Bovard Administration Building, John & Donald Parkinson, Architects 1920-21

Bovard Administration Building, John & Donald Parkinson, Architects 1920-21, a photo by Michael Locke on Flickr.

The first Master Plan for the campus of the University of Southern California proposed in 1919 by Architect John Parkinson included a series of Italian Renaissance style buildings connected by a series of Romanesque style bridges that were to be built over the streets. Although the bridges were never realized, the Parkinsons completed a half dozen of these handsome edifices that defined the early architecture of the university.

The first of Parkinson's buildings to be completed was the George Finley Bovard Administration Building, in 1921. Described as 'northern Italian Romanesque style', the building's dominating feature is a square bell tower with eight heroic sculptures by John Caspar Lachne representing the 'Progress of Civilization'. The eight figures are of American Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, Roman orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero and Greek philosopher Plato, John Wesley, Founder of Methodism, and three leading Methodist clergymen: Bishop Matthew Simpson, Preacher and College President; Phillips Brooks, the Fifth Bishop of Massachusetts and 158th in succession in the American episcopate, and a Methodist pastor and chair of Philosophy at Boston University.
Website:www.parkinsonarchitecture.com