The Council of Independent Colleges: Historic Campus Architecture Project

Whiting Hall

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Institution Name: Knox College
Original/Historic Place Name: Knox Female Seminary
Location on Campus: 19 E. Tompkins St.
Date(s) of Construction:

1857	original construction Ulricson, Charles

Designer: Charles Ulricson, Peoria, IL
Type of Place: Individual building
Style: Italianate (Glossary)
Significance: architecture, education
Narrative: see below
References: see below

Materials:

Foundation:

Walls: brick

Roof:

Function:

ca. 1857	classrooms (for female students)
ca. 1857-ca. 1980	residence hall (for female students)
ca. 2004-present (2006)	other (apartment building)

Narrative:
As the home to women attending Knox College for more than 120 years, Whiting Hall exemplifies the origin and evolution of female academic culture on American campuses in the 19th and 20th centuries. The building's stacked porches and ranks of large windows beginning at street level--necessary features to make a building of this size habitable in the 19th century--help to minimize and humanize its unwieldy proportions, as does the park it sits next to, which serves as a large and permanent front lawn. It has been used for private housing since the early 1980s.

References:

Knox College. Memorials in American Colleges. Galesburg, IL: Knox College, [1930?].