Campus Buildings Book Memento for Wesleyan Community

Wesleyan University Press has released Welcome to Wesleyan: Campus Buildings in October 2007. The 64-page, full-color book features numerous photographs of Wesleyan’s diverse structures captioned with historical notes.

Leslie Starr, the assistant director and marketing manager at Wesleyan University Press, is the book’s author and editor. Photographs in the book were contributed by a number of university staff members and professional photographers.

“We’ve felt that Wesleyan has needed a book like this for a long time – an informative and inexpensive memento of campus,” Starr says. “As I began to pull together the material, I discovered that there really weren’t many photographs of some of these buildings, and basic information on the history wasn’t readily available, either,” Starr says.

Founded in 1831, Wesleyan’s campus is rich in architecture and history. This collection of photographs of campus buildings begins with the original buildings of College Row, and, like a walking tour, takes the reader past a variety of more recent additions. Focusing on what would interest students, staff, faculty, alumni and university visitors, the book includes academic, athletic, administrative, and arts buildings, as well as residence halls, fraternity houses, and the off-campus deli.

In-depth, informative captions detail each building’s history and transitions over the years, and describe the buildings’ occupants and namesakes.

The book contains over 50 full-color photographs, including an aerial view from autumn 2006, an informative introduction describing the university’s history, a campus map, illustrations, acknowledgements, notes on the book and information about the author and Wesleyan University press. It will be updated for the next printing.

“We already know that we will revise several pages, since this book needed to go into production last January, so we weren’t able to include a finished image of the new Suzanne Lemberg Usdan University Center.” Starr says.

Several Wesleyan staff, faculty and students assisted with the book through historical researching, writing, editing, photo selection, printing and overseeing technical issues. They include Barbara Ally, Mark Bailey, Stacy Baldwin, Danielle Bugge ’07, John Biddiscombe, Shelley Burchsted, Lynn Cartwright-Punnett ’07, John Driscoll, Valerie Gillispie, Cheryl Hagner, Bill Herbst, Bill Holder, Brandi Hood, Linda Hurteau, Maureen Isleib, Erhard Konerding, Susan Krajewski, Shirley Lawrence, Willard Lockwood, Susan Lourie, David Low, Karl Maier, Cynthia McDermott, Nancy Meislahn, Jeff Miller, Joanne Palmer, Karl Scheibe, Joe Siry, Barbara Spalding, Bridgett Stapleton, Suzanne Tamminen, Suzy Taraba, Stephen Thompson, Allynn Wilkinson and Andy Wiltshire ’08.

Photography was contributed by Starr, Olivia Drake, Robert Benson, Bill Burkhart, Stephanie Elliott, John Foraste, Ryan Lee, William Mercer, Rick Scanlon Photography and Nancy Walz.