The 50 Ugliest College Campuses Ever

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Location: Cincinnati

Year Built: 1893, Notable New Construction: 1994 - 2008 (Founded: 1819)

Key Architects: Various, including: Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Peter Eisenman, Pei Cobb Freed and Partners, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, Moore Ruble Yudell, Bernard Tschumi, and STUDIOS Architecture

The University of Cincinnati campus has disgusted design enthusiasts for years now with its envelope-pushing architecture. The Crosby Tower is a single pour of concrete, and the Vontz Center, designed by Frank Gehry, has no right angles. Both of these buildings should be studied as feats of engineering and architecture, but their historic value is no excuse for their aesthetic.

Location: Worcester, Mass.

Year Built: 1865

Key Architects: Various

Some of the Worcester campus is beautiful, but due to bad planning and poorly placed parking lots, the scenic foliage is overshadowed by sterile, bland construction like the new Campus Center or the Life Science Center, both which compete with and tarnish the campus' New England charm.

Location: Waltham, Mass.

Year Built: 1948

Key Architect: Eero Saarinen

Eero Saarinen is one of the most iconic designers of the Modernist movement. His buildings have historic status. Unfortunately, Brandeis mixed these Modernist buildings with bland, brick structures and a castle to come up with their current campus. This jumble of styles and aesthetics leaves the school looking disheveled and incoherent.

Location: Claremont, Calif.

Year Built: 1963

Key Architects: Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects

The stark, white buildings of Pitzer seem to be incapable of aging gracefully. Their contemporary architecture detracts from the beautiful Claremont surroundings and looks out of place among the other five schools in the overall Clarement Colleges campus. Pitzer is another case of a beautiful environment being tarnished by unsightly monuments.

Location: Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Year Built: 1911

Key Architects: Various

Skidmore College's overall architecture is one of uninspiring inconsistency, where contemporary window treatments clash with old brick and concrete. With stark buildings placed haphazardly throughout its beautiful surroundings, this campus lacks both a true university feel and a unified design. One saving grace of the campus is the Arthur Zankel Music Center, which actually has nice lines, but then you get to the Williamson Sports Center, and you see a big metal box with green and yellow paint all over it. As a whole, the materials make the buildings appear monotonous and unsure if they want to update, renovate, or stay the same.

Location: Ithaca, N.Y.

Year Built: 1960s (Founded: 1892)

Key Architects: Various

The location is picturesque, but the campus does nothing for the scenery. With a slew of new buildings created in the '60s, the college has a landscape of industrial, boxy architecture and a landscape of cement and glass that weighs on the town's gorgeous landscape. Even the newer buildings have been designed to fit into the '60s style, which hasn't improved the architecture of the campus. It also doesn't help that Ithaca has Cornell to compete with, both academically and architecturally. 

Location: Albuquerque, N.M.

Year Built: 1922 (Founded: 1889)

Key Architects: John Gaw Meem

Blank, boring buildings make up this Southwest campus. Competing with the infamous New Mexico heat isn't an easy feat, but the architecture of the University of New Mexico's campus feels like the designers didn't even care to try. Some of the areas with Pueblo Revival architecture are a fitting and even welcome change; they bring a bit of local authenticity to the campus. However, if the school wants to break out of the monotonous, sterile class of campuses that it's in, it should consider employing this style of architecture throughout the whole campus. 

Location: Irvine, Calif.

Year Built: 1965

Key Architects: Original campus: William PereiraAdditions: Various, including:  Frank Gehry, Robert Venturi, Eric Owen Moss, James Stirling and Arthur Erickson

Irvine is another beautiful location with an unimpressive campus. This UC is a true Modernist 1960s California oasis, yet many of the buildings are constructed out of light brick and concrete, which gives the campus an unfortunately sterile feeling. The choice of white buildings is one of the better design decisions, which complements the lush foliage of the area. Overall, the architecture is unwelcoming, which isn't ideal for a learning environment.

Location: Rapid City, S.D.

Year Built: 1885

Key Architects: Various

South Dakota School of Mines and Tech is another school that has the misfortune of being located...well, where it’s located. It’s a top-tier school in the field of Mining and Technology, and its alumni are making good money, but the school’s architecture is built for function, at best. Rapid City itself is dangerous and poorly patrolled, causing issues among the students (beyond having to attend an ugly campus day in and day out). Recently the city declared that they would improve the campus area in the interest of student safety.

In February 2022, South Dakota Mines revealed it was running out of research space on campus, a fact serving as the basis for the school’s request to state lawmakers for the approval of $5.25 million to purchase the Ascent Innovation Building. The school also recently requested the approval of a plan for the construction of a new Mineral Industries building.

Location: Raleigh, N.C.

Year Built: 1937 (Founded: 1887)

Key Architects: Various

North Carolina State made it onto Princeton Review's 2009 list of "Least Beautiful Campuses," and "least beautiful" is actually kind of a euphemism for its architecture. This monotonous campus of red and white brick continues to fall short, even with its new construction. The main point of contention about the campus, and its recent renovations, is the lack of harmony with the existing buildings, which leads to a disjointed environment.

Location: Sacramento, Calif.

Year Built: 1947

Key Architects: Various, including: Julian Morgan

Cal State Sacramento is actually called "Tree Campus USA," and with more than 3,500 trees, the campus is indeed a picturesque location. However, the beautiful foliage is ruined by the facilities' medical complex aesthetic. The large brick buildings are heavy and clumsy looking compared to the blissful, natural surroundings. Some of them resemble a set of stairs or tiers on a cake, at best.

Location: New York

Year Built: Many were built in the 1980s (Founded: 1870)

Key Architects: Various, including: C.B.J. Snyder

Like many colleges of the time, CUNY Hunter was designed in the Modern Brutalist style. The buildings are cold and uninviting, and many of them lack adequate windows. Most of them look old and run down, and the location within New York City doesn't add to the campus' already decentralized environment. Ironically, iconic architectural critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, is a notable alumna.

Location: New York

Year Built: 1831

Key Architects: Various

Right off the bat, NYU is at a disadvantage by being located in a large city. This urban location eliminates the ability to ever have a cohesive traditional campus experience. Despite that, if you look closely at some of the buildings, they exist completely in their own styles and are lacking inspiration (or the ability to inspire). One good example of this is the philosophy center, which was renovated by Steven Holl Associates. This space has the potential to be something unique and engaging—a hidden gem in the Village—but instead it comes off as worn down and uninteresting.

Location: Bennington, Vt.

Year Built: 1932

Key Architects: Robertson Ward, Pietro Belluschi and Carl Koch, and Kyu Sung Woo

We'll say it: Postmodernism is probably the ugliest of all architectural movements, and the Bennington College campus is living proof of that. The campus appears to be iteration after iteration of domineering, imposing Postmodern buildings. The uninviting architecture is unfortunate, because the location of the college is very striking. 

Location: Pittsburgh, Pa.

Year Built: Various (Founded: 1900)

Key Architects: Various

Carnegie Mellon is a prestigious university. The school has been called "a place for over-achievers." This focus on studying and the lack of extracurricular activities translates to a school that doesn't pay much attention to the architectural beauty of its campus. There are common complaints that the campus is in dire need of updating its design, and judging by the overbearing and imposing architecture, it seems like the complainers may have a point. If only the school could elevate their campus to the same level as their academics.

Location: Valparaiso, Ind.

Year Built: Old Campus: 1859, New Campus: 1950s

Key Architects: Various, including: Sasaki Associates, Inc (New Campus)

While the Old Campus at Valparaiso was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, the new developments, which look more like a suburban office park than a haven for learning, don't live up to the original architecture. Built in the 1950s, the New Campus houses nine dorms, the majority of the academic buildings, as well as a glaring chapel that is somewhat of an eyesore. The lack of a traditional university layout equates to no quads, no commons, and no defined center. This also leads to a lack of cohesiveness and community for the student body. In a strange turn of events, the Ku Klux Klan assembled a bid to purchase the university in 1923. Thankfully they were unsuccessful.

Location: Chicago, Ill.

Year Built: 1950 (Founded: 1890)

Key Architects: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The Illinois Institute of Technology is another technology school that doubles as an office park. Need we say more? The van der Rohe sections of the campus are worth visiting, if only for the architectural history lesson, but the addition of new buildings without character does not add any value to the space's design.

Location: Dartmouth, Mass.

Year Built: Early 1960s (Founded: 1896)

Key Architects: Paul Rudolph

Paul Rudolph is an iconic architect, and his Dartmouth campus is cohesive, especially compared to some of the other colleges on our list. However, the buildings themselves are busy, unappealing, and appear overdone. With undulating forms and sterile, cold concrete, the buildings of the Dartmouth campus are spot on for style, but it's necessarily a pleasant or welcoming style.

Location: Cleveland

Year Built: 1967

Key Architects: Various, including: Frank Gehry

Although renowned for its prestigious engineering and science programs, Case Western doesn't quite offer the whole package. It was also named one of Princeton Review's "Least Beautiful Campuses," following in the trend of technology-centric schools being built in a sterile, Brutalist style. There's little flavor beyond the cold brick here.

Location: Arlington, Texas

Year Built: 1895

Key Architects: Various

UT Arlington unfortunately has to compete with other, more prestigious campuses, like UT Austin. The Arlington campus gives off a commuter-school vibe, and its basic, unappealing architecture makes it look very due for a remodel. The Planetarium, for one, rises like a giant concrete thermos, interrupting a facade of glass windows. The Chemistry and Science Building is depressingly institutional, with plain bricks and and uninspired details.

Location: San Diego

Year Built: 1960

Key Architects: Various

The University of California, San Diego has the unfortunate fate of being compared to other schools in the UC network. Although California is beautiful, UC San Diego campus' architecture lacks a cohesive style, like most of the ugly college campuses in this list. The University's six colleges each maintain their own buildings, which are differentiated by distinct architectural styles. As new colleges have been added, the additions were designed with styles that are vastly different from that of the original campus buildings.

Location: Chicago

Year Built: 1965 (Founded: 1858)

Key Architects: Various, including: Walter Netsch

Many students complain that the Chicago campus is unsafe. Ironically, they have also complained about the architecture, mainly the Brutalist style of Netsch's East Campus, stating that it is reminiscent of a prison. Rule #1 of building and updating the architecture of a college campus: don't make it look or feel like a place students are going to as punishment. 

Location: Potsdam, N.Y.

Year Built: 1896

Key Architects: Various

Many students complain that the Clarkson University campus is as dreary as the winters in upstate New York, but that's not deterring Clarkson from trying to change its tune. Recently, the school completed construction on a new, award-winning Student Center designed by Perkins and Will. Hopefully they will continue this string of good architectural decision-making, but in the meantime, the rest of the campus' boring brick needs work.

Location: Dallas

Year Built: 1969

Key Architects: Page Southerland Page

You could argue some parts of the University of Texas at Dallas campus resemble parking garages. The university tried to alleviate this by constructing new buildings, but the iridescent facades and casual architecture of some of the new construction, which has been mocked for looking like fish scales, seem like they would be more fitting for a beach resort in Hawaii. In 2012, Larry Speck of Page Southerland Page actually won an award for the design of the Visitor Center and University Bookstore. Hopefully things are looking up for the future of the school’s campus.

Location: New Brunswick, N.J.

Year Built: 1766

Key Architects: Various

As New Jersey's flagship university, Rutgers is already off to a rough start. The entire university is haphazardly laid out, and therefore, relies heavily on buses for transportation (a service that moves so many people, it is second only to NJ Transit) this dependency on public transportation leaves little room for a proper college experience. While some of the older buildings, like Old Queens (built between 1809–1825), are idyllic university gems, the newer architecture is an eyesore next to the original campus, like the alarmingly red and white patterned Civic Square Building.

Location: Anchorage, Alaska

Year Built: 1954

Key Architects: Various

As one design blogger once said, "I am perpetually blown away by University of Alaska Anchorage's commitment to interesting architecture." This remark of the school's architecture may be flippant, but it's not totally wrong. Most of the buildings at ASU are sterile, giving the campus an office park or medical center vibe. This is surprising considering the school's efforts to infuse native culture into the university, including a building that’s reminiscent of the bow of a canon.

Location: Claremont, Calif.

Year Built: 1955

Key Architects: Edward Durell Stone

Known for its stellar engineering program, Harvey Mudd leaves something to be desired in terms of its facilities. This California school has a beautiful location, but its flat architecture takes away from the natural scenery. Edward Durell Stone's buildings even have bumps (literally nicknamed warts) that make for a comical addition to his already unappealing buildings. 

Location: Pullman, Wash.

Year Built: 1911 (Founded: 1890)

Key Architects: Various, including: Rudolph Weaver

Although WSU has beautiful scenery, the campus feels as uninviting as a medical complex. The school has tried to alleviate this with some new construction, but some of their attempts, like the residence halls (which are reminiscent of a motel), have fallen short of expectations.

Location: Mobile, Ala.

Year Built: 1964

Key Architects: Various

The University of South Alabama has a very distancing design. Student attendance has actually outgrown the supply of dorms, leaving the university to construct many new buildings for the influx of new students. Hopefully, the new construction will do the college some good and finally help the campus become the kind of environment it strives to be. While many of the new designs look impressive, hopefully they will make up for older buildings like the Richard A. Harvill Building, which even the school's website says looks "basically windowless."

Location: Knoxville, Tenn.

Year Built: 1794

Key Architects: Various

We don't think it's a coincidence that the University of Tennessee's school color is orange, since the campus is overrun with orange brick. The John C. Hodges library is one of the campus' main offenders, with its setback levels reminiscent of a children's LEGO building.

Location: Towson, Md.

Year Built: 1910 (Founded: 1866)

Key Architects: Unknown

The campus' manicured, gated community aesthetic is sterile and bland. This may be intentional, due to the fact that the school is located in a decidedly unsafe area. Open in 2011, the College of Liberal Arts building plays it safe with brick and glass, but has an odd facade of windows with a pitched roof. The college's guarded style does not help make the suitcase school anymore inviting; most students end up going home on the weekends regardless of the campus aesthetic.

Location: Dekalb, Ill.

Year Built: 1895

Key Architects: Various

Located 65 miles outside of Chicago, this university has a bad reputation, receiving a C+ on some college ranking sites for its bland architecture and uninspiring surroundings. Northern Illinois University is a suitcase school, where most students leave for the weekend, and this has unfortunately inspired the nickname Norther Illinois Community College. As for the architecture, most students agree that the school sometimes presents itself falsely. It shows pictures of the castle-esque Altgeld Hall online, when most students never get the luxury of even being on that side if campus. On the upside, this reputation for old, sterile, and decrepit buildings, coupled with the recent press the university has received, has sparked new renovations.

Location: Minneapolis

Year Built: 1851

Key Architects: Various, including: Steven Holl and Frank Gehry

Originally designed as a commuter school, the University of Minnesota leaves a lot to be desired. The Brutalist architecture is heavy and impersonal, making the campus feel uninviting. On a positive note, the school is actively making strides to improve itself, although this is not readily apparent from the outside, by constructing new Green buildings and more dorms.

Location: College Park, Md.

Year Built: 1856

Key Architects: Various

Similar to many other campuses on our list, College Park is a brick wonderland. Its unfortunate Georgian aesthetic choice is the main reason this school gets on the list. With its cold, rigid architecture and need for high security, College Park leaves a lot to be desired.

Location: Amherst, Mass.

Year Built: 1970 (Founded: 1965)

Key Architects: Various, including Norton Juster 

Known as one of the "Five Area Colleges" (along with UMass Amherst, which is also on our list), Hampshire is often praised for its landscape, but many students have called this college "gloomy" or "gritty." The campus was designed around the library with initially bland planning. The school's planner Hugh Stubbin is quoted as saying that "structure should be forthright and honest." To achieve this honesty, Stubbin decided to commission poured concrete buildings. Unfortunately, these lackluster buildings leave a lot to be desired and do not add anything to the surrounding space. 

Location: Binghamton, N.Y.

Year Built: 1961 (Founded: 1946)

Key Architects: Various

Apparently, during the 1960s and 1970s, the state of New York didn't care much for architectural aesthetics. Similar to its brethren, SUNY Binghamton is a grim, utilitarian Modernist campus. Some have compared the facilities to that of a public high school, which is a statement that could be made for the rest of the SUNY network, as well.

Location: Newark, N.J.

Year Built: 1979 (Founded: 1881)

Key Architects: Various, including: John Welch

Unfortunately NJIT can't seem to distance itself from its drab urban surroundings. This lack of a traditional college-campus feel, coupled with a dizzying variety of building styles (ranging from pseudo-medieval to Modernist) all come together to create a haphazard, ugly campus.

Location: Amherst, Mass.

Year Built: 1970 (Founded: 1863)

Key Architects: Various, including Marcel Breuer, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Kevin Roche,  Edward Durell Stone, and Gordon Bunshaft.

Architectural criticism is nothing new to the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1974, the Boston Globe's architecture critic, Robert Campbell, called the campus "a jumble of unrelated personal monuments that look more like a world's fair grounds than a campus." We guess that's one way to say "disjointed," but the school is still made up of a variety of concert buildings, dark subterranean spaces, and clinical architecture, so Campbell may not have been far off.

Location: Albany, N.Y.

Year Built: 1962 (Founded: 1844)

Key Architects: Edward Durell Stone

SUNY Albany has taken a lot of flack for its cold, impersonal campus. Designed by renowned campus architect veteran Edward Durell Stone, the campus falls short...but it all can't be blamed on Stone. The SUNY system doesn't have a great reputation for glorious buildings. Budget constraints truncated Stone's idyllic vision of the space, complete with artfully lit archways and lush green surroundings. Unfortunately, due to this, we'll never know just how beautiful the central New York campus could have been.

Location: Denton, Texas

Year Built: 1890

Key Architects: Various, including: Holzman Moss Architecture

This sprawling campus sits along Interstate 35. The campus itself feels industrial, with small, low-lying buildings abound. It lacks a central area and subsequently, a traditional, central-collegiate feel. The college's sports arena, referred to as the Super Pit (formally the Coliseum), is one of the college's architectural abominations, along with the hated dorms. Built in 1973, the rounded brick structure is topped by a black, flat slap that is completely unappealing to look at.

Location: Glassboro, N.J.

Year Built: 1923

Key Architects: Unknown

This campus is in need of a lot of love. The buildings are falling apart and are covered with water stains from years of rainfall. If the crumbling architecture wasn't unwelcoming enough, the campus has an unfortunate amount of ill-placed technical equipment and dumpsters. This lack of care is not lost on Rowan University's students, who have gone as far as creating a blog called  "RowanPains," devoted to the campus' decrepit aesthetic.

Location: Warwick, R.I.

Year Built: 1972

Key Architects: Perkins + Will

The Knight Campus of CCRI was built for function but may have sacrificed style in the process. The campus is the perfect example of harsh, brutalist architecture. Cold, domineering, and intrusive, it doesn't give much by way of inspiration, and it's anything but inviting. The main building evokes images of a concrete cruise ship.

Location: Atlanta

Year Built: Ongoing (Founded: 1913)

Key Architects: Various

Georgia State is a large university spread out over the city of Atlanta. Due to the urban setting, the non-cohesive plan, and the lack of a central campus, the school sees a lot of crime from the surrounding city area. Some students have gone so far as to refer to the school as a glorified high school. The unwelcoming surroundings are enhanced by the campus' overbearing and unfriendly architecture. Many of the buildings, like Library North and South Library, lack adequate windows, adding to the prison-like atmosphere of the school. 

Location: Stony Brook, N.Y.

Year Built: 1957

Key Architects: Various including Bertrand Goldberg

SUNY Stony Brook has been criticized for years, even being named "neo-penal" for its "prison" aesthetic. The campus attempted to shed its bad rap by erecting new buildings like the space age campus recreation center and the Charles P. Wang Center. With these changes, the campus today has an oddly futuristic look, which stands in strange juxtaposition with the rest of the old 1960s buildings, especially the University Hospital.

Location: Philadelphia

Year Built: 1891

Key Architects: Various, including: Michael Graves

In 2002, Drexel University won “Ugliest Campus” by Campus Squeeze, and in 2008, it received the honor again, this time by Radar Magazine. Unfortunately, not much has changed. The campus is still being criticized for its “prison-like” dorms and factory-inspired aesthetic. The school’s concrete and brick Disque Hall looms over an open courtyard, and even from outside, the lack of windows is oppressive. Meanwhile, multiple construction projects were paused during the early months of the pandemic but were later confirmed to have resumed. More recently, a number of projects were set to be finished in 2022.

Location: Buffalo, N.Y.

Year Built: 1962 (Founded: 1846)

Key Architects: Various

Buffalo itself was an experiment in city planning. Originally intended to hold many more people than its current population, the city is a virtual ghost town in some places. This sprawling, hopeful planning extends to the North Campus of SUNY Buffalo. The campus itself is spread too thin, creating a multiple mile walk between some buildings. Due to this, the cohesiveness of the campus is nonexistent and cold (and from October to March that coldness is literal). Capen Hall, home to the president and provost of the university, looks more like a factory than the fulcrum of a center for learning.  

Location: Purchase, N.Y.

Year Built: 1967

Key Architects: Various, including Paul Rudolph, Charles Gwathmey, Phillip Johnson, John Burgee, and Robert Venturi

SUNY Purchase's campus may be irony at its most cruel. The campus is actually one of the few on this list that is known for its ugliness, deemed both a "modern interpretation of a medieval fortress" and "a repurposed maximum security prison." The campus has even inspired the sarcastic Tumblr "Beautiful Purchase." The 1960s modernist buildings are as interesting as plain cardboard boxes, and the institutional lack of aesthetic beauty could be taken as a misguided joke for one of SUNY's best art schools. The Performing Arts Center, for one, greets students like a windowless tower of doom. We'd like to think that it's a modernist architect's gift of a blank canvas to the immensely talented student body.

Location: Rochester, N.Y.

Year Built: 1966 (Founded: 1829)

Key Architects: Various, including: Kevin Roche

With such a good photo program, you would think RIT would have an eye for aesthetics. Unfortunately, the university's planners were not on the same page as the students. The campus was actually built on a swamp and is lovingly referred to as "brick city" because of its wall-to-wall (and ground-to-sky) reddish-brown brick architecture. However, we have to give credit where credit is due; the school is actively trying to implement better architecture with new construction, like the Vignelli Center for Design.

Location: New York

Year Built: 1847

Key Architects: George Browne Post

Many of City College's buildings were designed by George B. Post. When submitting proposals for the project, Post actually drew up two plans, one in the Beaux-Art style and a second in the Gothic style. The college chose the latter. Post's buildings are over-the-top ornate like the building that houses the Department of Psychology, which looks like a church decorated in lumpy icing or a wedding cake gone wrong. Due to this poor stylistic choice, the campus is uninviting and also a little terrifying.

Location: Ava Maria, Fla.

Year Built: 2007 (Founded: 1998)

Key Architects: Cannon Design

This campus is the pièce de résistance of the Ugliest Campuses in America. It's comical how obtrusive this campus looks with European-flavored buildings surrounding a church (the building was originally conceived by town founder, Tom Monaghan of Dominos). What makes no sense, however, is the fact that Monaghan is one of the world's largest collectors of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. We wish that he took a page from Wright's book when designing the school.