Boston College - Campus - Chestnut Hill

Chestnut Hill

Boston College's main campus in Chestnut Hill, 6 miles (9.7 km) west of downtown Boston, is 175-acre (710,000 m2) and includes over 120 buildings. Set on a hilltop overlooking the Chestnut Hill Reservoir the sprawling campus includes an ever-increasing number of ever-larger buildings, and markedly reduced green areas. A "Boston College" streetcar station on metro Boston's "T", or public transit system is located at St. Ignatius Gate. It is the western terminus of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Green Line's B-branch (also known as the "Boston College" line) and connects the school to Boston's city center and to destinations in the Boston metropolitan area. Due largely to its location and presence of buildings featuring gothic towers reaching into the sky, the Boston College campus is known generally as the "Heights" and to some as the "Crowned Hilltop". The main campus is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Designed by Charles Donagh Maginnis and his firm Maginnis & Walsh in 1908, the Boston College campus is a seminal example of Collegiate Gothic architecture. Combining Gothic Revival architecture with principles of Beaux-Arts planning, Maginnis proposed a vast complex of academic buildings set in a cruciform plan. Maginnis's design broke from the traditional Oxbridge models that had inspired it — and that had till then characterized Gothic architecture on American campuses. In its unprecedented scale, Gasson Tower was conceived not as the belfry of a singular building, but as the crowning campanile of Maginnis' new "city upon a hill". Though Maginnis' ambitious Gothic project never saw full completion, its central portion was built according to plan and forms the core of what is now BC's iconic middle campus. Among these, the Bapst Library has been called the "finest example of Collegiate Gothic architecture in America" and Devlin Hall won the Harleston Parker Medal for "most beautiful building in Boston". The 1895 Louis K. Liggett Estate was acquired in 1941 and developed into a Tudor-style upper campus, while an architecturally eclectic lower campus took shape on land acquired by filling in part of the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. Modernism had an enormous impact on development after the 1940s, though some of the modernist buildings at BC maintained non-modern rough stone facades in keeping with Maginnis's original designs.

Boston College's eight research libraries contain over two million printed volumes. Including manuscripts, journals, government documents and microform items, ranging from ancient papyrus scrolls to digital databases, the collections have some twelve million items. Together with the university's museums, they include original manuscripts and prints by Galileo, Ignatius of Loyola, and Francis Xavier as well as world renowned collections in Jesuitana, Irish literature, sixteenth century Flemish tapestries, ancient Greek pottery, Caribbean folk art and literature, Japanese prints, U.S. government documents, Congressional Archives, and paintings that span the history of art from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Opened in 1928, Bapst Library was named for the first president of Boston College (Johannes Bapst, S.J., 1815 to 1887) and it was one of the few structures built according to Charles Donagh Maginnis' original "Oxford in America" master plan. Bapst served as the university's main library until 1984. A guide to the building's stained glass windows is available online. The Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections is home to more than 150,000 volumes, some 15 million manuscripts and other important works, including a world-renowned collection of Irish literature. A rare facsimile of the Book of Kells is on public display in the library's Irish Room, and each day one page of the illuminated manuscript is turned. It also houses the papers of prominent Boston College alumni. The library is named after the Honorable John. J. Burns (1901 to 1957), Massachusetts Superior Court Justice and a member of the Boston College Class of 1921.

Located in Devlin Hall, the McMullen Museum of Art houses a prominent permanent collection and organizes exhibits from all periods and cultures of art history. Recent exhibits and acquisitions, including works by Edvard Munch, Amedeo Modigliani, Frank Stella, Françoise Gilot, John LaFarge, and Jackson Pollock. Admission to the Museum is free and open to the general public.

There are various housing buildings all over campus for students. Those located on lower campus are Walsh, Edmonds, Rubenstein, Ignacio, 90 St. Thomas More Road, 66 Commonwealth Ave, Vanderslice, Gabelli, and Voute. Roncalli, Welch, and Williams halls are located on middle campus on College Road. Finally, there is Freshman housing on Upper or Newton Campus.

In the fall of 2010, Boston College began construction of Stokes Hall, a 183,000-square-foot (17,000 m2) academic building on what was formerly known as the Dustbowl. Stokes Hall is the first academic building to be constructed on the Middle Campus since 2001 and its construction is expected to be completed in the fall of 2012.