In August 2015, Princeton Review named
Rollins College the most beautiful campus in the nation. The decision was based on survey results, but
the iconic beauty of Florida’s oldest college is rooted in history. Its harmonious blend of Mediterranean Revival
Architecture, intimate greens and plazas, scenic vistas, covered walkways, and
oak-shaded paths is an exemplar of the American Renaissance, a generational
effort to mold an unparalleled prosperity into a new urban civilization. The
movement began in the 1880s and disappeared after 1930, “the last full flourish
of the Renaissance that begun in Italy in the 15th Century,” Henry
Hope Reed writes.http://www.amazon.com/The-Architecture-Humanism-History-Classical/dp/0393730352
New England Congregationalists founded Rollins in 1885 and sited it on
Lake Virginia in Winter Park, which was modeled on Riverside, Illinois,
Frederick Law Olmsted’s prototype suburb. Olmsted set a precedent for the American
Renaissance by employing “the arts of civilization” to channel the “flood” of
urbanization into humane form. Like Riverside, Winter Park was centered
on a rail station in a park and designed to the pedestrian scale. Its 1883 town plan, which had concentric
circles denoting five-minute walks radiating from the train station, ensured easy
access to nature and transportation. Rollins
occupied the downtown’s southern terminus and, like Florida, it developed in
unique fashion.
When the college was founded Florida was a backwater, the least
populated state east of the Mississippi River.
A decade later, Henry Flagler had energized Florida’s dormant economy by
building a series of luxury hotels in conjunction with his new rail line. Eastern elites flocked to architectural
marvels set in stunning subtropical settings.
The Royal Poinciana Hotel in Palm Beach, the world’s largest wooden
structure, was Flagler’s crown jewel and a precursor of Florida’s future.
In the 1920s tourism became a staple of the first consumer economy, and
Florida attracted the greatest investment in real estate capital in history. “The
story of Florida is a story of adventure romance written through a long
history—four centuries...The early search was for the Fountain of Youth and for
gold, and the modern one is not essentially different,” John Nolen noted at a
1925 city planning conference. Flimflam and opportunism was rampant, but there
was also significant investment. Villages turned into cities, and by decade’s end
Florida was the first former Confederate state to have a majority of its
population classified as urban. Nolen, an
Olmsted disciple, had multiple commissions in the state he called, “the
nation’s great laboratory of city planning.” The aesthetic competence that imbued Nolen’s new
town of Venice marked the zenith of the American Renaissance. Classical forms and a sophisticated park
system placed recreation and leisure—the essence of tourism—on a higher plane. An amphitheater adorning a beachfront park epitomized
the neo-Renaissance plan’s essence—classical motifs celebrated nature and the
arts to elevate the modern mind.
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| Note amphitheater adjacent to the parkway terminating at the Gulf |
Hamilton Holt, the new president of
Rollins, also adhered to this logic. A confidant of Nolen, the longtime editor
of The Independent accepted the
position “because Florida is the one state…where the spirit of progress most
prevails and where results follow quickest from effort.” A consummate reformer, Holt wanted to break
the staid academic formula by marrying pragmatism and the liberal arts. He would direct Rollins, he wrote Nolen, on
an “adventure in common sense education.”
Holt’s first priority was to commission a plan for the 70-acre campus.
An American Riviera was arising in Florida and the accomplishments of Rollins
alumni George Merrick, the developer of Coral Gables, inspired Holt. The new Miami suburb had drawn national
attention for its unmatched assemblage of Mediterranean Revival architecture. With its open courtyards, tiled roofs, stucco
exteriors, high ceilings, and arched windows and doorways, this style combined
practicality and aesthetics to meet the challenge of Florida’s hot, humid
climate, Merrick also donated a 600-acre site for a private university in 1925,
the year Holt came to Rollins.
By 1926 Holt had studied a series of Mediterranean Revival projects in
Miami and St. Petersburg. He chose the Rolyat
Hotel as a model for Rollins. Richard
Kiehnel, a talented architect who introduced Mediterranean Revival to Florida,
designed the St. Petersburg hotel (it was turned into a private school after
the real estate market crashed in 1926).
Inspired by a medieval Spanish monastery, Kiehnel arranged a series of buildings
around a large central plaza. A dominating
tower based on Seville’s Torre Del Oro
was the focal point, an emphatic statement Holt wanted to replicate.
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| Rolyat Hotel ca 1925 |
John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner, http://lalh.org/john-nolen-landscape-architect/
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