Smith Board of Trustees Selects Architects for Major Building Projects

The Smith College Board of Trustees has selected architects for two major building projects--a new campus center and a renovation and addition to the Fine Arts Center, which encompasses the Smith College Museum of Art and the college's art department and art library.

James Stewart Polshek & Partners, a New York architectural firm, has been chosen for the Fine Arts Center project. Polshek designed the renovations to Smith's Sage Hall in the early 1990s and has worked on other major projects in recent years at the Brooklyn Museum and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York; the Pequot Museum and Research Center in Mashantucket, Conn.; and the Center for the Arts Theater, Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco.

It is expected that the Fine Arts Center project will add about 50,000 square feet to the 126,000-square-foot complex at an estimated cost of $31 million, making it the most ambitious capital construction project Smith has ever undertaken. Groundbreaking for the arts complex project is slated for the late spring of 2000.

Another New York firm, Weiss/Manfredi, has been selected as the architect for the campus center. Weiss/Manfredi's most well-known project, completed in October 1997, is the Women's Memorial and Education Center at Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The firm's other recent work include projects at Columbia University; the Sergeant Means Community Center in Olympia Fields, Ill.; and a suite of offices for the John A. Hartford Foundation in Manhattan.

A site adjacent to John M. Greene Hall has been chosen for the campus center with groundbreaking scheduled for late 2000.