620 PROSPECT ST

620 PROSPECT ST

Rock

Beloit

1929

1949

1980

university or college building

Neoclassical/Beaux Arts

Brick

Berlin and Swern, Chicago,Maurice Webster, Chicago

No

A red brick building with cast cement trim as cornices, entrances and lintels, the Wright Art Center was the 1929-30 work of the architectural firm of Berlin and Swern of Chicago; W.E. Armantraut was the designer.

Originally designed with a vast interior court rising two stories, it also had a center fountain and a balcony overlooking the courtyard. A remodelling in the 1940s altered the courtyard into two floors and the balcony and fountain were removed. In the arches formerly surrounding the upper walkways, exhibit cases were installed. Other rooms were made into storage spaces.

The central Georgian Revival doorway has an elaborate cast concrete broken pediment on its enframenment, and there are also cast concrete panels in the gable peak above, the whole contained in a slightly extended two story entry bay. The double staircase leads to a double door with a top light.

The building is surmounted by another gable atop the former court into which a studio is now cradled, below the original skylight. Symmetrical wings flank the entry bay and side wings flank those. A heavy cornice with a brick and concrete parapet caps the wings. Lower story windows in the first set of wings have smaller cast concrete pedimented lintels.

Robert C. Berlin, in practice alone and later with Perry W. Swern, was responsible for at least 12 TMCA buildings in Chicago, including the YMCA Hotel on Wabash Avenue, the McCormick YMCA (1928), and numerous other buildings including St. Stanislaus Church (1905).

The Wright Art Center was finished in 1930, at a cost of $143,000, built up from invested funds held over during the World War I years until inflation eased on construction costs. The art center was the dream of Madame Emerson, curator of the collection, and funds were supplemented by gifts from Beloit citizens in memorium for Theodore Lyman Wright.

It was an instructional center in the history of art, some studio work, and also a gallery and museum, and as a center for the Beloit Art League. With the shift of the teaching from art history to the practice of art the building proved inadequate, thus remodelling of the art center was done in 1949, under the architect Maurice Webster of Chicago.

Even with a reuse of spaces, storage was critical. Thus, the library housed at the art center was moved to the Morse Library. The Annex, an unobtrusive cement block addition for the firing of ceramics and casting, expanded the available spaces (c.f.). The changes in emphasis of education and studio work and the need for the study of more art forms has placed upon the art center a succession of changes through the years.

The courtyard also housed the summer series of Court Theatre from the 1850s to the 1970s. Nightly productions of repertory theatre were played, arena style, in the court of the art hall. The theatre was given a new home in the adjacent Neese Theatre.

One story contemporary addition of cement block was built in 1976, hidden to rear and down the slope below the Wright Art Center, at the basement level, but nonetheless non-contributory to the character of the district.

(A) Historical Sites and Points of Interest in Rock County, Wisconsin, Rock County Tourism Council, 5/1994. (B) Robert H. Irrmann, "Data on Beloit College Buildings," on file at RCHS Archives. (C) Withey and Withey, Biographical Dictionary of American Architects, 1956, pp. 54 and 587.

Near East Side Historic District

Jan 07, 1983

Jan 01, 1989

Yes