The list of Northwestern University buildings encompasses the two main campuses of Northwestern University, located in Evanston, Illinois and Chicago, Illinois. The Evanston site contains approximately 150 buildings on its campus. The downtown Chicago campus, of approximately 25 acres (0.10 km2), is home to the Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Northwestern University also has an 11-acre (0.04 km2) campus in Education City, a satellite campus complex in Doha, Qatar.
Evanston campus Northwestern's original Evanston, Illinois campus, located just north of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan, can be traced to 1851, one year after the institution's founding. The campus still hosts the majority of Northwestern's undergraduate programs, as well as several of its graduate and professional schools. Unlike many prestigious universities of the time, whose campuses were iteratively master-planned, buildings on the Evanston Campus range heavily in both architectural style and date, due in part to the university's historically fluctuating finances. The earliest buildings are of Victorian, Gothic-adjacent, Neoclassical, and Renaissance-Revival styles. Numerous buildings on the Evanston campus constructed from the early to mid-twentieth century, including lecture halls, student residences, and the university's flagship library, were commissioned in the Collegiate Gothic style by notable American campus architect James Gamble Rogers. In the postwar period, numerous brutalist projects were undertaken, including an expansion of the main library by Walter Netsch. Many of these buildings are located on the Northwestern University Lakefill, a 1964 landfill extension of Northwestern's campus into Lake Michigan. As the university's first and primary campus, Evanston has seen major development in the past decade, including the construction of major new projects for its Music, Business, and Athletic programs designed by leading architecture firms.
Academic buildings and lecture halls Building Image Opened Location Notes University Hall 1869 1897 Sheridan Road The oldest standing building on campus, which currently houses the English Department. University Hall was designed by architect Gurdon P. Randall in the Victorian Gothic style and is composed of Joliet limestone transported to Evanston by rail and barge via Lake Michigan. The interior was renovated in 1992 and it is now home to the American Studies and Science in Human Culture Programs (SHC). 1915 1881 Sheridan Road Designed by Charles Coolidge in the neoclassical style with a series of ionic columns flanking the entrance, and adorned with the names of various social science fields. Today Harris Hall houses the History Department's classrooms and administration. 1895 1920 Campus Drive Designed by Evanston architect Charles R. Ayers in a mixture of Venetian Gothic Revival and Romanesque styles with an ornate use of nonstructural decorative masonry. It was named for Annie May Swift, a Northwestern student and the daughter of notable Chicago meatpacking mogul Gustavus F. Swift, who donated the building in her honor following her death of typhoid. The building originally housed the School of Oratory, now the School of Communication's departments of Performance Studies and Radio/Television/Film. 1899 1845 Sheridan Road Designed by the firm of notable architect Daniel H. Burnham in the Romanesque Revival style. Contains the main classrooms for Medill School of Journalism and the Media Management Program for the Kellogg School of Management. 1894 2033 Sheridan Road Designed by William Augustus Otis in the Italian Renaissance style. Originally housing Northwestern's Main academic library before the opening of Deering, the building still contains a mathematics library. Lunt houses the Mathematical Experience for Northwestern Undergraduates Program (MENU), and the Department of Mathematics. Technological Institute 1942 2145 Sheridan Road Home to the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and the science departments of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences (Chemistry, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Physics and Astronomy). The Holabird & Root designed building was one of the largest buildings in the United States upon its completion. Construction of the building became possible after Walter Patton Murphy, a wealthy inventor of railroad equipment, donated $6.735 million in 1939. Murphy wanted the institute to offer a new kind of “cooperative education.” Various wings have been added to the Tech Institute since its inception, including the Center for Catalysis and Surface Science. 1955 1880 Campus Drive A multipurpose academic building housing various academic departments, including the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of Art History, Department of Classics, and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. Built in the 1950s with reserved gothic details, Kresge is the newest building in the oldest Evanston Campus quad surrounding The Rock. 2003 1860 Campus Drive A later wing adjoining Kresge Hall, this building houses the African American Studies Department, Comparative Literary Studies Program, French and Italian Department, Latina and Latino Studies Program, Religious Studies Department, Spanish and Portuguese Department, and Crown Family Center for Jewish Studies. 1909 2029 Sheridan Road Designed by George Maher in the early 20th-century, with various later art deco additions. Swift Hall is home to Northwestern's Program in Brain, Behavior, and Cognition (BBC), Cognitive Science Program, and the Department of Psychology. Kellogg Global Hub 2017 2211 Campus Drive A contemporary five-story, 415,000-square-foot facility with unobstructed views of Lake Michigan and a large curved glass facade. The flagship building of the Kellogg School of Management; designed by firm KPMB Architects with a layout "designed to encourage collaboration" among students of the prestigious graduate business program. 1973 2001 Sheridan Road Housed the Kellogg School of Management until its administration moved to the new Kellogg Global Hub. Currently unused. The 1973-built Jacobs Center sat on the recently vacated site of Northwestern's first building, Old College (designed by John M. Van Osdel), which was heavily damaged by lighting before its demolition after standing for 118 years. As of 2024, the Jacobs Center is undergoing a renovation converting it for use by the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, with the aim to create "a collaborative space to address pressing societal issues." 2005 2133 Sheridan Road Designed by Davis Brody Bond, a 63,000-square-foot, facility with classrooms, shops, design studios, meeting areas, and team-centered work rooms. 1994 2120 Campus Drive Designed by Booth Hansen Associates in a gothic-postmodern style. Annenberg Hall is home to the School of Education and Social Policy. 1972 2240 Campus Drive Built on Northwestern's Lakefill, a brutalist building housing School of Communication classrooms. 2002 1870 Campus Drive Contains the Medill School of Journalism's Integrated Marketing Communications Program (IMC). 1940 601 University Place One of a series of collegiate gothic buildings by James Gamble Rogers which houses event spaces and the offices of the Political Science Department. 1962 1870 Sheridan Road A two-story building adjacent to the Alice Millar Chapel housing various classrooms and the offices of the Religious Studies Department. 1972 2169 Campus Drive Previously housed Kellogg School of Management lecture rooms, currently unused. 1928 1850 Campus Drive Houses various academic classrooms. Prior to 2010, Locy Hall was home to the Department of Earth and Planetary Science (previously Geological Sciences). 1999 600 Foster Street A facility that houses the Northwestern University Transportation Center. [?] 618 Library Place A recent building housing the Center for Applied Psychological and Family Studies, as well as its namesake Family Institute, incorporated in 1969.
Libraries Building Image Opened Location Notes Charles Deering Library 1933 1937 Sheridan Road Designed by James Gamble Rogers in the Collegiate Gothic style, at the top of Deering Meadow. The library's exterior is modeled after King's College Chapel at Cambridge University and features 68 unique stained glass windows by G. Owen Bonawit; many of which picture the shields of other universities or various academic disclipines. Houses the Northwestern University Archives, the Music Library, and the Art Collection and the Special Collections Department, with indoor connections to the larger University Library complex. The building's exterior underwent major renovation and restoration in 2013. As of 2024, the interior of Deering Library is closed for a refurbishment expected to conclude in September 2025. University Library 1970 1970 Campus DriveDesigned by brutalist architect Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it today houses the main academic library system of Northwestern University, built to address Deering's limited size as its collection expanded in a period of postwar growth. University Library is the 14th-largest university library in North America, and is architecturally similar to other Netsch university projects in the Chicago area (including the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago or UIC's University Hall). The complex consists of three structurally independent towers linked by multilevel elevated hallways. Seeley G. Mudd Science and Engineering Library 1977 2233 Tech Drive Northwestern's third and most contemporary library building, dedicated to science and engineering. A major renovation of the building was completed in 1999. The library was expanded again in 2017, a project which included such amenities as "collaboration rooms" and showers in renovated study areas.
Performing arts