8-30-99

Contact:
Steve Sullivan, News Service, (515) 294-3720

ISU LANDSCAPE TO BE HONORED SEPT. 1

AMES, Iowa -- An American Society of Landscape Architects medallion recognizing Iowa State University's central campus as a "significant landscape" will be presented to ISU President Martin Jischke at a brief ceremony on Wednesday, Sept. 1.

The ceremony will begin at 3:30 p.m. on central campus just west of the campanile. Speakers will include Tom Dunbar, ISU graduate and immediate past president of the ASLA, and Robert Harvey, ISU professor of landscape architecture. Harvey will give a brief history of the development of central campus.

To commemorate its centennial, the ASLA has selected more than 300 significant landscapes across the country as "medallion sites." Thirteen of the sites are on college campuses, but only three are central campus sites -- Yale University, the University of Virginia and Iowa State University.

Iowa State's central campus includes 490 acres of trees, plants and classically designed buildings. The landscape's most dominant feature is the 20-acre central lawn. Over the decades, campus buildings including the campanile, Beardshear Hall and Curtiss Hall circled and preserved the central lawn, creating a space where students study, relax and socialize.

Iowa State's campus also includes more than 200 works of art, many by sculptor Christian Petersen. In 1991, the Iowa State campus was chosen as one of the country's 25 most beautiful in a 1991 book, "The Campus As a Work of Art."

The ASLA selected five Iowa locations as "medallion sites." In addition to ISU's central campus, the sites are Backbone State Park in Delaware County, Eagle Point Park in Dubuque, the Loess Hills in Western Iowa and the Neal Smith National Wildlife Reserve in Prairie City.

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