University Preservation: Bard College

Bard was founded in 1860 at the site of two nineteenth-century country estates that reflected the distinctive geography and culture of the Hudson Valley. The original estates were supplemented by a number of important early buildings dating from 1859 to 1900, as well as fifty-one pre-1957 buildings, and two National Register Historic Districts have been designated on the campus. With recent enrollment growth and new building programs, there was a pressing need to understand and plan for the protection of these historic resources regarded as central to the college's identity. Grant funds are supporting a Preservation Master Plan to include a physical history of the campus, assessment of existing conditions for buildings and landscapes, and the development of treatment guidelines and preservation recommendations.

Background


The college was originally founded under the name St. Stephen's, in association with the Episcopal church of New York City, and changed its name to Bard in 1934 in honor of its founder, John Bard(Figure 1). While the college remains affiliated with the church, it pursues a far more secular mission today. Between 1928 and 1944, Bard/St. Stephen's operated as an undergraduate school of Columbia University. Bard/St. Stephen's ties with Columbia were severed when Bard became a fully coeducational college. By the 1930s, Bard had become atypical among US colleges in that it had begun to place a heavy academic emphasis on the performing and fine arts. During that time, a substantive examination period was introduced for students in their second year, as well as what the dean at the time called the "final demonstration". These two periods would come to be known as Moderation and Senior Project, respectively.

During the 1940s, Bard provided a haven for intellectual refugees fleeing Europe. These included Hannah Arendt, the political theorist, Stefan Hirsch, the precisionist painter; Felix Hirsch, the political editor of the Berliner Tageblatt; the violinist Emil Hauser; the noted psychologist Werner Wolff; and the philosopher Heinrich Blücher.

In 1975, after serving as the youngest college president in history at Franconia College, Leon Botstein was elected president of Bard. He is generally credited with reviving the academic and cultural prestige of the College, having overseen the acquisition of Bard College at Simon's Rock, the construction of the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, and the creation of a large number of other associated academic institutions.

Issue


With respect to historic resources and significance, the following preservation objectives have been identified for Bard College:


 * Create and implement a stewardship philosophy that expresses Bard’s unique mission and character.
 * Demonstrate how historic and natural resources are integral to a residential campus environment that integrates learning and life; that encourages love of learning, respect for the social and physical environment, and the assumption of civil responsibility.
 * Preserve and maintain the significant historic building and landscapes resources that define the character of the college campus and contribute to the historical significance of the larger National Register district and ecological community in which it is located.
 * Provide guidelines and recommendations that will enable Bard to manage growth and development in a way that will not diminish the integrity of the historic campus landscape.
 * Perpetuate and increase Bard’s ecological consciousness and the connections it maintains with the surrounding cultural landscape and natural resources.
 * Address the need for sensitive change and the accommodation of new uses in coordination with the campus master planning process.
 * Provide recommendations that will better enable the college landscape to convey the stories of the past, and promote an appreciation for its history and significance.
 * Recommend an administrative process for evaluating how new projects or major renovations may affect historic resources.

Guidelines for Maintenance Projects
Guidelines for Maintenance Projects provide specific recommendations for administrative policies and procedures associated with the short- and long-term maintenance of historic buildings and landscapes. A summary of these recommendations is as follows:


 * Develop Work Schedules and Detailed Condition Assessments
 * Establish and maintain records for each building on campus regarding conditions, potential problems, short-term maintenance needs, and long-term maintenance needs.
 * Update each time work is completed on a historic building or landscape resource.
 * Prepare Maintenance Manuals
 * Addresses unique situations and conditions associated with individual buildings of groups of buildings.
 * Ensures consistency in the buildings maintenance, even as staff or individual building assignments are changed.
 * Train Maintenance Personnel
 * Develop a training program to assist Buildings and Grounds staff in identifying potential problems and appropriate treatments.
 * Training should be held on a regular basis to ensure that staff is up-to-date on procedures and maintenance-related issues.
 * Define Maintenance Protocols for Building Tenants
 * Ensures that individual users do not make modifications to buildings that would adversely impact their historic integrity.
 * Identifies parameters for allowable alterations, best maintenance practices, and practices to avoid.

Post Treatment and Maintenance Plan


The concept of sustainable rehabilitation, encouraging and facilitating the long-term preservation of character-defining building and landscape features, can be summarized in the following general principles that are based upon the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and should be considered in planning maintenance, reuse, renovations, new construction, and other future work at Bard:


 * Continue to use a property as it was designed to be used, or find a new use that minimizes necessary changes to character-defining features.
 * Identify and retain distinguishing building and landscape qualities and characteristics.
 * Maintain, protect, and repair existing character-defining features, materials, and finishes. If features are deteriorated beyond repair, replace in-kind.
 * Be authentic: if a feature is missing or must be removed, use accurate documentation to guide replacement.
 * Respect the evolution of historic changes, fashion, taste, and use.
 * Respect the college’s evolving master plan.
 * Follow an established design review process.
 * Accommodate the needed program to the maximum extent possible without destroying the character of existing resources.
 * Understand that future change will continue to occur.
 * Respect the existing building and landscape context.
 * Maintain a high quality of design and craftsmanship.
 * Take a humanist approach – design places where people want to be.
 * Take a sustainable approach – be responsible to society and the local and regional ecology.
 * Where change is necessary, existing college buildings and landscapes offer opportunities for creative new uses. Often found with multiple layers of history and aesthetics, existing buildings and landscapes can inspire creative and compatible designs for new construction.
 * New construction should not destroy character-defining building or landscape features or materials.
 * Additions and alterations to historic buildings and landscapes should speak of their own time but should be compatible with the character of the existing resource.