University of Chicago -- Chicago, Illinois - Universities and Colleges on Waymarking.com

The University of Chicago is a four-year, private, non-denominational institution on the south side of Chicago. Its campus, whose core is built in a gothic style, has been home to dozens of nobel laureates and some of the most influential thinking in the arts and sciences.

The University of Chicago (or U of C, as it is often known), was founded in 1890, with its first classes being held in 1892. It arose from the ashes of what is known now as the "Old" University of Chicago, a baptist institution which lasted from 1857 to 1886. Baptist educators came together again after the failure of the first university, eventually getting William Rainey Harper, a theologian from Yale, to serve as its first president. It would be Harper who convinced John D Rockefeller to donate millions of dollars to the university, donations which would lead him to being called the university's "founder".

Situated in Hyde Park in Chicago, IL, the university's main campus is roughly bounded by Cottage Grove Avenue to the west, Woodlawn Avenue to the east, 55th Street to the north, and 61st Street to the south. The western portion of campus is primarily the grounds of the University of Chicago Hospitals. Parts of the campus stretch east along 60th and 61st Streets to Stony Island Avenue, and some dormitories are scattered about Hyde Park as well. The U of C business school also has a building, the Gleacher Center, on the river downtown, and operates satellite campuses throughout the world. The University also has a stake in Argonne National Laboratory, Fermilab, and Yerkes Observatory. The main cmapus of the university is split in two by the Midway Plaisance, a grassy green strip of land dating to Frederick Law Olmsted's plan for Chicago and used to much fanfare during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

The oldest buildings on the U of C campus date to the 1890s, and up until the 1930s they were primarily built in the gothic style (in various permutations) with limestone. The majority of the main quadrangles, from 57th to 59th Streets and Ellis to University Avenues, are in this style. Newer buildings have been in a wide array of styles, from the first to break this tradition (the '40s-era Administration Building) to the orange and pink Max Palevsky Residential Commons, with Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, and the brutalists (Regenstein Library) in between, among others. Also on the campus is Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House. Two magnificent chapels lie on the campus—Bond Chapel is the centrally located, intimate chapel, while Rockefeller Chapel towers over the Midway.

The University has always been home to great thinkers, and has been home to several eponymous schools of thought, including the Chicago School of Economics and the Chicago School of Sociology. The U of C was also home to the first isolation of a quantifiable amount of Plutonium, as well as the first man-made controlled nuclear reaction, both of which enabled the development of atomic weapons in the 1940s.

Famous alumni who subsequently taught at the university include Milton Friedman (a preeminent economist), Saul Bellow, and Norman Maclean. The first two were Nobel Laureates—indeed, 79 Nobel Laureates (as of 2007) have been affiliated with the U of C. Other famous alumni include Ed Asner, Paul Wolfowitz, John Ashcroft, James D Watson, Philip Glass, Jay Berwanger (the winner of the first Heisman trophy), Studs Terkel, Roger Ebert, Katharine Graham, Susan Sontag, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and Edwin Hubble. Famous faculty members (present and former) include T S Eliot, Ralph Ellison, Thornton Wilder, J M Coetzee, Barack Obama, Antonin Scalia, Hannah Arendt, A A Michelson, Robert Millikan, Enrico Fermi, A H Compton, and Karl Weintraub.

Name: The University of Chicago Location/Address: 5801 South Ellis Avenue Chicago, IL USA 60637 Web Site: [Web Link] Type of School: Undergraduate School with Graduate Programs School Affiliation: Private -- Independent Date Founded: 1890/1892 Enrollment: 14,000 Nicknames/Mascots: Maroons; Phoenix School Colors: Maroon and White Location of GPS Coordinates: Center of the quadrangles Phone Number: Not listed School Motto: Not listed

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