MWAP Selected to Renovate Historic Mullins Hall Complex by James Gamble Rogers
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary will adopt “Residential College” System for Boyce College
Michael Winstanley Architects & Planners was selected as the architect for the first phase of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) master plan in Louisville, Kentucky, including the restoration of the historic Mullins Hall Complex. Mullins Hall Complex is approximately 125,000 square feet and when completed will create a “Residential College” nested in the predominantly Graduate level Seminary. The final building will house 350 beds, student lounges, the Boyce College administration, faculty offices and meeting space. The project is expected to be completed by July, 2014.
The historic importance of Mullins Hall is founded in the lineage of this building in the career of James Gamble Rogers. The building represents one of the purest examples of Roger’s interest in the Collegiate Georgian style which allowed Rogers in the 1920s to connect these emerging large-scale institutional university buildings to the cultural precedent of smaller scale American structures. The style combined elements of ecclesiastical, industrial, institutional and domestic precedents. While it maintained the picturesque compositions of its counterpoint style Collegiate Gothic, Roger’s Collegiate Georgian buildings were simpler, modern in appearance with larger repetitive windows.
“The relocation of Boyce College into Mullins Hall will restore both the building fabric and the original use of the building and at the same time creates a building that will facilitate both recruitment and retention for the College,” says Leejung Hong, LEED AP, Team Leader for the project at MWAP. “The simplicity of Rogers’ building has allowed us the flexibility to implement a new modern residential life program to complete the Residential College model.”
MWAP was the master planner for the SBTS which was completed earlier in the year. Mullins Hall Complex is one of several buildings by James Gamble Rogers on the Olmstead designed campus. Other plans for improvement on the campus include the creation of a new loop road, the renovation of the Centennial Library and future expansion of Boyce College into a new western quadrangle.