This year marks the publication of the second edition of Pomona College: Reflections on a Campus, a campus history authored by professor emeritus Marjorie Harth, co-creator of Pomona’s archives program with former director of donor relations Don Pattison.
First published in 2007 in conjunction with the efforts of many colleagues, the book aims to chronicle Pomona’s campus not simply as a collection of buildings and open spaces but as a carefully designed learning and living environment for Pomona students. We spoke with Harth about the project.
How would you summarize this new second edition?
This version updates the history of Pomona’s campus, adding the many new and recently renovated buildings during the 17 years between editions. Physical changes reflect shifting pedagogies, societal priorities and a host of other cultural factors. I recommend Professor George Gorse’s essay on Myron Hunt, our founding architect; Scott Smith, long-time planning consultant, contributed a new chapter on landscape architect Ralph Cornell who worked hand in hand with Hunt. These give us insight into campus planning, how it has changed and how integrally related the two disciplines—architecture and landscape architecture—should be.
What would you like readers to take away from Reflections?
I hope they will take away an awareness of how rich the history of this College and its campus are and how much we can learn from and take pride in them. I hope readers will begin to register the way our environments—buildings, grounds, classrooms, public spaces—affect the quality of our lives.
We all know this on some level, I believe, but we don’t always focus on it when we’re creating or inhabiting spaces for various purposes, especially, in this case, a place for learning, intellectual growth and experimentation. So, this book offers what we hope is a fresh way of understanding the College and the lives lived within it.