Must seePhoto by Michael Barera on Wikimedia Commons
University of Chicago Main Quadrangles
Gray Indiana limestone quadrangles in English Gothic style, built in 1892 and still the heart of the University of Chicago campus.
You are standing inside the Main Quadrangles, the original heart of the University of Chicago. Architect Henry Ives Cobb laid out these six interlocking courtyards in 1892, modeling them on the medieval colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. Every building you see is gray Indiana limestone, carved with gargoyles, griffins, and crockets. When the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition opened just across the Midway, its neoclassical pavilions were painted bright white, the White City.
The press immediately dubbed this campus the Gray City, and the name stuck. John D. Rockefeller put up the money and Marshall Field donated the land. Cobb designed eighteen of the original buildings, mixing Early English, Decorated, and Tudor Gothic into something entirely new.
The 215 acres of green space you are walking through have been a designated botanic garden since 1997. Look north and you can see the downtown skyline, about nine miles away, rising above the treetops like a second city. Walk east out of the quadrangles toward Woodlawn Avenue. The tall Gothic tower ahead is your next stop.
