March 31, 2017 - A week ago we had planned to go on an organized walking tour of the Claremont Colleges but, Dante's illness forced our cancellation. So today we went to Claremont, CA attempting a self-guided tour of the seven campuses. The Claremont Colleges are a consortium of five undergraduate and two graduate schools of higher education. Their compartmentalized collegiate university design was inspired by Oxford University and Cambridge University and put together, the campuses cover roughly one square mile. The five undergraduate colleges are: Pomona College (founded 1887, 1,630 students), Scripps College (founded 1926, 962 students), Claremont McKenna College (founded 1946, 1,320 students), Harvey Mudd College (founded 1955, 800 students), and Pitzer College (founded 1963, 1,067 students). The two graduate universities are: Claremont Graduate University (founded 1925, 2,485 students) and Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences (founded 1997, 331 students).
There are flowers and flowering trees everywhere.
Designed by world-renowned architect Rafael Viñoly, the Kravis Center is a five-level, 162,000-sq-ft academic and administrative facility which serves as the western gateway to the CMC campus. The Center’s most photographed feature is its all glass Living Room (aka the “Kube”) that floats on a Mesabi black granite reflecting pool.
The Claremont Graduate University was founded in 1925 as the second of the seven Claremont Colleges.
These Shakespeare Mosaics on the Garrison Theater were created by Millard Sheets in 1963.
All told, we saw five of the seven campuses in two hours. Afterwards we had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants in Claremont, Il Mattone. We started off with Calamaretti, a crispy fried calamari and shrimp served with spicy tomato sauce and had their Pizza Ligure (goat cheese, mozzarella, artichokes, sliced tomatoes, basil, and charred red pepper puree) for our entrée. It was delicious!
