San Jose State University - Campus

Campus

The SJSU main campus comprises approximately 55 buildings situated on a rectangular,154-acre (62.3 ha) area in downtown San Jose. The campus is bordered by San Fernando Street to the north, San Salvador Street to the south, South 4th Street to the west, and South 10th Street to the east. The South Campus, which is home to many of the school's athletics facilities, is located approximately 1.5 mi (2.4 km) south of the main campus on South 7th Street.

California State Normal School did not receive a permanent home until it moved from San Francisco to San Jose in 1871. The original California State Normal School campus in San Jose consisted of several rectangular, wooden buildings with a central grass quadrangle. The wooden buildings were destroyed by fire in 1880 and were replaced by interconnected stone and masonry structures of roughly the same configuration in 1881. These buildings were declared unsafe following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and were being torn down when an aftershock of the magnitude that was predicted to destroy the buildings occurred and no damage was observed. Accordingly, demolition was stopped, and the portions of the buildings still standing were made into four halls: Tower Hall, Morris Dailey Auditorium, Washington Square Hall, and Dwight Bentel Hall. These four structures remain standing to this day, and are the oldest buildings on campus.

Beginning in the fall of 1994, the on-campus segments of San Carlos Street, Seventh Street and Ninth Street were closed to automobile traffic and converted to pedestrian walkways and green belts within the campus. San Carlos Street was renamed Paseo San Carlos, Seventh Street became El Paseo de César Chávez, and Ninth Street is now called the Ninth Street Plaza. The project was completed in 1996.

Completed in 1999, the Business Classroom Project was a US$16 million renovation of the James F. Boccardo Business Education Center.

Completed in 1999, the US$1.5 million Heritage Gateway project was unveiled. The privately-funded project featured construction of eight oversized gateways around the main campus perimeter.

In the Fall of 2000, the SJSU Police Department, which is part of the larger California State University Police Department, opened a new on-campus, multi-level facility on 7th Street.

The new US$177 million Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, which opened its doors on August 1, 2003, won the Library Journal's prestigious 2004 Library of the Year award, the publication’s highest honor. The King Library represents the first collaboration of its kind between a university and a major U.S. city. The library is eight stories high, has 475,000 square feet (44,100 m2) of floor space, and houses approximately 1.6 million volumes. San Jose's first public library occupied the same site from 1901 to 1936, and SJSU's Wahlquist Library occupied the site from 1961 to 2000, at which point it was torn down to begin construction of the King Library.

In 2002, three of SJSU's six red brick residence halls were demolished and replaced with the new Campus Village residence complex. The US$200 million housing facility comprises three buildings ranging from seven to 15 stories tall. The project increased student capacity for on-campus housing to roughly 3,500, and provides housing options for first-year students, upper-class students, graduate students and faculty, staff and guests of the university. Campus Village officially opened in 2005.

In 2006, a US$2 million renovation of Tower Hall was completed. Tower Hall is the oldest and most recognizable building on campus.