The Council of Independent Colleges: Historic Campus Architecture Project

Taylor Hall

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Taylor Hall (front facade, view from the southwest), Bryn Mawr College

Institution Name: Bryn Mawr College
Original/Historic Place Name: Taylor Hall
Location on Campus: 224 N. Merion Ave.
Date(s) of Construction:

1879-1884

original construction Hutton, Addison

Designer: Addison Hutton
Type of Place: Individual building
Style: Gothic revival, Romanesque revival (Glossary)
Significance:
Narrative: see below
References: see below

Materials:

Foundation: granite

Walls: granite

Roof: gray slate

Function:

ca. 1885	auditorium (lecture hall)
ca. 1885	academic department building (science laboratories)
ca. 1885	library
ca. 1885	chapel
ca. 1885	classrooms
ca. 1885	administration
present	classrooms
present	administration

Narrative:
Taylor Hall survives with relatively few important alterations since it was first opened in 1885 as the college's academic, administrative, and chapel building. Although there have been some changes on the interior as program has changed, and the building survived a fire in the early twentieth century, it retains much of its historic internal configuration and details. Its windows have been replaced.

Taylor Hall is significant as an institutional work of the Philadelphia architect and Quaker Addison Hutton, and for its association with Dr. Joseph Taylor, Bryn Mawr College's founder. Taylor was built on the model of the main building at Smith College and was the first building completed for the college Dr. Taylor began to plan for in 1870. It is therefore significant for its association with Bryn Mawr's origins and earliest phase.

References:

Andropogon Associates, and Emily Cooperman. Bryn Mawr College Campus Heritage Initiative, Funded by the J. Paul Getty Initiative. Report. Philadelphia, PA: Andropogon Associates, Ltd., 2004.

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s. New York: Knopf, 1984.

Webb, Leslie A. Bryn Mawr College Historic District. National Register of Historic Places designation report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior/National Park Service, 1984.