Field Theory Under Threat: The Uncertain Future of Walter Netsch’s Louis Jefferson Long Library at Wells College

Overlooking Lake Cayuga in the small village of Aurora, New York, Wells College was established in 1868 by Henry Wells, a prominent businessman and cofounder of Wells Fargo and American Express. Located in New York’s picturesque Finger Lakes region, this private liberal arts college and its 300-acre campus abruptly closed earlier this summer.

On April 29, 2024, Wells College president Jonathan Gibralter and Marie Chapman Carroll, chair of the board of trustees, announced the school’s forthcoming closure, stating that it did not have adequate financial resources to continue.¹ Two months later, on June 30, Dr. Susan Henking was appointed president of Wells College to guide the transition, and the campus closed all the facilities to the public, displacing 352 students and 150 staff.²

The Aurora Village–Wells College Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, includes fourteen Wells College properties.³ While not included in the original historic district designation (likely due to its relative newness at the time), the 1968 Louis Jefferson Long Library, designed by Chicago-based architect and SOM partner Walter Netsch, is now separately listed as a local historic landmark.⁴ Other midcentury structures on campus include the Campbell Art Building and the Barler Music Building, both completed in 1974, and also by Netsch.

Completed in June 1968, the Louis Jefferson Long Library was meant to be an important meeting place for both students and faculty, and served as the center of informal intellectual activity for the campus. In his design for the building, Netsch tucked floor levels into the hillside, thus preserving the existing landscape and minimizing the need for costly excavation. The multifaceted, gently sloping roof was designed to visually harmonize with the tranquil landscape as well as to provide continuity among the interior spaces.

Notably, Netsch applied Field Theory, a method of analysis he borrowed from behavioral science and applied to architecture, as the ordering device for the library. As Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn describe in their text “Walter Netsch: Field Theory,” this methodology “allowed Netsch to break the Miesian box by serving three primary functions in the design process: first, field theory provided aesthetic and psychological variety; second, field theory provided programmatic and structural flexibility in that it was used as an open-ended design system; and third, field theory allowed for economical change over time because it preestablished a unifying design objective.”⁵

Netsch’s first built project using Field Theory methodology was the Architecture and Arts Laboratories building at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle (UICC) campus; however, only a portion of the building was completed. This project would be followed by the Behavioral Science Building, and the Science and Engineering South buildings at UICC; the Louis Jefferson Long Library at Wells College; Lindquist Center I & II, the Basic Sciences, and the Medical Sciences Library at the University of Iowa; the Netsch Residence in Chicago; and the Miami University Art Museum in Oxford, Ohio.⁶

For the Louis Jefferson Long Library, Netsch used two systems: a pack of three and a pack of four combinations of rotated squares. This combination of forms provided optional locations of library book stacks by direction within the plan in both linear and radial patterns. The roof of the structure reassembled the components of the field at a larger scale.

The 61,000-square-foot library was designed to accommodate 250,000 volumes and 328 seated readers. With a brick and glass exterior and a steel and heavy timber structure, its interior included a series of interconnected and shape-shifting spaces defined by the dramatic roof. The roof, composed of 84 separate irregular octagonal planes, was constructed of 3-inch and 4-inch unfinished Western red cedar decking with white rolled exterior surfacing.⁷ Due to the geometry of the planes and the sectional variations, each structural member, including 550 laminated wood beams, was custom-engineered and fabricated by Koppers Company, Inc. in their Peshtigo, Wisconsin, plant.⁸ The roof is supported by the brick exterior walls, single laminated wood columns, and clusters of laminated beams that emerge from brick podiums that conceal ductwork. Fazlur Khan, who would go on to lead the structural design of the John Hancock Center, the Sears Tower, and the Hajj terminal, was the structural engineering partner in charge of the project.

The entrance to the library itself was at the circulation desk at the center of the second floor. The walkway through the building, which also served as an art gallery, gave access to a series of group study and seminar rooms that remained open even when the library was closed. The self-contained galleria-walkway through the library acted as a campus street, reinforcing its connection to the landscape and nearby structures.

The interior of the building, designed by SOM’s Robert Kleinschmidt, combined muted and vivid colors. Carpeting used throughout the library, bookstacks, and conference chairs were a neutral gray-beige tone, and exposed metal surfaces (building and furniture) were bronze. Deep colors for the mohair upholstery, elm wood work surfaces, and bronze plexiglass carrels also contributed to the muted approach. On the other hand, vivid colors were used in singular architectural elements, such as the diagonal plasterboard walls, where bright reds, purples, and oranges highlighted these unique moments.⁹

Following the announcement of the college closure, the Wells Legacy Society (WLS) incorporated on May 15 with the goal of “preserving and protecting the college’s rich history and nationally significant legacy in the Aurora community and the Finger Lakes region.”¹⁰ On July 17, with the departure of the Wells College’s head librarian, the organization extended an offer to the Wells College Board of Trustees and senior administration to provide volunteers to help protect the library holdings until the college disperses the collection and to help maintain the building until it changes hands.¹¹ Upon learning that the college’s current leadership plans to shut off the water and heat to the buildings on campus, on September 18 WLS sent a letter to US Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and other elected officials representing Aurora, NY, to urge them to protect the buildings. As described in their letter, “this decision will have catastrophic consequences for these irreplaceable historic structures and their contents.”¹²

In parallel, the Preservation Association of Central New York (PACNY) spearheaded an effort to nominate the college for inclusion on the Preservation League of New York State’s 2025–2026 Seven to Save list, which was submitted before the November 1 deadline.¹³ The campus was put up for sale in early November.¹⁴

Reflecting on the current situation at Wells College, PACNY President Andrew Roblee (a Wells College alumnus) told MAS Context that, “While PACNY and its partners in this effort are concerned about all of the historic buildings on campus, we are also focused on the future of three SOM buildings; Walter Netsch’s Long Library, Barler Music Hall, and Campbell Art Building. These are modern masterpieces of campus design. When the heat goes off, the cold upstate New York winters will start to slowly destroy these masterworks. In addition, we fear the school will empty the Long Library and sell off the fixtures and furniture—all of which were integral to Netsch’s original design.”

With the campus currently for sale at the time of this publication, urgent measures are needed to protect the buildings and their contents. We hope that, in this period of transition, Wells College president Dr. Susan Henking and her team understand the value of these important buildings and take the appropriate steps to preserve them while finding a suitable new owner to bring new life to these historic structures for the years to come.

The following text describes Walter Netsch’s field theory and helps position the Louis Jefferson Long Library within the context of this unique method of analysis. The text accompanied an exhibition on the topic at the Miami University Museum of Art in Oxford, Ohio, in 1979, which had recently opened to the public in a new building designed by Netsch using Field Theory principles.¹⁵

Field Theory Architecture
Studio of Walter A. Netsch, FAIA
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Miami University Museum of Art
April 23–June 18, 1979

Architecture, like any art, has aesthetic rules of organization, proportion, and form. Historically, geometry has provided the key rules in classic Greek form with the temple, in Gothic architecture with the cathedral, and in Baroque architecture with structural technique of specific materials. Geometry gives special visual context to these architectural periods.

Today, modern technology has provided such a variety of structural techniques and materials that contemporary architecture (except large engineering feats) does not rely on structure for special visual context.

The modern dictum “form follows function” relates to the contemporary effort of natural expression devoid of beaux arts applique decoration rather than an ordering aesthetic. Architects have had to conceive unique ordering systems, identifiable visual patterns, or a heavy reliance on technology to develop recognizable form.

Architecture is a social art. The physical use of buildings, climate, and orientation combine with the aesthetic and material goals to give a meaningful expression of utilization. Good architecture must be both useful and beautiful. Field theory architecture is an ordering system based upon mathematical proportion, which combines the programmatic needs of use and the aesthetic rules of form and proportion. Selected structural systems emphasize the aesthetic ordering. The application of a field provides a continuous proportional system with an infinity of mathematical variations. As in other contemporary aesthetic forms such as art and music, continuity, ambiguity, overlapping, scale change, lattice, pattern, and shape are constant elements in ordering field theory.

The primary ordering systems in field theory are the combination of orthogonal (right angle patterns) and diagonal (angular patterns), most often defined by the rotated square. The combination of patterns becomes the field, and the variety of patterns results in an endless choice of fields. The selected fields follow from the primary uses of the physical program and the character of the site.

Nine projects, from 1967 until 1979, have been selected to show the variety within the system, the special character of the field and the resulting uniqueness. Four of the field systems shown are completed buildings with an accompanying variety in scale, form, and materials. Each relies on the proportional and ordering aesthetics of the selected fields.

LINDQUIST CENTER I & II

Lindquist Center I & II (University of Iowa, 1972 and 1978) is composed of two building programs of different use on a restricted urban site. The field is comprised of two systems, one for each building; the first is a computer center and research area; the second an education center with special laboratories, classrooms, and offices. The smalI scale and tightness of the field reflects the restrictions of the site. The transition of the octagon field (which results in planning clusters of offices) is combined with the larger scale field of the newer building.

FIBONACCI SERIES

Fibonacci Series (1978) is a theoretical field based upon the mathematical system of Fibonacci (I, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc.), which has many variations. The system is currently being explored for projects in Algeria where Fibonacci developed his mathema­tical system.

WELLS COLLEGE LIBRARY

Wells College Library (Aurora, New York, 1968) is a classic use of two systems: a pack of three and a pack of four combinations of rotated squares. This combination of forms provides optional location of library book stacks by direction within the plan in both linear and radial patterns. The building, informal in nature, is located in a handsome rural setting where the building includes a self-contained galleria-walkway through the library acting as a campus street. The roof of the structure reassembles the components of the field at a larger scale.

PAHLAVI CENTER

Pahlavi Center (University of Chicago, 1968, Unbuilt) illustrates the origin of a special field (nicknamed The Turban Field), which defines the shape and clustering of research offices in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science. The combination of the cluster around a central rotated square or atrium follows the character of the building program. Changes in the field correspond to changes in the scale of the building needs.

NETSCH RESIDENCE

Netsch Residence (Chicago, 1974) is an urban house with an open plan evolving from the square and triangle, which the plan forms. The roof structure and the skylights follow the dictates of the field. The two utility cores support viewing platforms, “urban tree houses,” which are extensions in space of the diagonal lines developed from the elements of the triangular field.

MIAMI UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM

Miami University Art Museum (Oxford, Ohio, 1978) is a unique field combining the square and triangle to develop a series of exhibition galleries of varying sizes and volumes as welI as a smalI meeting classroom. The variation in size and cube follows the proportion and the dynamics of the field. These proportions permit viewing the galleries as separate objects and, from certain vistas, the galleries are seen as one visual element. The structure, window openings, and masonry unit sizes reflect the proportional elements of this unique field.

BASIC SCIENCES

Basic Sciences (University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 1972) marks the evolution of this field to incorporate laboratories and offices while surrounding a pedestrian street. The primary pattern of this field establishes a semicircular octagon field of eight patterns. The laboratories operate independently of the street and, in form, this structure follows the street with essentially an informal medieval atmosphere. The walkway is Piranesian in scale and character.

MEDICAL SCIENCES LIBRARY

Medical Sciences Library (University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 1973) is built on a standard library structural bay system to accommodate library book stacks, and develops a three dimensional field translating the rotated square to, sequentially, the square, the octagon, the cross, and the inverse octagon. The building, like Basic Sciences and WelIs College Library, also includes a pedestrian walkway.

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE CENTER

Behavioral Science Center (University of Illinois, Circle Campus, Chicago, Illinois, 1965) is a complex building with a variety of academic needs: lecture rooms, seminar rooms, classrooms, snack bars, research laboratories, and offices. The variety of elements in the field, the variations in the scale, and latticing of geometric elements, all contribute to the expression of the complex program.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Karen Widi, Manager of Library, Records and Information Services at SOM, for her invaluable help providing information and photographs of the Wells College Louis Jefferson Long Library, and information about Netsch’s Field Theory. Thanks to PACNY President Andrew Roblee for his remarks.