A Walk Around Campus

Most of you reading this know that I am at Georgetown University for a month-long class sponsored by my agency. We got a chance to walk around the campus during the day earlier this week. I hope to get some more pictures over the next three weeks, but here are three to start.



My distinct lack of botanical knowledge makes me, regrettably, unable to tell you what this tree is. But I thought it was pretty.



This is White-Gravenor Hall. The admissions office, Dean's office and registrar are in there. Here is what the campus visitor's brochure has to say about White-Gravenor.

The White-Gravenor building takes its name from Andrew White, S.J., and John Gravenor, S.J., two of the first Jesuits to come to Maryland in 1634. Completed in 1933, the building houses the Office of the Registrar in the basement and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and the Dean's Office for Georgetown College on the first floor. The Department of Psychology, chemistry labs and classrooms are located on the second, third and fourth floors.

This is the front of Healy Hall. It is a big, Gothic-looking building that can be seen from a fair distance. At night, it has a red light on top so nothing flies into it. The cross is from Georgetown's Jesuit heritage. It's kind of like the House of the Twenty Gables. You can see the head of the statue of Archbishop Carroll in the lower right area of the picture.

Here's what the visitor's brochure has to say about Healy Hall.

With its distinctive spires towering above the Washington, DC, skyline, Healy Hall is an impressive example of 19th century architecture. At its hightst point, the building rises more than 300 feet over the Potomac River.

The Hall's construction in 1877 carried symbolic meaning and educational purpose--signaling to the nation that Georgetown was no longer the small, rural academy founded more than 100 years earlier by Archbishop John Carroll. Healy Hall is named for Georgetown's "Second Founder" and the first African-American president of a major university, Patrick F. Healy, S.J., president of the University from 1873 to 1882. The building was completed in 1879 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Considered the centerpiece of Georgetown's campus, Healy Hall houses classrooms and academic and administrative offices including the Office of the President, the Office of Student Financial Services, Campus Ministry and the Office of Mission and Ministry.

Gaston Hall, located on the third floor of Healy Hall, is an ornately adorned lecture hall that is a popular venue for heads of state and other distinguished speakers, concerts and awards ceremonies. Riggs Library, locagted in th south tower of Healy Hall, is one of the last cast-iron libraries in the United States. Riggs Library and its various annexes and reading rooms served as the main campus library until 1970, when Launinger Library was completed. In front of Healy Hall, facing the Main Campus gates, is a statue of Georgetown's founder, Archbishop Carroll. The cannons in front of the building are relics of the two ships, the Ark and the Dove, which brought the first Maryland colonists and Jesuits to America in 1634.