University releases designs for new Butler

The University's plans to raze and rebuild the dorms of Butler College — replacing the existing quad with a more spacious, aesthetically pleasing one — continue to advance, according to a report released on the University website Friday.

Demolition and construction will begin on Lourie-Love, 1922, 1940, 1941 and 1942 Halls in the summer of 2007. In 2009, Butler will join Mathey and Whitman as one of three four-year residential colleges.

With its modernist architecture, waffle ceilings and dark brick exterior, Butler is often viewed by undergraduates as the least desirable college in which to live.

The new Butler will feature several common areas, spacious rooms and lighter-hued bricks, University architect Jon Hlafter '61 said in an interview Sunday.

The residential college will be grouped around two three-sided courtyards. One of them, the west courtyard, will be a traditional quad. It will preserve many of the trees in the current Butler quadrangle and will be similar in size and appearance to Pyne Hall and 1903 Hall courtyards, Hlafter said.

The other quad, the east courtyard, will mark a radical departure from any other on campus. It will be split into two levels, enabling the basements of the surrounding dorms to open onto the courtyard. This basement level will house a common space for Butler residents, made up of a cafe, a library, a study space and two seminar rooms.

"The usability of that lower level is a huge benefit of the new Butler," Hlafter said.

Recent sketches for the quad have even included an amphitheater, which would have "curving layers that have trees planted in them," Hlafter said. "The landscape architect was stimulated by an amphitheater at Swarthmore that has a more naturalistic setting, with trees."

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Inside, the new Butler is intended to be more inviting than the college is presently. "I really think that the quality of these interiors is significantly better than what's there now and, in fact, than just about any dorm that we have on campus," Hlafter said.

The hallways will be brighter, with more of what Hlafter called "opportunities to turn the corner." Rooms in current Butler dormitories are arrayed along straight, dark hallways.

The student rooms will lose their signature waffle ceilings and the exposed brick walls. "The interiors will be sheet-rock with skin plaster walls, like normal buildings, just like Bloomberg," Hlafter said.

The rooms will also be among the largest on campus.

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"Even the smaller bedrooms, which will be presumably for the freshmen and sophomore suites, will be large enough so that all the University-provided furniture will fit in them," Hlafter said. "The junior/senior bedrooms will be large enough so that you can put all the University-provided furniture on the floor with bunked beds and still have a living room to have social furniture in."

The new dormitories will mostly contain suites with some singles instead of the current dormitories configuration, which is mostly doubles and singles.

Even the new bathrooms will mark a sizable improvement. "They'll be airy, with natural light, so that you could open the window if you wanted to," Hlafter said.

He described the style of the new Butler as "warm brick and limestone," a contrast to the current Butler's "dark, in some cases, almost black brick."

The current aesthetic has proved disappointing to students who arrive on campus expecting to live in one of the University's iconic buildings.

"When freshmen and their parents arrive in the Butler quad, they have an expectation that they're going to live in a Collegiate Gothic dorm, so the fact that [Butler] isn't gothic may be a problem for them," Hlafter said. "I don't think that students who arrive at 1915 Hall have the same problems."

Though the new dorms will not feature the quintessentially Princeton look of those further up campus, Hlafter is guardedly optimistic that this won't be a problem.

"Nothing in life is sure," he said with a laugh. Nonetheless, he points out that the new dorm will have "very pleasing vistas and a much more significant sense of open space than the existing dorms."