Iowa State College Campus's Future Landscape Design

Beginning as a modest 648 acre farm in 1858, the Iowa State University campus was hardly more than a large prairie with a few buildings scattered around. As enrollment rates skyrocketed, it was clear that the landscape needed a change. In the early 1900s, the Olmstead Brothers were hired to survey the land and construct a detailed recommendations report to assist in the campus’s future landscape design. Their design of Iowa States campus was designated to not only serve the travel needs of its faculty and students, but it was also designed to serve the environment. By taking a naturalistic approach to the landscape’s construction, walkways and roads were built around trees and waterways creating “irregular masses of foliage” (Olmsted Brothers’ Iowa State College Campus Planning Report pg. 2). However this proved to be harder than expected and the Brothers ran into a minor problem with the preservation of the campus trees. When they were asked to begin their work, most of the trees were undesirable species, being of a short lived, soft wooded variety. It was evident that they would not survive long. If the trees died, the naturalistic design approach would not have been worth the effort. This problem was solved by “gradually cutting the… trees …show more content…
While better placement of some of the main buildings would have led to a more aesthetically pleasing view of the overall campus, it has been noted that a strong reluctance to move buildings, such as the Diary Building, was present throughout the entire construction period. The people of Iowa State had such a strong admiration for the beauty of the land itself, they were opposed to any sort of blockage of view of that landscape. Because of this, unfortunately, the paths such as the one from the Dairy Building to Central Campus are considered rather awkward and