“We will always engage in long-term planning, seeking sustained change. It is so easy to do quick things, but we will take the longer-term view.”
President Brian W. Casey
Colgate is rebuilding and renovating housing for juniors and seniors, creating a new campus region
At Colgate, the academic quadrangle is our village green — grassy, shaded, and bordered by buildings that belong on postcards. The Middle Campus is on its way to becoming an arts, creativity, and innovation district. The west side of Broad Street, at the south entrance to the campus, will continue to be the home of Colgate athletics, with its arenas, fields, and training centers.
Meanwhile, different forms of housing, in various states of repair, dot College and Broad streets. In spite of their proximity to campus, they can seem disorganized, distinct, and distant from Colgate’s physical core. Through a massive, multiyear investment in student life, the University is about to create a new campus neighborhood there. It is called the Lower Campus, and it stretches from Phi Delta Theta to the south, past Bunche House and the Loj, toward Kappa Kappa Gamma on the northern edge.
Once this ambitious set of Third-Century priorities is realized, all first- and second-year students will join a completed Residential Commons system atop the Hill. As juniors and seniors, they will move into Lower Campus theme houses, fraternity houses, sorority houses, apartments, and townhouses. They will certainly sleep in these spaces, but they will also form friendships, collaborate, socialize, cooperate, eat together, and continue to build on the knowledge they gained in the classroom.
This kind of community is available to a portion of the student body today. New buildings and renovations will make it universal as Colgate doubles down on its commitment to residential life within its liberal arts tradition.
“This is a complete renovation, an opportunity to reimagine these spaces for the way in which students live and learn in the 21st century.”
Bob Fox
Enter Bob Fox ’59. Last October, before the public launch of the Campaign for the Third Century, Colgate announced that the former head of Revlon International and Del Monte will give $10 million to place Fox Hall adjacent to Colgate’s longest-standing temporary building. The new residence hall will become the first in a complex housing a fifth commons, which will unite with Ciccone, Brown, Dart Colegrove, and Hancock commons in providing welcoming, faculty- and staff-directed communities for the University’s newest undergraduates. Once Fox Hall is completed, Gate House will be removed, and additional residences will rise to complete the fifth commons, with its social spaces and quadrangle overlooking Seven Oaks Golf Course and the valley below.
When Fox himself arrived on campus in 1955, that bit of real estate was just a stand of trees, one bad pull hook off the old golf course fairway. The son of German immigrants, Fox spent his mid-teens working at a soft-drink bottling company, supporting his family after his father’s early death. Grades, test scores, and his potential as a collegiate swimmer landed him a place at Colgate. He scraped together tuition payments from a combination of sources.
“Part of it was financial aid. Part of it was loans. Part of it was just working for room and board,” Fox says.
He went on to head leading brands and serve on the University’s Board of Trustees, and through the years, Fox has systematically invested tens of millions of dollars in the foundational elements of his Colgate experience: financial aid; an endowed coaching position for swimming and diving; a Career Services partnership to teach leadership skills; and, now, residential life. In the end, he says, “I wanted to have something that would endure.”
The physical manifestation of Fox’s gift will be stationary. But its implications will spread. The completion of Fox Hall and the commons system means that all first- and second-year students will reside on top of the Hill. The residence hall at 113 Broad Street will be taken down, and the five commons will be right-sized to maximize interaction among their first- and second-year members. All juniors and seniors will then be able to live on Lower Campus, where social and residential spaces will be of equitable quality and quantity, thanks to the construction and renovation work that begins at 66 and 70 Broad Street in the summer of 2024.
“The Third-Century Plan makes it possible to redefine Broad Street, opening the community to a more equitable experience — in social space, living space, and dining space,” McLoughlin says. “And as students move from up the Hill to down it, they will feel that sense of community while building greater levels of self-reliance that they need to transition into life after Colgate. This vision, once realized, will make Colgate’s residential experience even more distinctive than it is today.”