The Rutgers University-Newark campus is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Built from 1965-1970 by award-winning tri-state architects Kelly & Gruzen, Robert L. Geddes of Geddes, Brecher, Qualls & Cunningham, and Frank Grad & Sons, the campus is a jewel of mid-century modernist design.

Come join our Tour Day on October 15, featuring tours around the original buildings from 10 am to 3 pm, a multisensory exhibit about the campus architecture and history in Dana Library, and a guided look around the Institute of Jazz Studies, the most comprehensive jazz archive in the world.

The tours will focus on the changing aesthetics of modernism at mid-century as embodied in Rutgers’ six original buildings, which were designed as an ensemble with the contemplative Dana Library as the heart of the campus. Kelly & Gruzen drew up the campus master plan in the same years that they constructed the award-winning Chatham Towers in Manhattan. The campus core culminated with a seventh building, Hill Hall, a Brutalist monument that Robert L. Geddes designed in the same years he was working on the award-winning Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The tours will also consider the challenging politics of urban renewal in New Jersey’s largest city, with the expanded Rutgers University-Newark campus envisioned as an institutional anchor for a post-industrial Newark.

Sponsored by Dana Library, the Institute of Jazz Studies, and Docomomo US/New York - Tristate, the Tour Day features:

Tours last around one hour each, and will begin at 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 2:00, and 2:30. Starting point for the tours is Esterly Lounge, Engelhard Hall room 202, 190 University Avenue, Newark NJ 07102.

Between 12:00-2:00, tour guides will be on-hand in Dana Library’s multisensory exhibit, Making a Place: Rutgers University-Newark as a Microcosm of 1960s America, to talk about the exhibit pieces, campus history, design and architecture. The exhibit features original architectural plans, historic photos, oral histories, and music recordings from the 1960s and 1970s.

A shuttle bus will run in a continuous loop from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm between Engelhard Hall and Newark Penn Station, easily accessible by Path train and New Jersey Transit. The shuttle bus stops at the front entrance to Newark Penn Station, on Raymond Plaza West, outside of the hall with the Information Desk. Look for the Rutgers Shuttle with the sign: Docomomo Tour.

A guided introduction to the Institute of Jazz Studies, the most comprehensive jazz archive in the world.