Architectural Details

Saarinen’s watermark

Forty-five years ago the Law School Building (as the Laird Bell Law Quadrangle was known for the first eight years of its life) had an impressive beginning—with Chief Justice Earl Warren and Lord Chancellor Kilmuir coming to campus on May 28, 1958, to lay the cornerstone of the Eero Saarinen–designed complex, part of a larger campus-expansion master plan developed by Saarinen in the early 1950s.

Three of the quadrangle’s buildings are low-lying: the circular Constitution Hall, which contains an auditorium and courtroom, the classroom building, and an administrative wing. Rising in the center is what is now known as the D’Angelo Law Library. Six stories high, with windows of dark-paned glass, the library faces a large reflecting pool—a Saarinen trademark. Home to Antoine Pevsner’s bronze sculpture Construction in Space in the 3rd & 4th Dimension, on hot spring and summer days and nights the pool also offers a destination point for neighborhood canines and frolicking students.

—M.R.Y.

Photo by Dan Dry