Valpo's Midcentury Modern Campus, 1950–1970 | Valparaiso University

VALPO’S MIDCENTURY MODERN CAMPUS, 1950-1970

Prepared by Gretchen Buggeln, Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Professor of Christianity and the Arts, Christ College.

This tour begins on Union St. at the Athletics and Recreation Center (ARC).

Midcentury Modernism (MCM) is a broad term for a style of American architecture popular roughly from 1950 to 1970. Valpo’s East Campus was originally built almost entirely in this style. After WWII, American campuses grew substantially and rapidly. Most colleges and universities ultimately rejected the Collegiate Gothic or Colonial Revival architecture of previous generations as both too expensive and out of step with the times. Architects stripped surfaces of ornament and designed open spaces through which light, air, and people would move easily. In the Midwest, architects looked to the Prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright, with its low, earthy feel. They also admired the crisp International Modernism of Mies Van der Rohe. But most American modernists blended aspects of cutting-edge design into comfortable buildings with a fresh and welcoming appearance that fit the needs and aspirations of postwar Americans.

Charles E. Stade

Valpo’s chief architect of the postwar period was Charles Edward Stade (1923-1993), a native of Des Plaines, Illinois, who studied at the University of Illinois and Princeton University in the 1940s before returning to the Chicago area. Stade was a leader in the modern church architecture movement, and he and his associates designed hundreds of suburban parish churches. In the mid 1950s, Valpo’s leaders, who knew Stade’s church work, decided to take a chance on this young architect for the chapel project. Stade and his team eventually designed a dozen buildings for Valpo’s campus.

Jean Labatut

At Princeton, Stade found a mentor in Jean Labatut (18991986), a distinguished teacher, architect, and urban planner. Valpo hired Labatut to redirect and modernize plans for the eastern expansion of the campus. One of Labatut’s concerns was respecting the contours of the natural landscape. As you walk, note the gentle rise and fall of the terrain, where the midcentury buildings are placed, and how they relate to one another.

Characteristics of Valpo’s midcentury campus

Building materials such as steel-reinforced concrete, laminated wood beams, and manufactured wood paneling made MCM less expensive and easier to build than previous styles. Stade used a distinctive, sometimes elongated, “Valpo amber matte” brick with an orange tint stylish in the 1950s-60s. Most of the building entrances are modest, sheltered, and at or near grade. The buildings display little exterior ornament—but look for the frequent experiments with brick patterning. This Tour includes stops at:

Sites of 24 buildings built or significantly enlarged between 1939 and 1973.

16 still existing 8 sites of demolished buildings (photos included)

Highlights:

Four campus buildings that best reflect Stade’s MCM style are the Chapel of the Resurrection (1959), the President’s House (Linwood, 1960), Kretzmann Hall (the original Wesemann Law School of1963) and Neils Science Center (1967). Neils and its 1973 addition reflect the heavier, more massive style of the later1960s and 1970s. If you have time to see just a few of Valpo’s MCM buildings, take a look at these four.

A 1940s Snapshot:

In the late 1940s, Valpo’s greatest need was for student housing. Initially these needs were met by buying up properties in the old campus “College Hill” area to the west. Other makeshift housing and classroom buildings included military surplus barracks and temporary academic buildings. In 1944, the university purchased 95 acres of land to the East that would become the core of the future campus.

Source Acknowledgements:

Edgar J. Leuke, Creating a Campus One Lot at a Time (2013) is a detailed and comprehensive source covering the development of Valpo’s campus.

Valparaiso University Archives

Steven Shook collection of Valpo photographs on Flickr and the INGenWeb project site, inportercounty.org

Graphic Design: Mary Wegrzyn

This tour begins at #1 on Union St. at the Athletics and Recreation Center (ARC).

Tour Stops

1 The Athletics and Recreation Center (ARC)

Dau and Kreinheder Residences 3.Kroencke Hall (also former site of Graland, Heidbrink, and Dickmeyer Halls)

Loke Hall

Guild and Memorial Halls

Linwood House

(Huegli) Hall

Chapel of the Resurrection (Memorial Chapel)

#1 ATHLETICS AND RECREATION CENTER (ARC),

1939, POHLMEYER & POHLMEYER

ADDITION, 1963, CHARLES E. STADE & ASSOC.

The portion of the building to the left is Hilltop Gymnasium, 1939, designed by Pohlmeyer & Pohlmeyer of Fort Wayne, to replace the previous gym which burned in 1927. To the east is the 1963 addition by Charles Stade & Assoc. Although sympathetic to the 1939 Collegiate Gothic, Stade’s addition plainly rejects the historicism of the earlier campus architecture for graceful, relatively unadorned verticality. This addition included offices, auxiliary spaces, a six-lane pool, and basketball gym.

#2 DAU AND KREINHEDER RESIDENCES, 1955,

MICHAEL HARE, (DEMOLISHED 1995)

The low building under the trees to the right of the ARC, now a fitness center, was the original cafeteria for a lowbudget dorm complex consisting of octagonal structures joined in pods. Michael Hare, a New York Architect who also designed Valpo’s 1955 Union, had worked on New York’s Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall, as well as some significant theaters. Note the delicate lightcolored horizontal bands and how the first floor is cantilevered over a recessed entrance level—MCM features of Stade’s dorms as well.

#3 KROENCKE HALL, 1951

Currently an athletics weight training facility and a dance studio, Kroencke Hall is all that remains of a Mid Campus cluster of five MCM academic and administrative buildings. Kroenke and its southern neighbor, an Engineering Lab designed and built by students in 1948-49—were serviceable, and somewhat old-fashioned buildings erected by the Valpo community to meet pressing needs.

#3 STUDENT-BUILT ENGINEERING LAB, 1948,

(DEMOLISHED 2024)

In the 1940s, Valparaiso did not have the facilities to support a full, four-year engineering program, so students spent their last two years at Purdue. On their own initiative, engineering students, many of them WWII veterans, joined forces to design and build the labs necessary to complete their engineering education at Valpo.

#3 DICKMEYER HALL AND RENOVATED

ENGINEERING LAB (ART-MUSIC), 1972-1973,

CHARLES E. STADE & ASSOC., (DEMOLISHED 2024)

When Engineering moved to the new Gellersen Center in 1968, the lab was repurposed for Art and Music. Charles Stade renovated the building and adapted the lab’s exterior to match his new Dickmeyer Hall (1971). Those two buildings, joined by a courtyard, served as an art and music complex. When the new Center for the Arts was dedicated in 1995, the former lab was once again repurposed, this time as Art-Psychology. A fire gutted the building in 2022.

#3 GRALAND HALL, 1957, PAUL TANCK, (DEMOLISHED 1999)

#3 GUILD CENTER FOR ADMISSIONS (HEIDBRINK HALL), 1965, VALPO COLLABORATION WITH ARCHITECT AUGUST DRAVININKIS, (DEMOLISHED 2024)

#4 LOKE HALL, 1968, PAUL TANCK

Loke opened in 1968 as the new headquarters of the Home Economics Department. The building housed labs, lecture rooms, offices, and a lounge. Besides a 1999 eastern addition, the 1968 building is largely intact. Walk around the backside of the building, and notice the unusual half hexagonal original plan. Tanck interspersed panels of light-colored, irregular stone with the brick facing—a very common Chicago-area design feature that Stade and his firm used often on church exteriors.

#5 GUILD AND MEMORIAL HALLS,

1946-1947,

EDWARD JANSSON

These two women ’ s dorms were the only postwar East Campus structures built in a popular pre-war style, Collegiate Tudor Gothic. In 1999 a new south entrance, which included a second-story chapel, connected the two residences. Architect Edward Jansson (1894-1963), a Chicago-based church architect, came to campus in 1943 to advise on the expansion. In the late 1940s, Jansson composed a rather formal master plan entirely in this style, but the university ultimately rejected his ideas and embraced modernism. (Interestingly, the sleekly modern Wehrenberg Hall, 1960, at the end of this tour, was the last building Jansson designed for Valpo.)

#6 THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE (LINWOOD), 1960,

CHARLES E. STADE

Stade designed this house for President O.P. Kretzmann at the same time he was working on the chapel. In 1988, after housing presidents Huegli and Schnabel, Linwood was converted for academic and administrative use. In 2025, the University partnered with Indiana Landmarks, which will restore and care for Linwood while using it as the home of its Northwest Field Office.

Linwood is an exceptional example of Stade’s Midcentury Modern architecture. In this house, he creatively blended the private and public functions in an L-shaped, openplan. A capacious public entrance leads to a southern facing, brightly lit reception room. Family quarters, O.P.’s office, and a living room are on the quieter north side.

#7 MUELLER HALL, 1970, HERBERT BOUMAN

Architect Herbert Bouman (1916-2000), a member of Ewald Mueller’s Lutheran congregation in Pennsylvania, designed this building for Christ College, Valpo’s new honors college. The original plan was ambitious, including dorms and dining facilities. Cost overruns as well as concerns about the isolation of honors students led to elimination of the dorms and the addition of a basement story for classroom space. Although modern, the design of Mueller Hall, with its Refectory and interior courtyard, consciously invoked the medieval university quadrangle with its sense of community purpose.

#8 STUDENT UNION, 1955, MICHAEL HARE, (DEMOLISHED,

2009)

Michael Hare, a New York architect and expert in student unions, designed this compact MCM building containing recreation and dining facilities. The view from the east shows the lightness and engaging repetition of the architectural elements. Both images illustrate the large expanses of windows, a departure from earlier campus buildings. The College of Arts and Sciences now sits on this building site.

#9 DEACONESS (HUEGLI) HALL, 1957, REX BECKER,

(DEMOLISHED 2012)

In 1957 the Lutheran Deaconess Association (LDA) dedicated an administrative headquarters and dormitory on a site just to the west of the current union. The university purchased the building in 1986 and transformed it into offices and community space for the College of Arts and Sciences. After the opening of the new Arts and Sciences building, Huegli Hall was torn down.

1959, CHARLES E. STADE

Valpo’s Chapel is the university’s most important and widely recognized building. It has been the heart of this campus, a center for worship and community events, for over sixty years. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this midcentury building conveyed Valpo’s attitude towards its future: modern, poised for growth, proud of its Lutheran heritage and committed to the union of faith and learning. More information about the chapel is available inside the building and online. See https://www.valpo.edu/chapel/history/

#11 MOELLERING LIBRARY, 1959 AND 1969, CHARLES

E. STADE, (DEMOLISHED 2005)

While working on the Chapel, Stade and his firm designed and built both Linwood House and a substantial new library. On a much grander scale than Linwood, the library displayed Stade’s preference for low lying, flatroofed buildings with large windows, cantilevered elements, sheltering eaves, and gradual, welcoming entrances, here consisting of a large, raised plaza with reflecting pool.

#12 WESEMANN LAW BUILDING

(KRETZMANN HALL),

1964

AND

1976,

CHARLES E. STADE & ASSOC.

A new law school building was a priority for the university. Wesemann had a wood-paneled courtroom, library, numerous offices, lounges, and the first major classrooms built on East Campus. Like many of Stade’s higher-end buildings, the inner walls were faced in brick, while solid mahogany-stained woodwork dignified the hallways. Both Chief Justice Earl Warren and Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke at the dedication. When the new Wesemann Hall opened on the old (“Historic”) campus in 1988, this building was renamed for O.P. Kretzmann and became Valpo’s chief administrative center.

Law Library, ca. 1960s

#13 MEIER HALL, 1968, CHARLES E. STADE

Meier and Gellersen were developed under the same contract and completed in 1968. Meier was built as a new Foreign Language Building, a comfortably-scaled structure with a central, enclosed courtyard. Stade and his associates continued to experiment with brick patterning on building exteriors such as these window surrounds, which look like stepped, inverted buttresses.

Courtyard, ca. 1968.

#14 GELLERSEN ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICS CENTER, 1968, CHARLES E. STADE

The Gellersen Center successfully consolidated mathematics and engineering into one large and versatile building with14 classrooms, conference rooms, lounges, and a student-operated supply store. Up-to-date labs included a computer facility with an adjacent room that housed the noisy machinery for making computer punch cards.

#15 NEILS SCIENCE CENTER, 1967 AND 1973,

CHARLES E. STADE & ASSOC.

Neils was the first major instructional building of the College of Arts and Sciences built on East Campus. The building was designed to be built in two phases, or “units” (a typical strategy for church buildings of the period). The 1967 unit housed biology and chemistry labs, classrooms, and a greenhouse; the 1973 unit included physics labs, offices, classrooms, and two large lecture halls. Unlike Stade’s earlier work, this building is rather massive and fortress-like. Note the interesting brick patterning on the north side of the building.

#16 WEHRENBERG HALL, 1959, EDWARD JANSSON

Because of an urgent need for modern housing, many of the midcentury buildings erected on East Campus were residence halls. The first, Wehrenberg, was designed by Edward Jansson, the architect who had designed the Tudor Gothic Guild and Memorial Halls twelve years earlier. Of the five residence halls, this Y-shaped building is the most spacious, with broad windows, kitchens, laundry and four lounges on each of its residential floors. The taut exterior facades and strict rectilinearity distinguish Jansson’s work from the four residences by Stade.

#17 BRANDT HALL, 1962, CHARLES E. STADE & ASSOC.

Brandt (L) and Wehrenberg (R) with glass-walled common dining area between them.

#18 SCHEELE HALL (1961), LANKENAU HALL (1964), AND ALUMNI HALL (1966), CHARLES E. STADE & ASSOC.

These three dorms by Charles Stade & Assoc., are remarkably similar. Each follows a Z-plan layout, with two long off-center wings extending from a central core. In all three, the top four dormitory floors overhang a recessed entry level containing office, kitchen, study, and social areas with rows of floor to ceiling windows. Note the contrasting, light-colored stone courses on all three residences articulating the division of floors and balancing the building height with a strong horizontal.

Scheele was designed as sorority housing.

Scheele