Architect: Frank Miles Day & Charles Zeller Klauder
Style: Collegiate Gothic
Facility Description
Work began on men's residence halls after the implementation of plans for a second women's dormitory, Prudence Risley Hall (1911), in the popular English collegiate Gothic style. Warren Manning's 1910 campus plan indicated a site for the halls west of the main campus. A trustee committee including Georges Charles Boldt, Andrew Dickson White, and Robert Henry Treman led the subscription campaign. Ralph Adams Cram, architect of the influential Graduate School at Princeton (1910), designed the site land which was to be filled in over a period of years as money was raised. A wall of buildings of local bluestone trimmed in Indiana limestone and reflecting the late Gothic mode of Oxford and Cambridge defined the edge of this residential community- an inner, protected collegiate environment where according to Cram personal honor, clean living,... good fellowship, obedience to law, reverence and the fear of God- all those elements that are implied in the word 'character' would thrive. The firm of Day & Klauder (later Charles Zeller Klauder after Day's death in 1918), which also did work for Princeton, designed all the buildings between 1913 and 1931. The firm designed the buildings in small units housing 16 to 30 students. The dedications of the buildings and their decoration reminded residents of the accomplishments of Cornellians. Founders Hall is the second of the collegiate Gothic buildings for the men's campus.
