The East Field House: Multi-purpose space

The first central campus building, the East Field House, initially served for classes, studying, gym, dining, college night, performances, and dance hall.

After bids for building the first college came in at one million dollars over budget, trailers were leased to house the first class adjacent to the Field House, so that the campus could open on time in September 1965. Their residents dubbed them with inventive names like Bitten Apple, Humpty’s Dump, Parnassus, Homer’s Bodyssey, Godzilla’s House of Desire, Gilded Cage, and Belching Flamingos.

These towers of trees are “out-scale” and...therefore to be thought of less as trees to enhance, screen and shelter buildings (although this they will do), but more as great vertical elements of the topography having form, mass and density against which to compose the architecture.

- Thomas Church, “Random Notes on the Site” (1962)

Academic Services: Building a Library

The library will be the intellectual heart of the Santa Cruz campus. . . As soon as the library building is completed in 1966, it should be a central focus of faculty research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

- from A Provisional Academic Plan for the Santa Cruz Campus, 1965-1975  (1962)