Walk through UIC’s architectural history

Jessica Williams planned how she wanted to spend her retirement long before she left UIC in 2017 after a 30-year career as a linguistics professor.

A longtime resident of Chicago, she studied the city’s history and kept active to lead visitors on the Chicago Architecture Center’s walking tours. That meant knowing more than when each building was designed. She also had to know the history of the designers and what impact each building had on its neighborhood.

Last year, an opportunity arose for Williams to help design a tour she knew intimately: UIC’s campus.

Since the summer of 2024, Williams has been one of four docents to take visitors on a walking tour of what was once called Circle Campus. She’s the only docent who once worked here.

“Walking through campus is seeing two sides to every story and an exercise in introspection,” Williams said. “For example, the most interesting building is the Behavioral Sciences Building. It’s the one that won the most awards, and critics loved it. Most people who used it really hated it.”

Many visitors who have joined her over the last year are former students (though not necessarily her former students). Their insights add flavor to the journey, as she gives opportunities for anyone in her group to tell their favorite stories of campus.

“It’s fun for me because they tell me things that I didn’t know,” Williams said. “One person said they had classes in University Hall, which they don’t do anymore.”

UIC is one of five campus tours offered by the Chicago Architecture Center. Walking tours of UIC run on select days through October, and tickets range from $10-35.

All tours meet at the Academic and Residential Complex, then visit locations around the east side of campus before finishing at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. Anyone joining the tour should come prepared in their walking shoes and listen closely to learn how the campus was built and its impact on the city.

Academic and Residential Complex

Fast fact: The Academic and Residential Complex was finished in 2019 in an area not part of the original campus.

Listen for stories about: UIC as the first fully planned, public urban university in the country and Mayor Richard J. Daley’s vision for the university.

Behavorial Sciences Building 

Fast fact: While the original campus was designed at one time, it was slated to be built in four phases. The Behavioral Sciences Building was built in phase III.

Listen for stories about: Architect Walter Netsch’s field theory and the “hidden” spaces in the building that were created as study nooks and areas for students to gather.

University Hall 

Fast fact: University Hall was designed to be wider at the top than at the bottom to mimic the city’s “big shoulders” from Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago.”

Listen for stories about: The criticisms and adoration that the brutalist style inspires still today and the repetition of circles throughout campus.

Architecture and Design Studios

Fast fact: A stone pillar from the original second-floor walkways remains outside the entrance to the Architecture and Design Studios.

Listen for stories about: How Netsch offered to design renovations to make the campus compliant with 1990s requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Quad

Fast fact: Netsch created the quad as a “great court,” taking inspiration from the rings that emanate from a pebble dropped in water. The Quad was designed to be the center and the rest of Circle Campus the rings built around it. With the removal of the elevated walkways in the 1990s, this is one area of campus that has seen significant change.

Listen for stories about: How the green space of The Quad and glass skin of the classroom buildings modernized the space.

Science and Engineering Labs

Fast fact: The bricks laid in the building form an “I,” similar to the design of the windows in phase I and II buildings.

Listen for stories about: The sculpture tribute to a 1970s-era engineering professor and the architectural importance of the arch between the east and west buildings.

Hull-House Museum 

Fast fact: The original Hull-House Museum property was sold for $875,000 to allow the campus to be built at its current location.

Listen for stories about: How the campus site was chosen and how the current museum buildings were preserved.