Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 30 Year Master Plan (Tilton & O'Donnell) [PAGE 66]

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WHITE PLAN—1911 A hasty study, drawn up primarily in response to a request from the Athletic Department that its needs be given more consideration in the planning of the campus. The plan here presented is remarkable for a number of new features. Extensive additions to the University's land holdings are proposed with particular view to providing playgrounds to compensate for the utilization of the area south of the Auditorium for building sites. The acquisition of the entire tract of land between the campus and the Illinois Central railroad is suggested, as well as the establishment of a playground in the area between Oregon Street and the property line south of Nevada Street, and between Mathews Avenue and Lincoln Avenue. Because of the protests of the Agricultural departments against the location of the military area on the experimental plots east of Mathews Avenue, the Armory and the drill field are here shown west of Wright Street in the horticultural tract, the greenhouses being removed to approximately the site they now occupy. Immediately south of the Auditorium are two science buildings; farther south there is an agricultural group, but the quadrangle arrangement previously suggested is abandoned, and a new system of drives is outlined. This scheme embodies the ideas for the relocation of the Armory which Professor White presented to the Board of Trustees October 5, 1911. The attempt to work the Armory into a scheme west of Wright Street persisted till Mr. Burnham suggested its removal, and Mr. Blackall found a successful location for it at the end of Fifth Street.