temperature zone to do that. So we, we balance, we won't overheat or take away too much. it's gonna, it's, it's a play that we're really excited about. It requires us to convert our buildings to low temperature hot water instead of steam, so that we can eventually retire the boilers that are fueled by natural gas in this era. We've also stopped burning coal. We did that about four years ago. Father John challenged us to get it done in five years. We did it in four, again following Lado Sea. We also are trying to, con, develop other, concepts to help save energy. One of them is, to hold off on air conditioning buildings until you really need it. As you can tell, tonight, it's a little warm in here. It's a little early to turn on an air conditioning, and so it's gonna be cold tomorrow. We're, we we're held back on chilled water. We also pull back our set point policy so that we're not giving everybody the ability to get 72, or if your preference is 68. We ask everybody to sort of take, be a little, uh, share in the sacrifice so that we don't, spend excess, uh, carbon on energy to, to make custom temperature ranges. We also, committed to build, a geo, excuse me, a um, a hydroelectric dam, uh, on the South Bend, on the St. Joseph River, taking the city's license on the existing dam, putting turbines under, under the park just south of where Stefanos lives at. The Cascade brings that energy, about 5% of our daily electricity use in a direct line right to campus. And now a solar array you could see being built on the west side of campus. That'll be. One of our energy, but we also are partner in a EP solar array, which gives us about 40% of our electricity were their array out in Granger. So all these efforts are, are giving us these results. we're about, we're about halfway there at 48% reduction, but there's a lot work yet to come in the, in the decades, in,

Speaker 10 50:27

in front of us. I'll, I'll wrap up with this before we turn it over to, to

Speaker 3 50:34

questions. And that is those tenets of planning. here, here at Notre Dame. The first one is the most important to us, and that is everything we do shall be informed by a sacramental vision and our Catholic heritage. After all, Notre Dame is not a place purely of study. It is a place of prayer. It is not a place purely of academic pursuit and research. It's a place of spiritual formation. The tenant calls for us to reflect that, that sacramental vision throughout all of our work. These are some examples, old and new. The addition a hundred years ago over the east portal of the Basilica reminds us who we are, where

Speaker 10 51:25

we are. The incredible tradition of

Speaker 3 51:29

over 60 chapels on campus, every residence hall, having them so that our students, our community, has a place to go and pray and celebrate the Eucharist and the lower left, the most sacred outside space on campus. The grotto, of course, and then much newer than that in the last couple of years, the creation of a new peace plaza, a spot for, for folks to come, pray,

Speaker 10 51:59

and pray prayers that are never uh, been in more need.

Speaker 3 52:06

We're in the midst of another transformational, spot to create, hopefully a sacramental location right in the heart of Notre Dame at the terminus of Notre Dame Avenue, at least the vehicular terminus, the main circle that's been fairly blase, let's say over the last couple of decades. and so we are in the midst of, transforming that into the Notre Dame Circle. It'll be a space once done at the end of the summer that will be celebrating the commitment and the contributions of women to the success of the university from the beginning with a special emphasis on the, the 50 year class of, 1972, the year that women were first admitted as undergraduate students at Notre Dame. Right now is a big hole. We, we have a big sewer, uh, we're fixing at the same time. Uh, but look for, this to, uh, unfold in the, in the weeks to come.

Speaker 10 53:11

I think I'll, I'll leave it at, at this, and then again, we can invite questions if there's time. this is an extraordinary place. We know it, we all love it,

Speaker 3 53:21

but it isn't about the buildings. It isn't about the trees and, and, and the spaces solely by themselves.

Speaker 10 53:29

Notre Dame is a place of love. Yes, it is love of place, but it's love of mission. It's love of each other, care for each other, and care for ourselves, our, and it's love of our Lord. Thank you for being here tonight. Go that. Thank you. I think, I think there's some time for questions. Happy to take some questions.

Speaker 5 54:14

You know, you had a grace planner go up and all of a sudden was, well that's not a good idea to separate students by the floors like that. And about 15 years ago there was kind of a plant or a dorm that would be, uh, like a large family area in the center

Speaker 6 54:29

with small, rooms around that. And that concept was never created. How do you come upon making the decision on building a dorm and who makes those?

Speaker 3 54:40

That's a great question. We ask our students. We actually meet with them. We focus group. What works well in our tradition of our residence halls and what can we improve on? We looked at the sweet style where every student would have a private space come out. There'd be a little family room. And I have to say by overwhelming majority, our students rejected that. And, but you see that model throughout the country. It's very popular. Our students love the residence halls and the way they're set up, and most of them vote for the community bathroom because there's still an opportunity to run into your friends. And our corridors are extra wide, especially in the guides dorms.'cause that's where the football games, that's a hockey arena, football game, basketball court, all rolled into one. They love community. We go to the state and ask the state fire marshal for an exception to the code requirement that that says close the doors. You're supposed to have a closer on all the, all the doors and, and because we have a fire station here in 24 7 operation and we have sprinklers, in our buildings, they give us that exception so that the doors stay open. You can walk by and you can see your buddy in there or your, your girl girlfriend. And he is like, you come in, you chat. And that's what makes community. And so that

Speaker 10 56:00

model we quickly rejected our students said we don't want it. Other questions? Yes, sir.

Speaker 7 56:08

Um, so I've noticed that, uh, a lot of the newer buildings use the same sort of yellow brick that was original, to campus. I don't, I assume that we no longer make bricks

Speaker 10 56:18

wrong,

Speaker 7 56:20

but how do you go about sort of matching those materials?

Speaker 3 56:23

We, we have a great partner in the Belden Brick company in Belden, Ohio. I think they have, they've sent 25 or 26 family members through Notre Dame over the decades. And they make great brick. And then so they, they're the home of our, of our brick in almost every case. We challenged them a few years ago to match that. We call it the soren brick. because you're right, we can't make'em, the codes don't let us do that. There's plenty of mud left in the lake. We could probably do it. good student job, make those bricks, but I don't think the code allows to do it. So, they found a, a really good new brick that's a, a great representation of it. And it's based on the clay. It's still, of course, an organic material and they did a great job finding it for us.

Speaker 7 57:10

And do you have, are there just stockpiles of the old original brick lying around? Because I see them putting into the new buildings in small amounts.

Speaker 3 57:18

We have a, not a stockpile, we have a handful and we use them for repairs. Don't go looking for them

Speaker 8 57:26

in the back. For talk. I'm also fisherman, so thank you for hopping down that. could you talk about Crossroads inspiration to do that with that space come from and was pushback to that?

Speaker 3 57:45

Oh, it was a great idea that originated. I, I, I'll give credit to our, just recently retired athletics director, Jack Schwar Brick, who came to Father John originally with the idea of, of, we have this building that's starting to become in the middle of campus and it's a dead zone. And as people walk by, you can't get to it. It's all locked up. You, we use it six or seven days a year. What a waste. So I also saw an opportunity for some reinvestment there, to create meeting space that could have double duty used on game day for the fans who had been asking for it, but also solve space problems. the, the folks in music or anthropology or psychology who are now occupy their whole departments in those, in those buildings, they, they continue to grow. It's, it's really remarkable, solution there. And there was pushback. there was, there was concern that the, the buildings would be BMS too large. we've, we were careful to try to design them so they would scallop down and have these terraces rather than, so many of these sideline structures you look like they're just slice stuff like vel, vita cheese blocks. and we didn't want that. And so, you know, by and large, the feedback we get is that they, that those, they're somewhat successful.

Speaker 10 59:00

Yes.

Speaker 9 59:01

Well, thank you and congratulations on

Speaker 10 59:04

Thank you. You

Speaker 9 59:04

don't, you need reduction, the reduction of carbon from sources of power. But how much data are you getting from the new deficiency, new buildings and from the ions?

Speaker 3 59:17

It's difficult to measure, but no question. We're getting a boost from it. When we replaced a, an old building that had very inefficient envelopes, mechanical systems, and we put in, the, a contemporary version of that now and, and in most cases a lead certified building, which requires us to put in the, the Cadillac of air handling systems and, and heat recovery. In fact, I'll, I'll just note at the conclusion of when those halls are done and, and a couple of other buildings completed in the next 18 months, Notre Dame will have 33. It's gonna be 32, uh, lead certified buildings and we hope with McCourtney number two that just finished will be our first platinum lead building. They will encompass 33% of campus square footage now being a lead certified building. So your, to your excellent point, buildings we're creating are much more efficient, replacing older ones that weren't, by the way, that reduction

Historic Preservation and Building Renovations

Speaker 10 1:00:12

on the, on the carbon considers. Added square footage. Hello. I'm wondering how do you, what is the thought process behind historic preservation here on campus? I know one of the oldest buildings, Corby Hall, was knocked down and replaced with a building with a similar footprint and size. I'm wondering why we knocked down buildings such as Corby Hall, while Washington Hall, we redo the frescoes and have more attention to one building right on the other. And does that go through a board? What's the process and Yeah, just learning a bit more about that.

Speaker 3 1:00:47

Sure. It's a great question. So Corby, we tried to save, in fact, we started off with a project to renovate, but we found this, when we started digging into it. Corby was also built a rather hastily in the 1880s with a rubble foundation. It was probably a contemporary building technique at the time, but it was basically digging a trench, throwing some rubble in and and some mortar, and then building on top of that, it was all wood structure. It was all dependent on the load bearing walls, then all, all the way up. So you end up with these extraordinarily wide quarters. I think I had 12 foot wide quarters, but very thin building plate from there. And what the goals of the, of the order were was to try to get a few more apartments in there. And it had been very odd and, uh, elongated. We also saw the settlement issues with, as we, as we tried to, uh, really project what we needed to do to the building that we, we don't think it would've survived, quite frankly. And so made the unfor, you know, sort tough decision, but in the end we took it to the board and they helped us make that decision. But in the end we think it's right. It we, we repurposed many things from the original building on the, on the structure and try to make it like

Speaker 10 1:02:01

it was from, from that era. Yes. you, so earlier you, when you were talking about

Speaker 11 1:02:08

finding this kind of new university style. You looked

Speaker 10 1:02:13

at,

Speaker 11 1:02:14

that you looked at alumni Hall kind of as one of the main source of inspiration. I guess I was wondering if there was ever kind of an idea in the room to go back further, look at kind of the more Victorian like building, so Edward Hall, sorn Hall, fun, those as kind of a path.

Speaker 10 1:02:33

Yeah, yeah. I'd say

Speaker 3 1:02:34

yes, especially as evidenced by, the new, Remnick Family Hall. So the new home for Ace, northwest of the main building in the, using the second French Empire style that we call that our sort of French quarter of campus. And, uh, picked off details from the main building, which it would be hard to classify. What style that's from is pretty eclectic mix of, of details and styles. Certainly informed by St. Ed's and, and the, and the Bronson that was, uh, preceded that. So, uh, we are not wedded solely to a collegiate gothic character. A look at the Racklin, Carma excuse, Melin Murphy Museum of Art as, uh, as being a, you know, very much a, a neoclassical structure and we hope to finish that zone out as a neighboring space. So we've left space between this building and it for a new visual arts center.

Speaker 12 1:03:29

There's a question online one where listeners and viewers, Joseph Devlin is asking, was it ever considered to use the under quad areas for expansion, especially given the south climate?

Speaker 3 1:03:43

The under quad meaning the underground?

Speaker 10 1:03:46

I think so.

Speaker 3 1:03:47

Okay. it's actually, been asked before. We have about 10 miles of walkable concrete tunnels, throughout campus and then miles of, miles of other utilities. we don't recommend to be in the tunnels, and they're not really occupiable. It's about a 1 25 degrees in there. So despite a lot of installation on those, those steam lines, it's, uh, it's a little toasty in there. it would be, it'd be a real challenge to try to p do subterranean,

Speaker 10 1:04:13

structures at this point in the development of campus. Joe, can you talk about Soaring Hall? What happened there? What happened in Soren Hall, the renovation? Oh,

Speaker 3 1:04:30

yeah. Um, Soren, we actually continued, a, I guess a tradition of addition. Soren Hall, originally, the first building in America, dedicated solely to college, uh, residents. so it was another sort of first for, so, eventually had two wings. It wasn't, it was just a bar shaped building north and south. And then. The two arms were added in time, and then we just finished it off. We put an addition off the back because we decanted, we sorn Cow, sorn Hall, we're not supposed to call it. So Couch, uh, Soren Hall has, had no community space, at, at all. And so, we, we felt like, uh, we needed to add some more square footage, so we kind of finished off the square

Speaker 10 1:05:14

and then renovated the rest of it. Building such as Grace and Planner Hall, that kind of disrupt the whole energy and aesthetics of that quad. Currently,

Closing Remarks and Acknowledgements

Speaker 3 1:05:30

for this room, I'd say they're on a watchful weight. We we're, we'll keep them safe and we'll keep them dry, but we don't foresee them. The, in the long term plan, maybe Dan will have under his watch the opportunity to, to take them down. but I don't wanna put anybody that's, has an office in those buildings on alert. Uh, it's not gonna happen anytime soon. But, we, we would, I think, look for the opportunity to say that they've lived their life, and that that's gonna be, I think over time an important, part of our campus, that could be reinvigorated, with different buildings. You know, we, a common phrase we use around the office is think like Soren. And so we don't like to necessarily put timelines to everything, but we have to look at the very long-term view. We're gonna be here, we're not going anywhere. And so whether it's looking at the, what's happening around us at the edges of campus or right in the heart of campus, we have to think like Sorin and always have that, that future projected in in what we do.

Speaker 13 1:06:35

Just one last question. My family moved here in early 2000 as you know, we kind of really fell into the love of the campus and, and I'm sure you look in the mirror and say, pinch yourself. I've really done a great job. You and your team have done an amazing job. So I, I'd just like to, I would say thank you. That's really a fantastic piece.

Speaker 3 1:07:00

Well, thank you. And it's time for me to return the favor. first of all, thanks for turning out tonight. both in this room, in the overflow room, but also online, especially my classmates. I, they wanted to sign up for 1.5 learning units. I think I said if you sit through this, they'll probably take 1.5 off your records. I wanna say thanks to Dan for saying yes to Notre Dame, but once again, he's gonna be a tremendous leader and he'll be here a long, long time. Well, thank a couple other colleagues. In my team, on my team that's here today, they represent 500 some odd souls that represent, uh, that consist of facilities, design and organization, our, our group that's charged with the care and stewardship as of this remarkable place.

Speaker 2 1:07:50

Doug, thank you for being with us tonight. Thank you. I got

Speaker 10 1:07:52

one more, one more person I gotta

Speaker 3 1:07:54

thank. And she's right there. And that's the love of my life, Pam of 41 plus years and, been, just,

Speaker 10 1:08:01

partner through life and so thank.